V. I. Lenin

Speech Delivered At A Conference

Of Chairmen Of Uyezd, Volost And Village

Executive Committees Of Moscow Gubernia

October 15, 1920 [1]

Comrades, in my report on the domestic and the external position of the Republic, which you wished to hear, I
shall naturally have to devote most of my remarks to the war with
Poland and its causes. It was this war which in the main
determined the Republic’s domestic and external position
during the past six months. Now that the preliminaries for a peace
with Poland have just been signed, it is possible and necessary to
take a general look at this war and its significance and try to
give thought to the lessons we have all learnt from the war which
has just ended, though nobody knows whether it has ended for
good. I would therefore like first to remind you that it was on
April 26 of this year that the Poles began their offensive. The
Soviet Republic solemnly and formally proposed a peace to the
Poles, the Polish landowners and the Polish bourgeoisie, on terms
more favourable than those we have offered them now, despite the
tremendous reverses our troops suffered at Warsaw, and the even
greater reverses during the retreat from Warsaw. At the end of the
April of this year, the Poles held a line between 50 and 150
versts to the east of the one they now regard as the line
of a preliminary peace; though at that time the line was
manifestly an unfair one, we solemnly proposed peace to them on
behalf of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, since, as
you all of course know and remember, the Soviet government was
mainly concerned at the time with ensuring the transition to
peaceful construction. We had no reason for wishing to resort to
arms in settling questions in dispute between ourselves and the
Polish state. We were fully aware that the Polish state was, and
still is, a state of the landowners and capitalists, and that it
is fully dependent on the capitalists of the Entente countries, in
particular on France. Though at the time Poland controlled, not
only the whole of Lithuania but also Byelorussia, to say nothing
of Eastern Galicia, we considered it our duty to do everything
possible to avert a war, so as to give the working class and the
peasantry of Russia at least a brief respite from imperialist and
civil wars, and at last enable them to get down in earnest to
peaceful work. The events that ensued have happened all too
frequently: our straightforward and public offer of peace on the
line the Poles actually held was taken as a sign of weakness. Bourgeois diplomats of all countries are unaccustomed to
such frank statements and our readiness to accept a peace along a
line so disadvantageous to us was taken and interpreted as proof
of our extreme weakness. The French capitalists succeeded in
inciting the Polish capitalists to go to war. You will remember
how, after a brief interval following upon the Polish offensive,
we replied by dealing a counter-blow and almost reached Warsaw,
after which our troops suffered a heavy defeat, and were thrown
back.

For over a month and right down to the present, our troops were
retreating and suffered reverses, for they were utterly worn out,
exhausted by their unparalleled advance from Polotsk to
Warsaw. But, I repeat, despite this difficult situation, peace was
signed on terms less advantageous to Poland than the earlier
ones. The earlier frontier lay 50 versts to the east, whereas it is now 50 versts to the west. Thus, though we
signed a peace at a time favourable only to the enemy, when our
troops were on the retreat and Wrangel was building up his
offensive, we signed a peace treaty on more favourable terms. This
once again proves to you that when the Soviet Government proposes
peace, its words and statements have to be treated seriously;
otherwise what will happen is that we shall offer peace on terms
less favourable to us, and get this peace on better terms. This is
a lesson the Polish landowners and capitalists will not, of
course, forget; they realise that they have gone too far; the
peace terms now give them less territory than was offered
previously. This is not the first lesson either. You all probably
remember that, in the spring of 1919, a representative of the
U.S. Government came to Moscow and proposed a preliminary peace
with us and with all the whiteguard commanders at the time:
Kolchak, Denikin and others, a peace which would have been
extremely unfavourable to us. When he returned and reported on our
peace terms, they were not considered advantageous, and the war
went on. You are aware of the outcome of the war. This is not the
first time that the Soviet state has proved that it is considerably stronger than it appears, and that our diplomatic
Notes do not contain the boasts and threats that are usual with
all bourgeois governments; consequently, rejecting an offer of
peace from Soviet Russia means getting that peace some time later
on terms that are far worse. Such things are not forgotten in
international politics; after proving to the Polish landowners
that they have now obtained a peace worse than the one which we
originally offered, we shall teach the Polish people, the Polish
peasants and workers, to weigh and compare the statements of their
government and ours.

Many of you may have read in the newspapers the American
Government’s Note, in which it declares: “we do not wish to have any dealings with the Soviet Government because it
does not honour its obligations. [2] “ This does not surprise us, because it has been said for many years, the only
outcome being that all their attempts to invade Soviet Russia have
ended in disaster. The Polish newspapers, nearly all of which are
in the pay of the landowners and the capitalists-there this is
called freedom of the press-assert that the Soviet government
cannot be trusted, since it is a government of tyrants and
frauds. All Polish newspapers say the same thing, but the Polish
workers and peasants compare these words with the facts, and the
facts show that we demonstrated our attachment to peace the very
first time we made our peace offer; by concluding peace in October
we proved this again. You will not find proof of this kind in the
history of any bourgeois government, a fact that cannot but leave
its impress on the minds of the Polish workers and peasants. The
Soviet Government signed a peace when it was not to its advantage
to do so. It is only in this way that we shall teach the
governments that are controlled by the landowners and capitalists
to stop lying; only in this way shall we destroy the faith the
workers and peasants have in them. We must give more thought to
this than to anything else. Soviet power in Russia is surrounded
by countless enemies, and yet these enemies are impotent. Think of
the course and outcome of the Polish war. We now know that the
French capitalists stood behind Poland, that they supplied Poland
with money and munitions, and sent them French officers. We quite
recently received information that African troops, namely French
colonial troops, had appeared on the Polish front. This means that
the war was waged by France with aid from Britain and America. At
the same time, France recognised the lawful government of Russia
in the person of Wrangel-so Wrangel too was hacked by France, who
provided him with the means to equip and maintain an army. Britain
and America are also aiding Wrangel’s army. Consequently,
three allies stood against us: France, supported by the
world’s wealthy countries, Poland, and Wrangel-yet we have
emerged from this war by concluding a favourable peace. In other
words, we have won. Anyone who examines the map will see that we
have won, that we have emerged from this war with more territory
than we had before it started. But is the enemy weaker than we
are? Is he weaker in the military sense? Has he got fewer men and
munitions? No, he has more of everything. This enemy is stronger
than we are, and yet he has been beaten. This is what we must give
thought to in order to understand Soviet Russia’s position
with respect to all other countries.

When we Bolsheviks started the revolution, we said that it
could and should be started, but at the same time we did not
forget that it could be successfully ended and brought to an
absolutely victorious conclusion, without confining ourselves to
Russia alone, but, in alliance with a number of countries, after
defeating international capital. Russian capital is linked up with
international capital. When our enemies say to us: even if you
were to win in Russia, your cause will nevertheless perish because
the other capitalist states will crush you, we now have an
answer-the highly important experience of the war-with Poland,
which shows how things have actually turned out. Indeed, why did
it happen that, within six months and even less, if we take April
as the beginning of the offensive, France, Poland and Wrangel, who
were stronger than we are, were full of hatred of Bolshevism, and
were determined to overthrow Soviet power, have been defeated, and
the war has ended in our favour? How could it have happened that
Soviet Russia, exhausted by the imperialist and civil wars,
surrounded by enemies, and cut off from every source of supplies
and equipmentthis Soviet Russia has proved the victor? We must
reflect on this because, if we go deeper into this question, we
begin to understand the mechanism, not only of the Russian but of
the world revolution as well. We see confirmation of the fact that
the Russian revolution is but a single link in the chain of the
world revolution, and that our cause is strong and invincible
because the cause of revolution is developing throughout the
world; economic conditions are evolving in a way that is making
our enemies weaker and us stronger with every day. The Polish war
has again proved that this is neither exaggeration, boasting nor
overenthusiasm. Three allies were fighting against us. One might
have thought that uniting these three allies should present no
difficulty but it appeared that, taught by the great experience of
Yudenich, Kolchak and Denikin campaigns, they were unable to unite
against us and squabbled at every step. In this connection, the
history of the Polish war, which has only just ended, is
particularly instructive. Our march on Warsaw-the Red Army’s
march, in which weary, exhausted and poorly-clad soldiers covered
over 600 versts , inflicting one defeat after another on
the Polish troops, who were excellently trained, with hundreds of
the best French officer instructors-showed us the kind of
relations that existed among our enemies. On July 12, when the Red
Army troops were approaching the Polish frontier, we received a
telegram from Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Curzon, on behalf
of the League of Nations, that notorious League of Nations, an
alliance which professes to unite Britain, France, America, Italy
and Japan, countries with a tremendous military potential and
possessing all the navies of the world, and against whom military
resistance might seem perfectly impossible and absurd. On behalf
of this League of Nations, Curzon proposed that we stop the war
and enter into negotiations with the Poles in London. According to
this telegram, the boundary should pass near Grodno, Byelostok,
Brest-Litovsk and along the River San in Eastern Galicia. To this
proposal we replied that we recognised no League of Nations, since
we had seen its insignificance and the disregard that even its
members had for its decisions. The French Government considered
our reply insolent, and one would have thought that this League of
Nations would come out against us. But what happened? The League
of Nations fell apart at our very first declaration, and Britain
and France fell on each other.

For several years Britain’s Secretary for War Churchill
has been employing every means, both lawful and more often
unlawful from the viewpoint of British law, to help the
whiteguards against Russia, so as to supply them with military
equipment. He hates Soviet Russia bitterly, yet immediately after
our declaration Britain fell out with France, because France needs
the forces of a whiteguard Russia to protect her against Germany,
while Britain needs no such protection. Britain, a naval power,
fears no such action because she has a most powerful navy. Thus,
the League of Nations, which has sent such unprecedented threats
to Russia, was itself helpless from the very outset. At every step
the interests of the League’s member states are patently in
conflict. France desires the defeat of Britain, and vice
versa. When Comrade Kamenev was negotiating with the British
Government in London and asked the British Prime Minister,
“Let us suppose that you will really do what you say, what
about France?”, the British Prime Minister had to reply that
France would go her own way. He said that Britain could not take
the same road as France. It became plain that the League of
Nations was non-existent, that the alliance of the capitalist
powers is sheer fraud, and that in actual fact it is an alliance
of robbers, each trying to snatch something from the others. When
at the conclusion of peace in Riga, we discovered what divided
Poland, Britain, France and Wrangel, and why they could not act in
unison, we learnt that their interests differed: Britain wanted to
have the small succession states-Finland, Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania-in her sphere of influence and was not interested in the
restoration of tsarist or whiteguard or even bourgeois Russia; she
even stood to lose from it. That was why Britain was acting
counter to France and could not unite with Poland and
Wrangel. France’s concern was to fight to the last Polish
soldier for her interests and the debts owed to her. She hoped we
would pay her the 20-thousand-million debt incurred by the former
tsar and recognised by the Keren-. sky government. Any sensible
person will realise that the French capitalists will never see the
colour of their money; the French capitalists realise that the
French workers and peasants cannot be made to fight, while Polish
soldiers are plentiful and can be driven into battle-so let them
die that the French capitalists may get their millions back. However, the Polish workers too can see that the French,
British and other officers behave in Poland just as if they were
in a conquered country. That was why, during the Riga negotiations, we saw that the party of the Polish workers and
peasants which is undoubtedly patriotic and undoubtedly hostile to
Bolshevism, just like our Rightwing Mensheviks and the
Socialist-Revolutionary Party, stood for peace and was opposed to
the government of the Polish landowners and capitalists, who up to
the last moment tried to wreck the peace treaty, and even now want
to do so and will go on doing so for a long time to come. I shall
have to speak on this point when I come to the question of whether
the preliminary peace we have just concluded will last.

The third ally, Wrangel, who fought for the return of the whole
of Russia to the landowners and the capitalists, regards Poland as
part of Russia. All the Russian tsars, landowners and capitalists
were accustomed to regarding Poland as their prey; they never
forgot that Poland had long ago been crushed by the Russian serf
army led to war by the tsar. That meant that, had Wrangel been
victorious, he would have used his victory in order to restore
full power, both in Russia and in Poland, to the landowners. What
happened, however, was that, when the three allies stood ready to
attack us, they began by falling out among themselves. France’s aims are alien to both the Polish
peasant and the Polish worker, while Wrangel ’s aims are
alien even to any Polish landowner. And now, ---when we hear
Wrangel’s radio or the French Government radio from Paris,
we learn that France and Wrangel are gnashing their teeth because
they realise the implication of this peace which we have concluded
with Poland, though they assert that this is no peace, and that
Poland cannot sign it. We shall see what we shall see, but
meanwhile a peace has been signed. Actually, neither Wrangel nor
France understands how it could have come about. They cannot
stomach the miracle of a devastated Soviet Russia defeating
civilised countries far stronger than she is. They do not
understand that these victories stem from the fundamental doctrine
of the Communists, which says that property divides whereas labour
unites. Private property is robbery, and a state based on private
property is a state of robbers, who are fighting for a share of
the spoils. Though they have not yet finished this war, they are
already fighting among themselves. A year ago fourteen states were
threatening us, yet the alliance of these fourteen states at once
fell apart. Why did it fall apart? Simply because the agreement
between these states only existed on paper, and not one of them
went to war. When a war started and France, Poland and Wrangel
joined forces, their alliance too fell apart, because they were
trying to trip one another up. As the Russian proverb says, they
were trying to share out the skin of a bear they had not yet
killed. They were, in fact, squabbling over a bear they would
never kill.

The experience of world politics has shown that the alliance
against Soviet Russia is irretrievably doomed to failure, because
it is an imperialist alliance, an alliance of plunderers who are
not united, and are bound by no genuine or permanent interests. They lack that which unites the working class; they
have no common interests, which was again revealed during the
Polish war. When our Red Army crushed the resistance of the Poles,
captured Byelostok and Brest-Litovsk and approached the Polish
frontier, this signified the collapse of the entire established
system of international politics, for it is based on the Treaty of
Versailles, which is a treaty of robbers and plunderers. When the
Peace of Brest-Litovsk was imposed on us, a burden we bore so
long, there was a world-wide outcry that it was a robber s
peace. After Germany’s defeat, the League of Nations which
had declared, during the war against Germany, that it was being
fought for liberation and democracy, imposed a peace on the
vanquished country, but it was a usurer’s peace, an oppressor’s peace, a butcher’s peace, because Germany
and Austria were looted and carved up. They deprived them of all
means of subsistence, and left the children hungry and starving;
this was a predatory peace, without any parallel. What then is the
Treaty of Versailles? It is an unparalleled and predatory peace,
which has made slaves of tens of millions of people, including the
most civilised. This is no peace, but terms dictated to a
defenceless victim by armed robbers. Through the Treaty of
Versailles, Germany’s enemies have deprived her of all her
colonies. Turkey, Persia and China have been enslaved. A situation
has arisen wherein seven-tenths of the world’s population
are in a condition of servitude. These slaves are to be found
throughout the world and are at the mercy of a handful of
countries-Britain, France and Japan. That is why this international system in its entirety, the order based on the
Treaty of Versailles, stands on the brink of a volcano, for the
enslaved seven-tenths of the world’s population are waiting
impatiently for someone to give them a lead in a struggle which
will shake all these countries. France hopes that her loans will
be repaid to her, but is herself in debt to America whom she
cannot repay because she has not the wherewithal, and private
property is sacred over there. What is the essence of this
sacrosanct private property? It is that the tsars and capitalists
borrow money, while the workers and the peasants have to repay the
debt for them. They are on the verge of bankruptcy. They cannot
meet their debts. At that very moment, the Red Army broke through
the Polish frontier and approached the German borders. At the time
it was common talk in Germany, even among the reactionaries and
the monarchists, that the Bolsheviks would save them, it being
evident that the Versailles peace was falling apart, that there
existed a Red Army which had declared war on all capitalists. What
has come to pass? It has come to pass that the Peace of Versailles
now hinges on Poland. True, we lacked the strength to bring the
war to an end. It should, however, be remembered that our workers
and peasants were ill-clad and practically barefooted, yet they
marched on and overcame all difficulties, fighting in conditions
never before experienced by any other army in the world. We lacked
the strength to take Warsaw and finish off the Polish landowners,
whiteguards and capitalists, but our army showed the whole world
that the Treaty of Versailles is not the force it is made out to
be, that hundreds of millions of people are condemned to repay
loans for many years to come and have their grandchildren and
great-grandchildren do the same in order that the French, British
and other imperialists may be enriched. The Red Army proved that
the Treaty of Versailles is not so very stable. After the Treaty
of Versailles our army showed that in the summer of 1920, the
Soviet land, devastated as it was, was on the eve of complete
victory thanks to that Red Army. The world saw that a force exists
to which the Treaty of Versailles holds no terror, and that no
Versailles treaties will subdue the power of the workers and
peasants once they have learnt to deal with the landowners and
capitalists.

Thus, the campaign against the Peace of Versailles, the
campaign against all the capitalists and landowners of every
country and against their oppression of other countries, has not
been in vain. Millions upon millions of workers and peasants in
all lands have been watching this and giving it thought, and they
now look upon the Soviet Republic as their deliverer. They say:
the Red Army has shown that it can give blow for blow, though it
was not strong enough for victory in the first year or, you might
oven say, in the first month of its peaceful construction. That
first month of peaceful construction, however, will be followed by
many years, and with each passing year its strength will multiply
tenfold. It was thought that the Peace of Versailles was one of
the all-powerful imperialists, but after the summer of 1920 it
became clear that they were weaker than the workers and peasants
of even a weak country who know how to unite their forces and
repulse the capitalists. In the summer of 1920 Soviet Russia
showed herself as a force that not only defended herself against
attack, against the onslaught of the Polish whiteguards, but
showed herself in fact as a world force capable of smashing the
Treaty of Versailles and freeing hundreds of millions of people
in most countries of the world. That is the significance of the
Red Army’s campaign of this summer. That is why events took
place in Britain during this war, which marked a turning-point in
the whole of British policy. When we refused to halt our troops
Britain replied by threatening to send her fleet against
Petrograd. The order was given to attack Petrograd. That is what
the British Prime Minister announced to Comrade Kamenev, and all
countries were notified. But on the day following the dispatch of
this telegram, mass meetings were held throughout Britain, and
Councils of Action sprang up. The workers united. All the British
Mensheviks, who are even viler than the Russian brand, and fawn
upon the capitalists far more assiduously-even they had to join
in, because the workers were demanding it, because the British
workers said they would not tolerate a war against Russia. All
over Britain Councils of Action were formed, the British
imperialists’ war plans were frustrated, and it once more
turned out that, in her war against the imperialists of all lands,
Soviet Russia has allies in each of them. When we Bolsheviks said:
“We are not alone in our revolt against the landowners and
capitalists of Russia, because in every country we have allies the
worker and peasant; moreover, those allies are to be found in most
countries”, we were ridiculed and were asked: “Where are these working people?” Yes, it is true that in Western
Europe, where the capitalists are far stronger and live by
fleecing hundreds of millions in the colonies, it is far more
difficult to rise up in revolt. There the working-class revolution
is developing incomparably more slowly. Nevertheless, it is
developing. When, in July 1920, Britain threatened Russia with
war, the British workers prevented that war from taking place. The
British Mensheviks followed the lead of the British
Bolsheviks. They had to do so and come out against the
Constitution, against the law declaring they would not tolerate
the war. If the latter was declared on the morrow, they would call
a strike and give no coal to Britain and to France as well. The
British workers declared that they wanted to determine foreign
policy; they are directing it in the same way as the Bolsheviks in
Russia, and not like the capitalists in other countries.

That is an example of what the Polish war has brought to
light. That is why we have emerged victorious withir six
months. That is why devastated, weak and backward Soviet Russia is
defeating an alliance of states infinitely more powerful than she
is. That is because they lack strength at home, and the workers,
the working people in general, are against them. This is apparent
at every crisis. This is apparent because they are robbers who
attack each other and cannot unite against us; because, in the
final analysis, private property divides people and brutalises
them, whereas labour unites them. Labour has not only united the
workers and peasants of Russia, it has united them with the
workers and peasants of all lands. Consequently, in all these
countries the people can now see that Soviet Russia is a force
that is smashing the Peace of Versailles. Soviet Russia will
become stronger, and the Treaty of Versailles will collapse just
as it all but collapsed at the first blow by the Red Army in July
1920. That is why the Polish war has ended in a manner no
imperialist state had bargained for. This is a lesson of the
utmost importance to us, for it shows by the example and behaviour
of all countries taking part in international politics that our
cause is strong; that no matter what attempts are made to invade
Russia and no matter what military moves are made against us-and
in all probability many more will be made-all these attempts will
go up in smoke as we know from our actual experience, which has
steeled us. After every such attempt by our enemies, we shall
emerge stronger than ever.

I shall now turn from international politics, where the clash
with the Peace of Versailles demonstrated our strength, to
problems that are more immediate and practical, to the situation
which has arisen in connection with the Treaty of Versailles. I
shall not dwell on the significance of the Second Congress of the
Communist International, which took place in Moscow in July, a
congress of the Communists of the whole world, and also of the
Congress of the Peoples of the East, which took place afterwards
in Baku. [3] These were international congresses which united the Communists and showed that in all civilised
countries and in all the backward countries of the East, the
banner of Bolshevism, the programme of Bolshevism, the line of
Bolshevik action are an emblem of salvation, an emblem of struggle
to the workers of all civilised countries and the peasants of all
the backward colonial countries. They showed that, during the past
three years, Soviet Russia not only beat off those who fell upon
her in order to throttle her, but won the sympathy of the working
people of the whole world; that we not only defeated our enemies,
but acquired and are still acquiring new allies daily and by the
hour. That which was achieved by the congress of Communists in
Moscow and by the Baku congress of Communist representatives of
the peoples of the East cannot be immediately assessed or directly
calculated, but it has been an achievement of greater significance
than some military victories are, because it proves to us that the
Bolsheviks’ experience, their activities and programme, and
their call for a revolutionary struggle against the capitalists
and imperialists have won world-wide recognition; that which was
achieved in Moscow in July and in Baku in September will for many
months to come provide food for thought and assimilation by the
workers and peasants of the world. This is a force which, in any
conflict or crisis, will come out for Soviet Russia, as we have
seen on more than one occasion. Such is the fundamental lesson of
the Polish war, from the angle of the alignment of world
forces.

In dealing with events at home, I must say that Wrangel is the
chief force in the field against us. France, Poland and Wrangel
joined forces against us. While our forces were wholly engaged in
the war on the Western front, Wrangel mustered his forces, aided
by the French and British navies. When Wrangel was approaching the
Kuban, he was counting on support from the rich Cossack
kulaks. Who helped Wrangel at the time? Who supplied him with fuel
and a fleet to enable him to hold on to the Donets Basin? It was
the British and the American navies. We know, however, that this
landing operation failed, because the Kuban Cossack, though he was
rich in grain, saw perfectly through those promises of a
constituent assembly, rule by the people and the other fine things
that the Mensheviks, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc., try to
fool simpletons with. Perhaps the Kuban peasants believed them
while they were holding forth so eloquently, but in the long run
they put their faith in action not words, and saw that though the
Bolsheviks were severe people to deal with, they were to be
preferred. As a result, Wrangel fled from the Kuban, and many
hundreds and thousands of his troops were shot. Despite this,
Wrangel assembled more and more of his forces in the Crimea, his
troops consisting in the main of officers. He hoped that, at the
first favourable moment, it would be possible to build up these
forces, provided they had the backing of the peasants.

Wrangel’s troops are better equipped with guns, tanks, and aircraft than all the other armies that fought in
Russia. Wrangel was assembling his forces when we were fighting
the Poles; that is why I say that the peace with Poland is
unstable. According to the preliminary peace signed on the 12th,
the armistice will come into force only on the 18th, and the Poles
still have two days in which they can repudiate it. ’°4 The
entire French press and the capitalists there are striving to get
Poland to start a new war against Soviet Russia; Wrangel is
hastening to use all his connections in order to wreck this peace,
because he can see that when the war with Poland is ended the
Bolsheviks will turn against him. The only practical conclusion
for us, therefore, is to direct all our forces against Wrangel. In
April this year we proposed peace on terms ’which were unfavourable to us, only in order to spare tens of thousands of
workers and peasants the carnage of a new war. To us frontiers do
not matter so much; we do not mind losing some territory in the
frontier regions. To us it is more important to preserve the lives
of tens of thousands of workers and peasants and to retain the
possibility of peaceful construction, than to keep a small piece
of territory. That is why we submitted this peace proposal and now
repeat that Wrangel is the main threat, that his troops, which
have meanwhile grown enormously in strength, are fighting
desperately, at points have crossed the Dnieper and have assumed
the offensive. The Wrangel front and the Polish front are one and
the same thing, and the question of the war against Wrangel is a
question of the war against Poland; to convert the preliminary
peace with Poland into a permanent peace we must crush Wrangel in
the shortest possible space of time. If that is not done, we
cannot be certain that the Polish landowners and capitalists,
under pressure from the French landowners and capitalists and with
their help, will net once again try to embroil us in war. That is
why I am taking advantage of this broadly representative meeting
to draw your attention to this fundamental question and to ask you
to make use of your position and authority in order to influence
the masses of workers and peasants and ensure that the greatest
possible efforts are made towards the full accomplishment of our
immediate task-at all costs to crush Wrangel in the shortest space
of time, because the possibility of our engaging in the work of
peaceful construction depends only on this.

We know that in our devastated country the peasant economy has
been destroyed, and that the peasant needs goods, and not the
paper money which is being showered on him in such profusion. However, to supply him with goods such as paraffin oil,
salt, clothing, etc., industry must be restored. We are
approaching a position in which that can be done. We know that we
now have more grain than last year; we now have fuel for industry:
over 100 million poods of oil from Baku; the Donets
Basin, which provides an enormous quantity of fuel, has been
rehabilitated, though some industrial enterprises had to be
evacuated during Wrangel’s advance to the south of the
Donets Basin. Donots industry can be considered completely
restored. Supplies of firewood are growing. Last year they
totalled seven million cubic metres; we now have considerably
more. Our industry is reviving. In Ivanovo-Voznesensk Gubernia,
where for a number of years the mills were at a standstill,
putting all the workers in low spirits, the mills are now being
supplied with fuel and are beginning to operate. Thanks to the
victories in Turkestan, they have received Turkestan cotton, and
are starting to work. We are now confronted with a vast field of
productive work, and we must do everything possible to rehabilitate industry, and supply the peasant with clothing,
footwear and food and thus commence a fair exchange of the
peasants’ grain for urban products. We must begin to give
aid to agriculture. Yesterday, in the Council of People’s
Commissars, we decided to encourage with extra rations the workers
of the factory that will manufacture the first plough that proves
best suited to our Russian conditions, so that we may restore our
agriculture and raise it to a higher level, despite the shortage
of cattle.

The workers and peasants are working together, without the
landowners and the capitalists, and are achieving successes. However, the main thing in tackling this problem in
earnest is the need to remember firmly that tens of thousands of
workers and peasants are giving up their lives on the Wrangel
front, that the enemy is better armed than we are, and that it is
there, on the Wrangel front, that the last desperate battle is
being fought out; it is there that the matter is being decided
whether Soviet Russia will be able to strengthen herself for
peaceful labour, so that no imperialist world-wide alliance, and
not only the Polish whiteguards, will be able to threaten her. It
is up to you, comrades. You must bend every effort, and remember
that Soviet Russia has been able to solve all the problems in her
struggle, not because decrees have been issued from the centre,
but because these decrees have met with the enthusiastic and
ardent sympathy of the workers and peasants throughout the
country. Only when the workers and peasants saw that they were
fighting against Kolchak, Denikin and Wrangel for their own land,
their own factories and workshops, for their own interests and
against the landowners and capitalists-only then did every one of
them give the Red Army every possible support and assistance. When
the Red Army men saw that the people in the rear were doing all
they could for them, they were filled with the spirit which led
them to victory. Everything depends on our defeating Wrangel, and
I call on you to do everything possible in your organisations and
factories, and in your villages, voluntarily and in accordance
with the interests of the workers and peasants of the whole of
Russia to come to the aid of the Wrangel front, and then we shall
be victorious, both on the Wrangel and on the international
fronts. (Stormy applause.)

Endnotes

[1]
The conference was held between October 15 and 17, 1920, and was
attended by some 3,000 delegates. Following Lenin's report a
resolution was passed expressing satisfaction with the signing of
a peace with Finland and a preliminary truce with Poland. It also
recognised as correct the peaceful policy of the Soviet government
which "has set out to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of
Russian and Polish workers and peasants and to spare the Russian
and Polish working people the hardships and privations of a winter
campaign". The conference went on record that "the immediate task
in winning a lasting peace is the complete rout of surviving bands
in the South" and urged the working people of Russia "to give all
possible help to the fronts and to bend every effort to wipe out
Wrangel" (Pravda No. 231, October 16, 1920). The conference also
discussed the organisation of aid for the Western front, the food
situation, labour and cart service, and education.

[2]
Lenin is referring to a Note from the U.S. Secretary of State
B. Colby to the Italian Government, on the attitude of the
U.S. Administration towards Soviet Russia. The Note was published
in Izvestia No. 198 of September 8, 1920.

[3]
Lenin is referring to the First Congress of the Peoples of the
East, which was held in Baku between September 1. and 7, 1920, and
attended by 1,891 delegates representing 37 nationalities (1,273
delegates were Communists). On the national and the colonial
questions the Congress expressed solidarity with the relevant
resolution of the Second Congress of the Communist International.