Comrades, you will now have to conduct your work under the conditions of a transition to a new phase of activity for Soviet Russia. You are of course all aware that these conditions of transitional times are caused equally by international and internal circumstances; that is, more precisely, by a change in the situation on both the international and internal fronts, which has occurred in recent times.

The fundamental change consists in the fact that the main forces of the White Guard counter-revolution have been broken following the defeat of Yudenich and Kolchak and the victory over Denikin. Although in this regard one must be cautious, since there has recently been a setback near Rostov and in Novocherkassk, which creates the danger that Denikin may recover. But nevertheless the basic victories create a new situation. It is clear that the bourgeoisie can no longer seriously count on a turnaround in its favor, and this is all the clearer because the international situation has also changed very substantially—changed in such a way that the Entente was forced to lift the blockade. We have succeeded in concluding peace with Estonia. In this regard we have achieved a fundamental success, which has greatly strengthened our position, and in all probability we shall achieve peace with all the remaining border states, and then no invasion by the Entente will be practically possible.

Thus the first acute moment of struggle against counter-revolution, against White Guard armed force both concealed and open—this first acute period, it would seem, is passing. But it is more than probable that attempts at various counter-revolutionary movements and uprisings will be repeated, and moreover, the experience of the Russian revolutionary movement shows that attempts of a purely terrorist character are often accompanied by mass armed struggle, and therefore it is natural to expect that the officer armed counter-revolutionary force, which represents an element hardly less accustomed to the possession and use of weapons than any other, it is natural to expect that it will not renounce the use of this weapon for its own purposes.

Thus, although on the initiative of Comrade Dzerzhinsky after the capture of Rostov capital punishment was abolished, at the very beginning a caveat was made that we are by no means closing our eyes to the possibility of restoring shootings. For us this question is determined by expediency. It goes without saying that Soviet power will not maintain capital punishment longer than necessity demands, and in this regard the abolition of capital punishment is a step that no democratic power has taken in any bourgeois republic.

You know that the significant majority of workers and peasants in all the border regions that were under the yoke of the White Guards—the longer they were under it, the more firmly they went over to our side. And therefore we know that all attempts by the bourgeoisie are predetermined to fail. But that these attempts are possible, we have observed over two years of the practice of Soviet power. We have seen how tens of thousands of officers, landowner elements, went to any crimes whatsoever, concluded treaties about blowing up bridges with agents of imperialist foreign powers. And we say that such attempts will not cease. Taking into account the new general state situation, we nonetheless absolutely must remain on guard and remember that while the period of armed struggle in a broad historical scale is coming to an end, this in no way excludes that we must be ready.

Before the organs of suppression of counter-revolution, before the organs of the Cheka, there was and remains a question that is quite complex and difficult. On the one hand, one must understand and take account of the transition from war to peace; on the other hand, we must constantly be on guard, since we do not know how soon we shall achieve a lasting peace; we must consider how this new method will affect the bourgeois strata; we must keep this in mind, we must test in practice what these changes will yield, and only taking this into account, on the basis of this practical experience, introduce one or another modification.

In short, we must as before maintain complete combat readiness to repel the enemy. It is possible that there will be attempts at invasion; it is possible that Denikin will entrench himself to continue civil war; it is possible that counter-revolutionary groups will attempt terrorism; and the preservation of combat readiness for us is an obligation. Preserving this combat readiness, not weakening the apparatus for suppressing the resistance of exploiters, we must take into account the new transition from war to peace, gradually changing tactics, changing the character of reprisals.

I think that this question has played no small role in your discussions, and of course you have incomparably more data for practical concrete decisions than I do. I have no doubt that you will attempt to study this material concretely and practically. You must think through how the activity of the organs for suppressing counter-revolution is changing in the recently liberated parts of Russia, in Siberia, in Ukraine, and how accordingly we must modify our activity. To take all of this into account in detail and dwell on it at length I shall not, because I have not been able to familiarize myself with the factual material; but I repeat that the most important thing is to take into account the concrete data that have manifested themselves in reality in each Cheka. Moreover, the task of such conferences consists in discussing such factual data in as detailed a manner as possible, so that each local worker does not bury himself in his narrow circle, but thanks to the exchange of views could work out a more durable, long-established tactic.

In particular I should like to call attention to a question that arises before the organs of suppression of counter-revolution, before the organs combating espionage and speculation—to the bloodless front of labor, which now moves to the forefront from the point of view of the construction of Soviet power, from the point of view of strengthening worker-peasant power and restoring the devastated economy.

You know that the task of struggle against Kolchak, Yudenich, and Denikin, supported by the Entente, the task of struggle against counter-revolutionary landowners and capitalists, who until now were confident that victory was assured to them because they had on their side the wealthiest powers in the entire world—this was the task that required from us the mobilization of all forces in the country, because we faced the question of defending the very existence of the Soviet Republic itself.

One can say that over these two years of Soviet power something has been accomplished that can be called a miracle, because in the struggle against international capital we have succeeded in achieving such an unprecedented, incredible victory as the world has not witnessed. This occurred because we had unity of all forces, the actual implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the sense that the vanguard, the best, honest vanguard of the working class over these two years of Soviet power's existence demonstrated incredible heroism and decisiveness, and all the wavering elements from the less developed part of the working class and peasantry, having undergone enormous fluctuations—the more they fluctuated, the more they inclined toward our side. The more trials they underwent, the sooner they came over to our side.

To achieve such a concentration of forces, we had to resort to measures of coercion contrary to all the sighs, complaints, and grievances. Both before and after the October Revolution we stood on the point of view that the birth of a new order is impossible without revolutionary violence, that all the complaints and grievances which we hear from non-party petty-bourgeois intellectuals represent nothing but reaction. History, which moves through desperate class struggle, has shown that when the landowners and capitalists felt that it was a matter of the last, decisive battle, they did not stop at anything.

History has shown that without revolutionary violence it is impossible to achieve victory. Without revolutionary violence directed at the direct enemies of workers and peasants, it is impossible to break the resistance of these exploiters. And on the other hand, revolutionary violence cannot but manifest itself also with regard to the shaky, unreliable elements within the laboring masses themselves.

If we have witnessed the enormous victory of the Red Army, then looking back on the two years of Soviet power we have experienced, thinking about how we proceeded toward these victories, we cannot but recall that the October Revolution began with the complete disintegration of the army, with the complete absence of military organization. We had no army; we had to follow a long, difficult path to forge, consolidate, gather together, and recreate this army anew. And in this creation of a new, disciplined Red Army we had to resort to revolutionary violence. And this revolutionary violence was completely correctly applied to selfish, parasitic elements. At the time when the advanced part was giving all its strength to the struggle against counter-revolution, at the time when it was, with the greatest self-sacrifice, dying in thousands on the fields of battle, at this time the backward part of the peasantry, which had received land, and the backward part of the workers were working only for themselves. At this time the advanced part had to create and strengthen new discipline, which was maintained through revolutionary violence and which could be maintained only because the entire conscious part of the workers and peasants, all the laboring masses, sympathized with this violence, understood that without this iron discipline we could not have created the Red Army, could not have endured two years of struggle, and generally could not have withstood organized, unified capital. And in this regard the tasks of fostering discipline, maintaining discipline, consolidating our forces so as to withstand further struggle—these tasks are now gradually changing. At first we threw all our forces into war, all the forces of the devastated country. By this the entire country was condemned to even greater devastation.

Two years ago no one believed that Russia—a country devastated by four years of imperialist war—could endure another two years of civil war. And probably if we had been asked in the end of October 1917 whether we would endure two years of civil war against the world bourgeoisie, I do not know how many of us would have answered affirmatively. But events have shown that the energy which the worker-peasant masses developed proved greater than those who carried out the October Revolution had assumed. And as a result we obtained, and the internal fronts have shown us, that the source of new strength is far greater than we had calculated. At the same time this source has shown that the Red Army, able to win on military fronts, encounters a new obstacle on the internal fronts—especially is this now manifested in transport. Of course we now have it difficult with food as well; hunger and cold are now worse than ever. But because we have liberated the most grain-producing gubernias, the food situation is improving, and our main crisis now is transport. And one must note that this crisis is the same in all the wealthiest countries, which have not experienced such continuous war. Even these countries suffer from a shortage of freight cars. One can imagine what is happening in Russia, which has waged war for six years, in which bridges and locomotives were deliberately destroyed.

Our situation in this regard is of course very grave, and the task of the transport sections of the Cheka, of its entire apparatus, of all the mass of conscious revolutionary force, is directed toward helping to emerge from this critical situation, which can be called without exaggeration as bordering on catastrophe. And one must further note that in the month of February the transport situation after winter, owing to snowdrifts, is always and even in ordinary times worse than in any other time of year. At present our transport crisis has reached the point where the railroads are threatened with complete stoppage. Recently supplies of bread in Moscow were down to three days, and dozens of trains stood idle because fuel was lacking and could not be delivered.

We know well the methods of struggle with this catastrophic situation which we have employed over the two years of war. These methods of struggle are: the raising of consciousness of the masses and open appeal to them. In each such hopeless case we considered it our duty to appeal to the worker-peasant masses and describe to them the grave situation that had arisen. We appealed to them and pointed out on whom the salvation of Soviet Russia depends and what intensity of energy is necessary in order to throw all forces toward one definite task. These tasks have more than once changed during the time when Soviet power was struggling with its enemies, and all understanding of the state situation consists in correctly assessing those tasks which one must take hold of in order to overcome devastation and proceed to normal construction. And so now you know that the most attention has been paid to explaining to workers and peasants the critical transport situation. Here one needs the strain of all the forces of the proletariat and peasantry. Such a thing as the delivery of fuel—this is a difficult task; it is completely impossible to accomplish if there is no upsurge on the part of the worker-peasant population, if there is no collective mass labor of the sort that was carried out in the best times of Red Army victories. Now, for example, the delivery of fuel and the clearing of railroad tracks were hampered by the fact that a whole series of promises were made to compensate the peasants with products. Naturally, delivery requires horse power, and the peasantry there is unable to do it; it relates to this very reluctantly and unfriendly, since it does not receive compensation in the form of a definite quantity of goods; and we, owing to complete transport stagnation, are unable to provide even any quantity of goods. And we say that the peasants must do this on credit to their worker-peasant state, in order to save starving workers and restore industry. The peasants must give this on credit, because, for example, in some places the peasantry suffers terribly from a shortage of salt, and we have enormous reserves of this salt, but we cannot deliver it, since transport is completely unable to cope with the task of transporting the absolutely necessary quantity of bread.

It is in such a situation that discipline is still required, that propaganda and agitation are required, which enlightens and unites all workers and peasants. And the revolutionary violence that is applied turns this discipline into a reality, into something actual, which shows that the conscious working class has set a firm practical task, which we shall carry through to the end. Just as in the era of the most difficult struggle against Yudenich, Kolchak, and Denikin, we brought to the forefront communists, responsible workers, made enormous sacrifices, giving the lives of these best fighters, and at the same time created discipline, punished selfish elements—we achieved the maximum strain of popular energy and we won. And to the same end, by the same proven methods, we must at all costs achieve success now as well, in order to save transport.

We have bread, salt; we have a sufficient quantity of raw materials, fuel; we can restore industry, but this requires many months of intense struggle, and in this struggle the organs of the Cheka must become an instrument for implementing the centralized will of the proletariat, an instrument for creating such discipline as we have succeeded in creating in the Red Army.

And I am convinced that after this conference, in practice your organs will work out, and you here will agree, what role the Transport Cheka sections play, how they must organize themselves, how they must put forward from their midst new workers to struggle against speculators and saboteurs, of which there are more among railroad workers than in any other group. This is a task of your practical experience, a task which you must accomplish through the exchange of views. The railroad environment is distinguished by the fact that we have there a majority of workers standing at the level of workers, and a minority that takes part in speculation, and here the task of the Transport Cheka is to achieve the correct distribution of labor, to achieve responsibility with an economy of labor power, to achieve all of this through the efforts of the communist element among railroad workers. And only relying on these best masses shall we be able to create such a force as will overcome this specter of speculation, will overcome these elements drafted in the worst times of tsarism. To overcome this force, the force left to us as a legacy from capitalism, we have one means: to develop discipline and revolutionary energy to the maximum. The Cheka must rely on communist cells, on trade unions—to unite its work with propaganda and agitation, to call forth in the mass of railroad workers a conscious attitude toward the struggle. And I am convinced that with the aid of organization, taking into account our past experience, we shall achieve in our new work such victories as we have achieved in the sphere of armed struggle. (Loud, prolonged applause.)

First published in 1957 in the journal *Kommunist*, No. 5

Printed from the stenographic record