V. I. Lenin

Speech At A Plenary Meeting Of

The Moscow Soviet Of Workers’ And Peasants’ Deputies

February 28, 1921 [1] (Prolonged applause.) Before going on to the
domestic situation—a subject which, quite naturally, arouses great
interest and much concern—let me run over the salient international
developments. To be brief, I shall deal with only three. The first is our
conference with Turkish delegates which has opened here in Moscow. [2] This
is an especially welcome fact, because there had been many obstacles to
direct negotiations with the Turkish Government delegation, and now that
there is an opportunity of reaching an understanding here in Moscow, we
feel sure that a firm foundation will be laid for closer relations and
friendship. Of course, this will not be achieved through diplomatic
machinations (in which, we are not afraid to admit, our adversaries have
the edge on us), but through the fact that over the past few years both
nations have had to endure untold suffering at the hands of the
imperialist powers. A previous speaker referred to the harm of isolation
from the imperialist countries. But when a wolf attacks a sheep, there is
hardly any point in advising the sheep to avoid isolation from the wolf.
(Laughter, applause.) Up to now, the Eastern peoples may have
been like sheep before the imperialist wolf, but Soviet Russia was the
first to show that, despite her unparalleled military weakness, it is not
so easy for the wolf to get his claws and teeth into her. This example has
proved to be catching for many nations, regardless of whether or not they
sympathise with the “Bolshevik rumour-mongers.” We are a popular
topic all over the world, and, in relation to Turkey, have even been
‘described as malicious rumour-mongers. Of course, we have so far
been unable to do anything in this sphere, but the Turkish workers and
peasants have demonstrated that the resistance on the part of modern
nations to plunder is a thing that has to be reckoned with: Turkey herself
resisted plunder by the imperialist governments with such vigour that even
the strongest of them have had to keep their hands off her. That is what
makes us regard the current negotiations with the Turkish Government as a
very great achievement. We have no hidden motives. We know that these
negotiations will proceed within a very modest framework, but they are
important because the workers and peasants of all countries are drawing
steadily closer together, despite all the formidable obstructions. This is
something we should bear in mind when assessing our present
difficulties.

The second thing worth recalling in connection with the international
situation is the state of the peace talks in Riga. [3] You know that in
order to conclude a peace with any degree of stability we have been making
the greatest possible concessions to all the states formerly within the
Russian Empire. This is very natural because national oppression is one of
the main factors which arouses hatred for the imperialists and unites the
peoples against them, and few states in the world have sinned as much in
this respect as the old Russian Empire and the bourgeois republic of
Kerensky, the Meusheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in alliance with
the bourgeoisie. That is why it is in respect of these nations that we
have shown the greatest willingness to make concessions and readiness to
accept such peace terms, for which some Socialist-Revolutionaries have
virtually called us Tolstoyans. We don’t care, because we have to
show the greatest willingness to compromise with these nations, to dispel
the age-old suspicions generated by the old oppression, and to lay the
foundation for a union of workers and peasants of various nations which
once suffered together at the hands of tsarism and the Russian landowners,
and now suffer at the hands of imperialism. In respect of Poland, this
policy has been largely frustrated by the Russian whiteguards,
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who enjoy “freedom of the
press", “freedom of speech” and other wonderful ‘freedoms
’, alongside the extraordinary freedom of the French and other
capitalists to buy up a larger part of Poland, where they are at liberty
to spread their propaganda in an effort to push Poland into a war against
us. The capitalists are now doing their utmost to disrupt the peace that
has been concluded. One of the reasons why we cannot demobilise our army,
as we should like to do, is that we must reckon with the possibility of
war on a much larger scale than some people imagine. Those who say that we
need not put so much into defence are wrong, because our enemies are
resorting to all sorts of machinations and intrigues to break up the final
peace with Poland, the provisional terms of which have already been
signed. These negotiations have lately been dragging on, and although a
few weeks ago things had come to such a pass that there was reason to fear
a serious crisis, we recently decided to make some further concessions,
not because we thought they were warranted, but because we considered it
necessary to thwart the intrigues of the Russian whiteguards,
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in Warsaw, and of the Entente
imperialists, who are making the greatest efforts to prevent peace. It has
not yet been signed, but let me say that we have every reason to be
optimistic: it will be signed in the near future, and we shall succeed In
thwarting the intrigues against Its conclusion. Although this is only
guesswork on my part, I believe tile prospect will gladden us all. But let
us not count our chickens before they are hatched. That is why we shall
not slacken or weaken our military effort however slightly, but we shall
not be afraid to make a few more concessions to bourgeois Poland, so as to
wrest the workers and peasants of Poland from the Entente and prove to
them that the workers’ and peasants’ government does not deal
in national strife. We shall defend this peace even at the price of
considerable sacrifice.

The third international question is the events in the Caucasus. There
have been large-scale developments there recently, and although we do not
yet know the details their implication is that we are on the brink of a
major war. We were, of course, disturbed at the clash between Armenia and
Georgia, for these events turned the Armenian-Georgian war into an
insurrection, with a section of the Russian troops taking part. The upshot
of all this was that, for the time being, the tables have been turned on
the Armenian bourgeoisie, which had been scheming against us, so that,
according to the latest but still unconfirmed reports, Soviet power has
been established in Tiflis. (Applause.) We know that the insurrection
began in the neutral zone of Armenia, which lies between Georgia and
Armenia, and winch Georgia had occupied with the consent of the Entente
imperialists. When the Mensheviks, particularly the Georgian Mensheviks,
speak of the harm of isolation from the Western powers, they usually mean
the reliance on the Entente imperialists, who are stronger than anyone
else. But some whitoguards tend to forget that the advanced capitalists
are more deceitful than anyone else, and say to themselves: can Armenia,
the Armenian peasants, etc., or the ravaged Soviet Republic be compared to
the united imperialist powers of the world? Let us turn to the advanced
capitalists for they are the civilised forces of the world. That is how
the Georgian Mensheviks seek to justify their unseemly defence of the
capitalists, and they had control of the only railway line, the Armenian
peasants’ food supply line.

No one will have the patience to read all the telegrams, statements and
protests we exchanged with Georgia on this question. If we had had a peace
treaty with Georgia, our policy would have been to procrastinate as long
as possible. You must understand, however, that the Armenian peasants did
not view the treaty question in that light, and things culminated in the
terrible insurrection which broke out in early February and spread with
astonishing rapidity, involving not only Armenians, but also Georgians.
There has been hardly any news from over there, but our assumptions have
been borne out by the latest available report. We know perfectly well that
the Georgian bourgeoisie and the Georgian Mensboviks do not rely for
support on their working people, but on their capitalists, who are only
looking for a pretext to start hostilities. Upon the other hand, we have
had our stake on the working people for three years and we shall continue
to have it on them to the last even in this backward and oppressed
country.

With all our circumspection and all our efforts to strengthen the Red
Army, we shall ultimately do everything possible to put out the flames in
the Caucasus. We shall demonstrate in the East what we have been able to
demonstrate in the West: when Soviet power is in, national oppression is
out. On this, in the final analysis, depends the outcome of the struggle,
and because of their superior numbers the workers and peasants will
ultimately prove to he stronger than the capitalists.

Let me now turn from foreign policy to home affairs. I have been
unable, unfortunately, to hear the whole of Comrade Bryiikhanov’s
report. He has given you the facts in detail and I need not go over that
again. I want to deal with the main thing, which may possibly show us the
causes of our terrible crisis. We shall have to set ourselves a task and
find a way to solve it. There is a path, we have found it, but we are not
yet strong enough to follow it with the persistence and the regularity
demanded by the difficult post-war conditions. We are in every respect
poverty-stricken, and yet we are no more destitute than the workers of
Vienna. They and their children are starving and dying, but they have not
the main thing that w have: they have no hope. They are dying, crushed by
capitalism; they are in a position where they have to endure sacrifices,
but net as we do. We make sacrifices for the war which we have declared on
the whole capitalist world. That is the difference between the position
of the workers of Petrograd and Moscow and that of the workers of Vienna.
Now, in the spring, our hardships due to the food shortage have once again
become more acute, after the improvement earlier on. The fact is that we
had miscalculated. When the plan for surplus-food appropriation was drawn
up, we thought we could improve on our success. The people had gone hungry
for so long that their condition had to he improved at all costs. It was
essential not only to help, but to improve things. We had failed to see
that if we improved things then, we shoould be hard pressed later on,
and it was due to this mistake that we now face a food crisis. We have
made the same mistake elsewhere: in the Polish war, and in fuel. The
procurement of food and fuel—coal, oil, fire-wood—are all
different types of work, but in all three we have made identical mistakes.
At the time of the severest hardships, we overestimated our resources and
failed to take stock of them properly. We failed to realise that we were
using up our resources all at once, we failed to estimate our reserves,
and we put nothing by for a rainy day. This is, generally speaking, a good
rule of thumb that any peasant follows in his simple, everyday economy.
But there we were, acting on a nation-wide scale as if we gave no thought
to the reserves so long as we had enough for today, so that when we were
finally faced with and brought up short by this question of reserves we
were quite unable to put anything by for a rainy day.

During the Polish war we had a vigorous, daring Red Army, but we
advanced too far—to the very gates of Warsaw, and then had to roll
back, almost to Minsk. The same thing has happened with the food supply.
True enough, we emerged from the war as victors. In 1920, we offered the
Polish landowners and bourgeoisie peace on terms more advantageous to them
than the present terms. They were taught a lesson, and the whole world was
taught a lesson, which nobody had previously bargained for. When we speak
about our position we tell the truth; if anything, we tend to exaggerate
the negative side. In April 1920, we said: transport is falling to pieces,
there is no food. We said this frankly in our newspapers and spoke about
it openly at mass meetings in the best halls of Moscow and Petrograd. The
spies of Europe rushed to cable the news, and over there some people
rubbed their hands in glee and said: ”Get on with the job, you Poles:
you see how badly things are going with them, we shall soon crush
them.” But we were telling the truth, sometimes tending to
exaggerate the negative side. Let the workers and peasants know that our
difficulties are not over. And when the Polish army, with French, British
and other military advisers and arms and money, went into battle, it was
defeated. And now, when we say that our affairs are in poor shape, when
our ambassadors report that the whole of the bourgeois press is
saying “The Soviet power is doomed", when even Chernov has said that it will undoubtedly fall, we say: “You can shout your heads off, that’s
what freedom of the press on capitalist money is for, you have as much of
this freedom as you want, but we are still not in the least afraid to
speak the bitter truth.” Indeed, the situation this spring has
worsened again, and our papers are full of admissions of this bad
situation. But we say to the foreign capitalists, the Mensheviks, the
S.R.s, the Savinkovites, [4] or whatever else they are called: just you try
to cash in on this and you will find yourselves in a far deeper hole.
(Applause.) It is obviously a difficult transition from our state of utter
destitution in 1918-19, when it was very hard to think about a
year’s reserve or allocation, and when all we could do was to look
one or two weeks ahead and say ‘we’ll see” about the third one. It is obviously difficult to change over from this situation to
that of 1920, when we saw that our army was bigger than that of the Poles,
when we had twice as much grain as the previous year, when we had fuel,
and when there was one and a half times more Donets and Siberian coal. We
were unable to distribute this on a nation-wide scale. You must remember
that annual estimates require a special approach and special conditions.
We knew that the spring would be worse than the autumn, but how much
worse, we could not know. It is not a matter of figures or distribution
but a matter of the degree to which the workers and peasants have starved,
and the extent of the sacrifice they are still able to make for the common
cause of all workers and peasants. Who can estimate this? Some may point
out this error—it is an error, and we make no effort to conceal the
fact, just as we did net conceal it in the case of the Polish war
—but leil those who blam us for it—and justly so—giver us
as estimate for projecting the national amount to be set aside from the
first six months’ grain reserves, so as to leave something in stock
for the six months after that. No such estimates have been made. We first
tried to work out some in 1920 and miscalculated. In certain respects, a
revolution is a miracle. If we had been told in 1917 that we would hold
out in three years of war against the whole world, that, as a result of
the war, two million Russian landowners, capitalists and their children
would find themselves abroad, and that we would turn out to be the
victors, no one of us would have believed it. A miracle took place because
the workers and peasants rose against the attack of the landowners and
capitalists in such force that even powerful capitalism was in danger. But
just because of the miracle we lost the habit of taking the long view of
things. That is why all of us now have to limp along. The forthcoming
Party Congress is to be called earlier, because we need to sum up this new
experience in earnest. The defence of the workers’ and peasants’ power was achieved by a miracle, not a divine
miracle—it was not something that fell from the skies-hut a miracle
in the sense that, no matter how oppressed, humiliated, ruined and
exhausted the workers and peasants were, precisely because the revolution
went along with the workers, it mustered very much more strength than any
rich, enlightened and advanced state could have mustered. But this will
not work in economics, where-perhaps the word is not altogether
appropriate—you need “thrift.” We have not yet learned to practise “thrift” . We must hear in mind that we have
defeated the bourgeoi-sie, but that they are still with its and so the struggle goes on. And spreading panic
is one of their ways of lighting us. We must net forget that they are past
masters at it. They have their newspapers, although net printed ones, but
splendidly distributed, and they are doing much more than making mountains
out of molehills. But under no circumstances must we succumb to panic.
The situation has been aggravated because we have made mistakes in every
field of work. Let us not be afraid of these mistakes, let us not be
afraid to admit them; let us not indulge in mutual recrim-ination; but if
we are to make use of all our resources and put in the greatest effort in
every field, we must know how to reckon. Reckoning will give us control of
the whole Republic, for proper reckoning alone will give us an estimate of
the large amounts of available grain and fuel. The bread ration will be
short for a lusty appetite, but the amount cannot he increased all at
once. There will he a shortage only if we do not lay in stocks, but we
shall have enough if we make a correct estimate and give to the most
needy, and take from those who have large surpluses rather than from those
who, over the last three years, may have given away their last crust. Hive
the peasants of the Ukraine and Siberia seen the point of this reckoning?
Not yet, I’m afraid. Their present and past grain surpluses have
never been matched in central Russia, nor have they ever experienced such
a plight. The peasants of the Ukraine, Siberia and Northern Caucasus have
never known such destitution and hunger as the peasants of Moscow and
Petro-grad guhernias (who received far less than the Ukrainian peasants)
have endured for three years. Their surpluses usually ran to hundreds of
poods, and they were accustomed to receive goods at once for that kind of
surplus. There is nowhere to obtain the goods from, now that the factories
are at a standstill. To set them going once again will take time and
preparation, and workers. Our tremendous sacrifices are not made in a
state of desperation, but in a fight that wins one victory after another.
This is a distinction that makes all the difference.

That is the main point that I wished to make here, not in terms of the
exact figures given by the comrade responsible for food supplies and by
the comrade responsible for fuel, but in terms of economics and politics,
to help understand how our recent mistakes differ from earlier ones, and
while they are different they still have this in common, that we have
tried to jump two rungs when we only had the possibility of climbing one.
Nevertheless, we are now at a higher stage. That is good. This year we
shall have a much better fuel balance than last year. And let me give you
one final fact in regard to the food supply: the Deputy Commander-in-Chief
of the republican forces in Siberia has cabled that communications have
been restored and that seven train-loads of grain are on their way to
Moscow. At one time there were disturbances and kulak revolts. Of course,
it is possible to joke about rumour-mongers, but it is necessary to
appreciate that after all we have learned a thing or two in the course of
the class struggle. We know that the tsarist government called us
rumour-mongers, hut when we speak of the Socialist-Revolutionary and
Menshevik rumour-mongers, we are speaking of another class, of people who
support the bourgeoisie and who take advantage of every difficulty to
issue leaflets and say: ‘Look, 300 poods of grain surpluses are
being confiscated from you; you give everything away, and get nothing in
return but coloured bits of paper.” Don’t we know these
rumour-mongers! What is their class? No matter what they call themselves,
Socialist-Revolutionaries, lovers of liberty, of peoples power,
constituent assemblies, and so on, they are the same old landowners. We
have heard all they have to say and have learned to understand their true
meaning. These revolts indicate that there are people among the peasants
who do not wish to reconcile themselves either to surplus food
requisitioning or to the tax. Someone here has mentioned the tax. Much of
what he said was common sense, but he should have added that before we
said anything about it from this platform, the newspaper Pravda, which is
the Central Organ of the Russian Communist Party, carried tax proposals
signed not only by casual contributors but by staff correspondents. [5] When
the non-Party peasant says to us: “Make your calculations conform to
the needs of the small peasant; he needs confidence; I shall give so much
and then I shall look to my own affairs,” we say: “Yes, that is
business-like, that is common sense and is in keeping with local
conditions.” So long as we have no machines, so long as the peasant
himself has no wish to change over from small-scale to large-scale
farming, we are inclined to take this idea into account and we shall place
this question before the Party Congress due to be held in a week’s
time, sort it out and take a decision satisfactory to the non-Party
peasant and to the mass of the people. In our apparatus there is, of
course, much that is imperfect and inexcusable, because a great deal, a
very, very great deal of the bureaucratic practices has seeped in. But
weren’t there the same kind of mistakes and imperfections in our Red
Army? We could not rid ourselves of them right away, but thanks to the
help of the workers and peasants, the Army was, nevertheless, victorious.
What took place in the Red Army is bound to happen in another form in all
spheres, and we shall be cured of these bureaucratic distortions—condemned on every hand because they are evidence of
our mistakes and misfortunes—by persistent work, not succumbing to
panic and not turning a blind eye to those who, taking advantage of these
mistakes, are trying to repeat the Kolchak and Denikin affairs. Any amount
of scandalous practices in the way of the pilfering of coal is taking
place in the Ukraine, while here we are suffering from a great shortage.
Over there they have had 120 governments, and the rich peasants have been
corrupted. They cannot understand that there is a workers’ and
peasants’ government and that, if it confiscates grain, it does so
in order to ease the position of the workers and peasants. Until we are
able to achieve full clarity on all these questions in that area, we shall
continue to receive news of disturbances, banditry and revolts. This is
inevitable because we have inherited from capitalism a peasant who is
isolated and cannot help being ignorant and full of resentment, and it
will take us years to re-educate him. We see this every spring, and we
shall continue to see it every spring for some time to come.

The south-eastern railways are quite another matter. This year we have
mainly existed on the resources supplied us by Siberia and the Northern
Caucasus. Here is a five-day report. It says 8 cars were sent in every day
from February 1; the second five-day report gives the figure of 32 cars;
the third, 60; the fourth, 109; but we should he receiving 200 cars a day,
and only in the last five clays, from February 20 to 24, have we been
getting ‘120 cars a day. That is three train-loads. Today Comrade
Fomin reports that during the past two days we have received four
train-loads. As one comrade has said, the position in the Donets Basin is
that there is no grain because there is no coal, and there is no coal
because there is no grain. This vicious circle must be broken at some
point by the energy, pressure and heroism of the working people, so that
all the wheels start turning. We are beginning to emerge from the enormous
difficulties that we have experienced in this respect. A ray of light has
appeared. I do not at all wish, comrades, to lull you with promises and I
have no intention of announcing that this difficult period has ended.
Nothing of the sort! There are signs of improvement, but the period
remains incredibly difficult, and, in comparison with last autumn, it need
not have been as difficult as it is now, despite the fact that we are cut
off from Western Europe. In order not to be cut off, we have had to accept
the idea of granting concessions: here’s your 500 per cent profit,
and let’s have more grain, paraffin oil, etc. We are prepared to
grant concessions, and will grant them. This will mean a new struggle,
because we are not going to give them 500 per cent, or perhaps even more,
without bargaining, and to switch to this struggle is equivalent to
switching all our trains onto new rails.

For this it is essential to convince the capitalists that they cannot
butt in on us with a war. We have decisively accepted the policy of
concessions. You know that we have had many arguments with the peasants
and workers about this, you know that the workers have said: ‘Have
we got rid of our own bourgeoisie only to let the foreigners in?” We
have explained to them that we cannot switch all at once from scarcity to
abundance, and in order to ease this transition, in order to obtain the
necessary amount of grain and textiles, we must be able to make every
necessary sacrifice. Let the capitalists benefit from their own greed, so
long as we are able to improve the position of the workers and peasants.
It is no easy thing, however, to get this concession business going. We
published a decree about this in November, but so far not a single
concession has been granted. Of course, this is due to the influence of
the white-guard and Menshevik press. Russian newspapers are now published
in every country in the world, and in all of them the Mensheviks are
clamouring against any concessions and saying that in Moscow things are
not going well, that the Soviet power is about to collapse, and that the
capitalists should not believe the Bolsheviks and should have nothing to
do with them. But we shall not abandon the fight: we have defeated the
capitalists, but we have not destroyed them; they have now moved on to
Warsaw, which once used to be the centre of the struggle against the
Russian autocracy, and is now the rallying point of the whiteguards
against Soviet Russia. We shall fight them everywhere, both on the foreign
and on the home front.

I have here a telegram from Comrade Zinoviev in Petrograd
which says that, in connection with the arrests there, a
leaflet found in the possession of one of those detained makes
it clear that he is a spy of foreign capitalists. There is
another leaflet, headed To the Faithful, which is also counter-revolutionary in content. Further, Comrade
Zinoviev informs us that Menshevik leaflets posted up in
Petrograd call for strikes, and over here in Moscow this has
been blown up into a rumour about some kind of demonstration.

In actual fact, one Communist was killed by an agent provocateur, and
he is the only victim of these unhappy days. When Denikin was at Orel, the
whiteguard papers said he was advancing at almost 100 versts an hour.
These papers will not surprise us. We take a sober view of things. We must
rally closer, comrades. Otherwise, what are we to do? Try another Kereusky
or Kolchak “coalition” government? Kolchak, let us say, is no
longer with us, but another might take his place. There are any number of
Russian generals, quite enough for a large army. We must speak frankly and
have no fear of the newspapers being published in all the cities of the
world. These are all trifles, and we shall not keep silent about our
difficult position because of them. But we shall say this: comrades, we
are carrying on this difficult and bloody struggle, and if at the moment
they cannot attack us with guns, they attack us with lies and slander,
taking advantage of every instance of need and poverty in order to help
our enemies. I repeat, all of this we have experienced and survived. We
have lived through far greater difficulties; we know this enemy extremely
well, and we shall defeat him this spring; we shall defeat him by working
more successfully, and by calculating more carefully.
(Applause.)

Endnotes

[1] The
meeting was called by the Moscow Party Committee under a decision of an
activists' meeting held on February 24, 1921. The plenary meeting heard a
report on the food situation and Lenin's report on the international and
domestic situation. It adopted a unanimous message to the workers,
peasants and Red Army men of Moscow and Moscow Gubernia giving the reasons
for the food crisis. It also called on them to fight the enemies, who
tried to exploit those temporary food difficulties for their counterrevolutionary aims. The message was published in Pra vda No. 45, on March
1, 1921.

[2]
Negotiations between the governments of the R.S.F.S.R. and the Grand
National Assembly of Turkey opened in Moscow on February 26, 1921, and
ended with the signing, on March 16, of a treaty of friendship and
brotherhood between the R.S.F.S.R. and Turkey. A treaty of friendship
between Turkey and the Trans-Caucasian Soviet Republics, Armenia,
Georgia and Azerbaijan, was signed in Kars on October 13.

[3] The talks
on the conclusion of a final peace treaty opened in Riga, after the
preliminary peace treaty between Poland, on the one hand, and Soviet
Russia and the Soviet Ukraine, on the other, was signed on October 12,
1920. The talks went on for five months. The Polish Government, instigated
by France, continued it aggressive acts against the Soviet Ukraine and
Soviet Byelorussia and hampered the peace conference in every way.
Decisive diplomatic action by the Soviet Government and the defeat of
Wrangel, who was an ally of bourgeois-landowner Poland, compelled the
Polish Government to conclude peace. The final peace treaty was signed in
Riga on March 18, 1921, under which Western Ukraine and Western
Byelorussia were ceded to Poland.

The Riga Peace Treaty was abrogated by the Soviet Government on
September 17, 1939, when Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia joined
the Soviet Union in accordance with the will of their peoples.

[4] The
followers of B. V. Savinkov (1879-1925), a leader of the
counter-revolutionary revolts against the Soviet power in 1918-21.

[5] The
reference is to the article Surplus Appropriation or Tax by P. Sorokin and
M. Rogov, published by way of discussion in Pravda No. 35 and No. 43, on
February 17 and 26, 1921. The discussion in the press was started under
the February 16, 1920 decision of the C.C. Political Bureau.