[After March 15, 1921]
. . . By the decree on the tax in kind with the right to freely dispose of surpluses, our party took a step back to the positions of the bourgeois revolution. It is clear that the October Revolution was socialist only potentially—on the condition of a subsequent all-European revolution; if the latter possibility is delayed, the possibilities inherent in our October Revolution cannot be further developed, and a retreat to the positions of the bourgeois revolution is inevitable...

1 In a letter to V.I. Lenin, A. Antonov, a member of the agitation and propaganda collegium of the State Publishing House, proposed "continuing" the retreat and, to this end, securing land for the peasants, "restricting the purchase of land, inheritance, etc." He ended the letter thus: "Of course, this is Brest, but—in the end, it's all not so scary, for it is not we who decide, but the general course of things on a global scale."
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