V. I. Lenin

Concluding Remarks at a Conference of Chairmen of

Uyezd, Volost and Village Executive Committees Of Moscow Gubernia

October 15, 1920

Comrades, I shall have to confine myself to some brief concluding remarks, because from the very beginning of the meeting
it has been clear that there is quite a strong desire, in fact a
very strong desire, to upbraid the central government. That would,
of course, have been useful, and I have considered it my duty to
listen to everything said in criticism of the government and its
policy. I think that the discussion should not have been wound
up. (Hear, hear!) However, while listening to your remarks, I have been surprised to see how few precise and specific
proposals you have put forward. Of the two questions-the foreign
affairs and the home affairs of our Republic—I think that
home affairs interest you more. That is how it should be. But,
comrades, you forget that home affairs depend on foreign affairs,
and I therefore have thought it my duty to tell you how and why
the Polish war brought us up against the international imperialists and then led to peace; how and why this peace is
precarious, and what has to be done to consolidate it. I hope
that, in this matter, after you have discussed all the other
questions and set forth all the problems in a calm fashion, you
will not behave like certain personages in the fable mentioned by
one of the speakers, about the lynx which waits for the goat and
the ram to fall out, so as to devour them both. You will not give
that satisfaction to the lynx-of that I am sure. However furiously
the goat and the ram may clash, we shall give no satisfaction to
the lynx. (Applause and cheers.) Comrades, if extreme dissatisfaction and impatience have been expressed here so often,
we all know that freedom of speech is the primary rule of
procedure at meetings. At this meeting you have broken this
rule-it is because the majority of the peasants are experiencing
all too severely the effects of the very grave situation that has
arisen in the localities. Most of the peasants are feeling all too
severely the effects of famine, cold and excessive taxation. (" Hear, Hear!" and applause.) It was, in the
main, for this that most of the speakers upbraided the central
government, directly and indirectly. One got a feeling that the
comrades did not even want to give a full hearing to speakers in
whose speeches they heard no replies to this acute problem. One of
the speakers, I do not remember which, said that in his opinion I
had evaded this issue. I consider this assertion groundless.

The position of the Soviet Republic is most grave, which made
us hurry to conclude peace before the winter campaign set in. That
haste stemmed from a desire to avoid a winter campaign, a
realisation that it is better to have a worse frontier, that is to
say, to get less Byelorussian territory and be in a position to
wrest fewer Byelorussian peasants from the yoke of the bourgeoisie, than to impose fresh hardships and another
’winter campaign on the peasants of Russia. Such were our
reasons. You know that the poor harvest of this year has
aggravated the peasants’ need. However, the measure in which
this ties us in our home policy is not generally realised. I think
that you will all be fully informed on the subject of taxation. You will also hear what the speaker on the food policy
will have to say. And all I want is to draw your attention to the
close connection between the internal situation and the
external. Let us take, for example, the sittings of our Council of
Defence and the Council of People’s Commissars. At these
meetings we even have to deal with the question of the running of
each train, the grain-requisitioning quotas imposed upon the Great
Russia gubernias—quotas that are often extremely rigorous. Two or three weeks ago the Council of People’s
Commissars considered the question of the excessively rigorous
quotas, established by the central authorities; it decided that
they should be reduced. At whose expense is this to be done? There
can be only one reply .to this question: only at the expense of
outlying regions that are richer in grain, namely, Siberia and the
Kuban, and by making it possible to obtain grain from the
Ukraine. We are getting grain from Siberia and from the Kuban, but
we cannot get grain from the Ukraine because warfare is raging
there, and the Rod Army has to fight the bands that infest that
area. We have to settle the problem of almost every train. We have
seen what this meeting has turned into, the dissatisfaction
expressed here, and the voices raised in loud protest. We know the
reason for all this. We know that all those who have revealed such
emotion here are sick at heart because there is no fodder,
livestock is perishing, and taxation is so heavy. The comrade who
said that these cries of protest were something new to us was
wrong. Both from telegrams and reports from the provinces we know
of the heavy loss of cattle as a result of the grave fodder
situation, and we all realise the difficulties. But we also know
the solution. There is only one solution—Siberia, the Kuban
and the Ukraine.

From Siberia we had to bring up troops to the Wrangel front,
and in the Council of Defence there were two or three very painful
meetings when comrades came with the demand that we should cancel
the special food trains. After the most bitter wrangling and
bargaining, we ended by deciding to somewhat curtail the number of
food trains. However, we would like to hear more weighty and,
serious criticism. We know all about the outcries and lamentations
that the farms are being ruined. That is why even the truce that
comes into force on the 18th, even though the Poles are entitled
to cancel it at forty-eight hours’ notice, will give us some
respite and relief; in any case there will be more trainloads of
grain from Siberia and the Kuban in the next few weeks. Of course,
the need is so acute and the crop shortage so severe that the
relief this will provide will not be very great. We should not, of
course, deceive ourselves and say that it will remove all our
difficulties and enable us to discontinue the grain requisitioning
quotas.

That is something I cannot and will not say. State your views
precisely, let us have your definite suggestions for relieving the
heavy taxation, and the representatives of the workers’ and
peasants’ government will examine them with the closest
attention, because we must find a way of easing this exceedingly
painful situation. There is no less grain in the Ukraine than in
the Kuban; there is perhaps even more, but so far we have been
able to get hardly anything from the Ukraine under the grain
quotas, which have been fixed at 600,000,000 pood s, and
which could meet all the needs of our industries and help restore
them. We have struck the Ukraine off our accounts: not a single
pood can be expected from the Ukraine, because of the bandits there, and because the war with Wrangel compels us to say
that we cannot be sure of getting a single pood from the
Ukraine. Such is the situation, which, notwithstanding your
legitimate impatience and quite justified indignation, makes us
divert all our attention to the Polish and the Wrangel fronts. That is why when comrades say that they are not against
giving help, but they want that help to be given freely, we say:
"Go and help the front!"

I shall conclude my brief remarks by reminding you of what I
said at the end of my report, namely, that every time the Soviets
have had to get out of a difficult situationwhen Denikin was in
Ore!, or when Yudenich was within five versts of
Petrograd-when the situation seemed not only difficult, but
desperate, a hundred times as difficult as it is now, the Soviet
government got out of that situation by calling together meetings
of workers and peasants like the present one and telling them the
unvarnished truth. That is why I say that whether or not Wrangel
will soon be crushed depends, not on a decision of the central
government but on the way in which the representatives from the
localities, after giving vent to their dissatisfaction, after
finishing the struggle which the above-mentioned comrade has
called a clash between the goats and the rams-an indispensable
thing-and after voicing their complaints, accusations and
recriminations-the way in which local representatives reply to the
question whether they themselves want freedom, quite apart from
any decision by the central government. Here we cannot give
orders; it will depend on your own decisions, when you come to
discuss the state of affairs, the grain-requisitioning quotas,
taxation, Wrangel, etc.-it will depend on you. Let each man have
his say; give vent to all your reproaches; censure us ten times
more severely-that is your right and your duty. You have come here
to express your opinion plainly and bluntly. But when you have
done all that, just reflect calmly what you want to contribute and
do so as to finish with Wrangel as quickly as possible. I think
that we shall reach such thorough agreement on this question that
I repeat in conclusion-never will the lynx benefit from our
arguments, recriminations and accusations. (Applause.)