V. I. Lenin

Speech Delivered At

The All-Russia Congress Of Transport Workers

March 27, 1921 [1]

Comrades, may I thank you all for your greetings and ask you to
accept my greetings to your Congress. (Stormy applause.) Allow me to digress before dealing with the
subject that directly concerns the work and tasks of this
Congress and what the Soviet state expects of it.

As I was coming in through your hail just now, I saw a placard
with this inscription: “The reign of the workers and peasants will last for ever.” When I read this odd
placard, which, it is true, was not up in the usual place, but
stood in a corner-perhaps it had occurred to someone that it was
not very apt and he had moved it out of the way when I read this
strange placard, I thought to myself: there you have some of the
fundamental and elementary things we are still confused
about. Indeed, if the reign of the workers and peasants would
last for ever, we should never have socialism, for it implies
the abolition of classes; and as long as there are workers and
peasants, there will be different classes and, therefore, no
full socialism. And as I pondered over the fact that three and a
half years after the October Revolution we still have such odd
placards (even if they are shifted out of the way) it occurred
to me that there may still be great misunderstanding of the most
common slogans in popular use. Take one of our most popular
slogans which we all variously repeat: we all sing about our
present fight being the last and decisive one. But I am afraid
that if we were to ask a large section of the Communists against
whom they are now waging this last battle (not the last one, of
course, that’s putting it on a bit thick, but one of the
last and crucial ones) 1 am afraid only a few would give the
right answer showing a clear understanding against what, or
whom, we are now waging one of our last and decisive battles. It
also seems to me that, in view of the political events which
have caught the attention of the broad masses of workers and
peasants, we ought once again to ascertain, or, at any rate, try
to ascertain, against whom we are waging one of our last and
crucial battles this spring, at this very moment. Let me go over
this point.

To sort it out we should, I think, start by reviewing as
precisely and as soberly as possible, the opposed forces on
whose struggle hinges the fate of the Soviet power, and,
generally speaking, the course and development of the proletarian revolution, which is a revolution for the overthrow
of the capitalists in Russia and elsewhere. What are these
forces? Bow are they grouped against one another? How are they
deployed at present? Any marked aggravation of the political
situation, every new turn in the political events, even if it is
not considerable, should always cause every thinking worker and
peasant to ask himself: “What are the forces involved? How
are they grouped?” And only when we are able to estimate
these forces correctly and quite soberly, irrespective of our
sympathies and desires, shall we be able to draw the proper
conclusions concerning our policy in general, and our immediate
tasks in particular. Let me, therefore, give you a brief
description of these forces.

There are basically three such forces. Take first the proletariat, the force that is closest to us. It is the first
force, the first discrete class. You all know this very well,
living in the very midst of it. What is its condition now? In
the Soviet Republic it is the class that took power three and a
half years ago, that has, since then, been exercising its
domination-dictatorship-and has suffered and endured exhaustion,
want and privation more than any other class. To the working
class, to the proletariat, this period, during the greater part
of which the Soviet state was engaged in a relentless civil war
against the whole capitalist world, brought calamities,
privation, sacrifice and intense want on a scale unparalleled in
world history. A strange thing happened. The class that took
political power did so in the knowledge that it was doing so
alone.

That is intrinsic to the concept of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. It has meaning only when one class knows that it is
taking political power alone, and does not deceive others or
itself with talk about “popular government by popular consent through universal suffrage”. You all know that
there are very many-far too many-people who love to hold forth
on that subject, but, at any rate, you will not find them among
proletarians, because they have realised that theirs is a
dictatorship of the proletariat, and they say as much in their
Constitution, the fundamental law of the Republic. This class
was well aware that it was taking power alone, under extremely
difficult conditions. It has exercised its political power as
any dictatorship does, that is, with grim determination. In
these three and a half years, it has suffered distress, want,
starvation and a worsening of economic positions such as no
other class in history has suffered. It is not surprising that
as a result of its superhuman effort it is uncommonly weary,
exhausted and strained.

How was a single class able to exercise its power in the teeth
of the resistance and attacks of the world bourgeoisie, in a
country where the proletariat is numerically so much smaller
than the rest of the population? How was it able to do that in a
backward country artificially cut off by armed force from
countries with a more numerous, class-conscious, disciplined and
organised proletariat? How could it hold on for three and a half
years? What was its mainstay? We know that it was the mass of
the peasants, at home. About this second force more in a moment,
after we finish our examination of the first. I have said that
never has its suffering been so great and acute as in this epoch
of its dictatorship; and you all know it, having observed the
life of your mates in the factories, railway depots, and
workshops. Never before has the country been so weary and worn
out, Where did this class get the moral strength to bear those
privations? Clearly it had to draw on some source for the moral
strength to overcome these material privations. As you know, the
question of moral strength and support is a vague one; you can
give any reading to moral strength. To avoid the danger of
reading anything vague or fantastic into “moral strength”, 1 ask myself: Is there a precise definition of
that which gave the proletariat the moral strength to bear the
unprecedented material privations connected with its political
rule? I think this will give us a precise answer. Ask yourself:
Could the Soviet Republic have borne its trials over three and a
half years, and withstood the onslaught of the whiteguards
supported by the capitalists of the world, if it had had to face
backward instead of advanced countries? You have only to put the
question to see the obvious answer.

You know that for three and a hall years the wealthiest powers
of the world fought against us. The armed forces that were
ranged against us and that supported Kolchak, Yudenich, Denikin
and Wrangel—you all know this very well, for you all fought in the war—were immensely and clearly superior to
our forces. You know perfectly well that these states are still
very much stronger than we are. How is it, then, that they set
out to vanquish the Soviet power, and failed? How did this
happen? We have an exact answer: the proletariat of all the
capitalist countries was on our side. Even when it was patently
under the influence of the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries-in the European countries they go by
another name-it refused to support the fight against us. Eventually, the leaders were compelled to yield to the
masses, and the workers disrupted the war. It was not we who
won, for our armed forces were insignificant; the victory was
won because the powers could not hurl the whole of their armed
force against us. The course of a war depends on the workers of
the advanced countries to such an extent that it cannot be waged
against their will, and their passive and semi-passive resistance eventually disrupted the war against us. This
incontrovertible fact gives the exact answer to the question as
to the source on which the Russian proletariat drew for moral
strength to hold out for three and a half years and win. The
moral strength of the Russian worker lay in his knowledge and
awareness of the tangible assistance and support which the
proletariat of all the advanced countries of Europe was giving
him in this struggle. The direction which the working-class
movement in these countries is taking is indicated by this most
important recent event: the split in the Socialist parties of
Britain, France, Italy, and other countries (both vanquished
and victors) which differ in cultural and economic development. The main development of the year in all countries
has been the formation of Communist Parties, with the support of
all that is most advanced in the working class, on the ruins of
the Socialist and Social-Democratic parties—which in
Russia are called Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary. And, of
course, there can be no doubt that if we had been attacked by
backward countries, without mighty proletarian masses, and not
by advanced countries, we would have been unable to hold out for
three and a half months, let alone three and a half years. Would
our proletariat have had the moral strength if it had not relied
on the sympathy of the workers of the advanced countries, who
supported us in spite of the lies about the Soviet power
circulated by the imperialists in millions of copies, and in
spite of the efforts of the “labour leaders”—the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionarieswho could have been expected to, and
did, hamper the workers’ struggle for us? With this support, our proletariat—numerically weak and tormented by
poverty and privation—won out because it had the moral strength.

That is the first force.

The second is that which stands between developed capital and
the proletariat. It is the petty bourgeoisie, the small
proprietors, which in Russia constitute the overwhelming
majority of the population—the peasantry. They are mainly
small proprietors and small farmers. Nine-tenths of them are
that way, and can be nothing else. They do not take part in the
acute struggle daily waged by capital and labour. They have not
been schooled; their economic and political conditions do not
bring them together, but rather tend to separato, alienating
them from each other, and transforming them into millions of
lone-wolf small proprietors. Such are the facts and you are all
perfectly well aware of them. It will take collectives,
collective farms and communes years to change this. Thanks to
the revolutionary energy and devotion of the proletarian
dictatorship, this force was able to dispose of its enemies on
the right-the landowner class—to sweep them right out and
abolish their rule more swiftly than has ever been done
before. But the more quickly it abolished the rule of the
landowners, the more quickly it turned to its farming on the
nationalised land, the more resolutely it settled accounts with
the small minority of kulaks, the sooner it itself became
transformed into small proprietors. You know that there has been
a levelling-off in the Russian countryside in this period. The
number of peasants with large areas under crop and without any
at all has decreased, while the number of medium farms has
increased. The countryside has become more potty bourgeois. This
is an independent class, which the landowners and capitalists
are expelled and eliminated, is the only class capable of
opposing the proletariat. That is why it is absurd to write on
placards that the reign of the workers and peasants will last
for ever.

You know the political mood oi this force. It is a vacillating
force. We saw this to be true during our revolution all over the
country. There were some local features in Russia proper,
Siberia and the Ukraine, but the result was the same everywhere:
it is a vacillating force. For a long time it was in the leading
strings of the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, with the
aid of Kerensky, in the Kolchak period, under the Constituent
Assembly in Samara, when the Menshevik Maisky was a Minister of
Kolchak or of one of his predecessors, etc. This force wavered
between the leadership of the proletariat and that of the
bourgeoisie. Why didn’t it lead itself? After all, it is
the overwhelming majority. The fact is that the economic
conditions of these masses are such that they are unable to
organise and unite by their own efforts. This is clear to anyone
who is not misled by empty talk about “universal suffrage”, a constituent assembly and such like
“democracy” which has served to dupe the people in all countries for hundreds of years and which the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in our own country
played up for hundreds of weeks but fell through “on this
very spot every blessed time”. (Applause.) We know from our own experience—and revolutions all over the
world confirm it if we take the modern epoch of, say, a hundred
and fifty years—that the result has always been the same
everywhere: the petty bourgeoisie in general, and the peasants
in particular, have failed in all their attempts to realise
their strength, and to direct economics and politics their own
way. They have had to follow the leadership either of the
proletariat, or the capitalists—there is no middle way open to them. Anyone who thinks of a middle way is an empty
dreamer. There is much politics, economics, and history to prove
it. The teachings of Marx show that once the small proprietors
become owners of the means of production and land, exchange
between them necessarily gives rise to capital, and simultaneously to the antagonisms between capital and
labour. The struggle between capital and the proletariat is
inevitable; it is a law manifesting itself all over the
world. This must he accepted by anyone who refuses to fool
himself.

These fundamental economic facts explain why this force cannot
manifest itself through its own efforts, and why it has always
failed in all its attempts to do so in the history of all
revolutions. Whenever the proletariat was unable to lead the
revolution, this force always followed the leadership of the
bourgeoisie. That was the case in all revolutions. The Russians,
of course, are of the same clay, and if they choose to pretend
they are not, they will only look ridiculous. History metes out
the same treatment to all. We, in particular, saw the truth of
this under the rule of Kerensky. At that time, the government
had the support of very many more political leaders than the
Bolsheviks have, They were clever, educated men, with vast
experience in politics and state administration. If we were to
count all the officials who sabotaged us, but who did not make
it their business to sabotage the Kerensky government, which
relied on the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, we would
find that they made up an overwhelming majority. Still that
government collapsed. That shows that there were factors which
offset the enormous preponderance of intellectual and educated
forces accustomed to administering the state, an art they had
acquired decades before they actually took over. Events ran the
same course, with some modifications, in the Ukraine, the Don
and the Kuban regions, and the result was exactly the same. That
could not have been a coincidence. Such is the economic and
political law governing the second force: hence, either the
leadership of the proletariat—a hard road, but one which
can help it to escape the rule of the landowners and capitalists—or the leadership of the capitalists, as it
does in the advanced democratic republics, and even in America,
where the free distribution of land (every settler was allotted
sixty dessiatines [about 160 acres —Translator ] free of chargebetter
conditions can hardly be imagined!) has not yet entirely
stopped, and where this has led to the complete domination of
capital.

That is the second force.

Over here it is wavering, and is particularly weary. It has had
to bear the burdens of the revolution, and in the past few years
fresh burdens have been thrust upon it: a year of crop failure,
surplus-grain appropriations, with cattle dying off because of
the fodder shortage, etc. In the circumstances, it is not
surprising that this second force the masses of the peasantry—should give way to despair. They could not think
of improving their condition although three and a half years
have passed since the landowners were driven out, yet the
improvement is becoming an urgent necessity. The dispersing army
fails to find proper employment for its labour-power, and so
this petty-bourgeois force is being transformed into an anarchic
element, whose restiveness is an expression of its demands.

You are all familiar with the third force: the landowners and
capitalists. It is no longer conspicuous in this country. But
one crucial event, one critical lesson of the past few weeks—the Kronstadt events—was like a flash of
lightning which threw more of a glare upon reality than anything
else.

There is now no country in Europe without some whiteguard
elements. Russian émigrds in Europe have been estimated to total
about seven hundred thousand. These are fugitive capitalists and
the mass of office workers who could not adapt themselves to
Soviet rule. We see nothing of this third force, it has
emigrated, but it lives and operates in alliance with the
capitalists of the world, who are assisting it as they assisted
Kolchak, Yudenich and Wrangel, with money and in other ways,
because they have their international bonds. We all remember
these people. You must have noticed the abundance of extracts
from the whiteguard press in our newspapers over the last few
days, explaining the events in Kronstadt. In the last few days,
they have been described by Burtsev, who puts out a newspaper in
Paris, and have been appraised by Milyukov—you must have
all read this. Why have our newspapers devoted so much attention
to it? Was it right to do so? It was, because we must have a
clear view of our enemy. Abroad, they are not so conspicuous,
but you will find that they have not moved very far away, just a
few thousand versts at most; and having moved that far, have
taken cover. They are alive and kicking, and lying in wait. That
is why we must keep a close watch on them, especially because
they are more than just refugees. Indeed, they are the agents of
world capital, who work with it hand in glove.

You must have noticed that these extracts from the whiteguard
newspapers published abroad appeared side by side with extracts
from British and French newspapers. They are one chorus, one
orchestra. It is true that such orchestras are not conducted by
a man with a score. International capital uses less conspicuous
means than a conductor’s baton, but that it is one orchestra should be clear from any one of these extracts. They
have admitted that if the slogan becomes “Soviet power without the Bolsheviks” they will all accept it. Milyukov
explains this with particular clarity. He has made a close study
of history, and has had a refresher course in Russian history at
first hand. He has supplemented his twenty years of book
learning with twenty months of personal experience. He says he
is prepared to accept the “Soviet power without the
Bolsheviks” slogan. He cannot see from over there in Paris
whether this is to be a slight shift to the right or to the
left, towards the anarchists. From over there, he cannot see
what is going on in Kronstadt, but asks the monarchists not to
rush and spoil things by shouting about it. He declares that
even if the shift is to be to the left, he is prepared to back
the Soviet power against the Bolsheviks.

This is what Milyukov says, and it is absolutely right. When he
says that the Kronstadt events reveal an urge to set up a Soviet
regime without the Bolsheviks, he shows that he has learned
something from Russian history and from the landowners and
capitalists. It is a demand for a slight shift to the right,
with a little bit of unrestricted trade, and a little bit of a
constituent assembly—listen to any Menshevik, and you will
hear it all, perhaps even without leaving this hail. If the
slogan of the Kronstadt events is a slight deviation to the
left—Soviet power with the anarchists, begotten by distress, war, the demobilisation of the army—why is
Milyukov in favour of it? Because he knows that a deviation
leads either to the proletarian dictatorship or to the capitalists.

Political power cannot exist in any other way. Although we are
not waging our last battle but one of the last and decisive
battles, the only correct answer to the question “Against
whom shall we wage one of the decisive battles today?” is:
“Against petty-bourgeois anarchy at home.”
(Applause.) As for the landowners and capitalists, we beat them in the first campaign, but only in the first one: the
second is to be waged on an international scale. Modern
capitalism cannot fight against us, even if it were a hundred
times stronger, because over there, in the advanced countries,
the workers disrupted its war yesterday and will disrupt it even
more effectively tcday, because over there the consequences of
the war are beginning to toll more and more. We have defeated
the petty-bourgeois element at home, but it will make itself
felt again. And that is taken into account by the landowners and
the capitalists, particularly the clever ones, like Milyukov,
who has told the monarchists: “Sit still, keep quiet, otherwise you will only strengthen the Soviet power.” This
has been proved by the general course of the revolutions in
which the toilers, with temporary peasant support, set up
short-lived dictatorships but had no consolidated power, so that
after a brief period everything tended to slip back. This
happened because the peasants, the toilers, the small proprietors, can have no policy of their own and must retreat
alter a period of vacillation. That was the case in the Great
French Revolution, and, on a smaller scale, in all revolutions. And, of course, everyone has learned this
lesson. Cur whiteguards crossed the frontier, rode off a
distance of three days’ journey, and, backed and supported
by West-European capital, are lying in wait and watching. Such
is the situation. It makes clear the tasks and duties of the
proletariat.

Weariness and exhaustion produce a certain mood, and sometimes
lead to desperation. As usual, this tends to breed anarchism
among the revolutionary elements. That was the case in all
capitalist countries, and that is what is taking place in our
own country. The petty-bourgeois element is in the grip of a
crisis because it has had it hard over the past few years; not
as hard as the proletariat had it in 1919, but hard, nevertheless. The peasantry had to save the state by accepting
the surplus-grain appropriations without remuneration, but it
can no longer stand the strain. That is why there is confusion
and vacillation in its midst, and this is being taken into
account by the capitalist enemy, who says: “All it needs
is a little push, and it will start snowballing.” That is
the meaning of the Kronstadt events in the light of the
alignment of class, forces in the whole of Russia and on the
international scale. That is the meaning of one of our last and
crucial battles, for we have not beaten this petty-bourgeois—anarchist element, and the immediate fate
of the revolution now depends on whether or not we succeed in
doing so. If we do not, we shall slide down as the French
Revolution did. This is inevitable, and we must not let
ourselves be misled by phrases and excuses. We must do all we
can to alleviate the position of these masses and safeguard the
proletarian leadership. If we do this, the growing movement of
the communist revolution in Europe will be further reinforced. What has not. yet taken place there today, may well
take place tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but in world
history such periods, as between today and tomorrow, mean no
less than a few years.

That is my answer to the question as to what we are now fighting
for, in one of our last and crucial battles. That is my reading
of recent events and the significance of the class struggle in
Russia. It is now clear why it has become so acute and why we
find it so hard to see that the chief enemy is not Yudenich,
Kolchak or Denikin, but our own conditions.

I can now go on to the concluding part of my speech (which is
already too long), namely, the state of railway and water
transport, and the tasks of the Railway and Water Transport
Workers’ Congress. 1 think that what I have had to describe here is very intimately bound up with these
tasks. There is hardly another section of the proletariat which
comes so closely into contact with industry and agriculture in
its everyday economic activity as the railway and water
transport workers. You must supply the cities with food, and
revive the rural areas by carrying the manufactured goods to
them. That is clear to everyone, but it is much clearer to
railway and water transport workers, because that is their
everyday work. And from this, I think, follow the exceptionally
important tasks and the responsibility now falling to the
railway and water transport workers.

You all know that your Congress has been meeting just after some
friction between the upper and the lower echelons of the
union. When this question was brought up at the last Party
Congress, decisions were adopted to reconcile them by subordinating the upper echelons to the lower, by rectifying the
upper echelons’ mistakes, which I think were of a minor
nature but needed rectifying. You know that the Party Congress
rectified these mistakes, that the Congress closed on a note of
greater solidarity and unity in the ranks of the Communist Party
than before. That is the legitimate, necessary and only correct
reply that the vanguard, i.e., the leading section of the
proletariat, can give to the movement of the petty-bourgeois-anarchist element. If we class-conscious workers
realise the danger of this movement, if we rally our forces,
work much more harmoniously and show a great deal more of
solidarity, we shall multiply our forces. After our victory over
the military attack, we shall conquer the vacillations and
wavering of this element that is disturbing the whole of our
everyday life and for that reason is, I repeat, dangerous. The
decisions of the Party Congress, which rectified what was called
to its attention, signify a great step forward in increasing the
solidarity and unity of the proletarian army. Your Congress must
do the same thing and implement the decisions of the Party
Congress.

I repeat: the fate of the revolution depends more immediately
upon the work of this section of the proletariat than upon any
other. We must restore the exchange between agriculture and
industry, and we need a material basis to do so. What is it? It
is railway and water transport. That is why it is your duty to
dedicate yourselves to your work and this applies not only to
those of you who are members of the Communist Party, and are
therefore conscious vehicles of the proletarian dictatorship,
but also to those of you who do not belong to the Party, but
represent a transport workers trade union with a million, or a
million and a half, members. All of you, learning the lessons of
our revolution and of all preceding revolutions, must understand
the full gravity of the present situation. If you do not allow
yourselves to be blinded by all sorts of slogans such as
“Freedom”, “Constituent Assembly”, “Free Soviets”—it is so easy to switch labels
that even Milyukov has turned up as a supporter of the Soviets
of a Kronstadt republic—if you do not close your eyes to
the alignment of class forces, you will acquire a sound and firm
basis for all your political conclusions. You will then see that
we are passing through a period of crisis in which it depends on
us whether the proletarian revolution continues to march to
victory as surely as before, or whether the vacillations and
waverings lead to the victory of the whiteguards, which will not
alleviate the situation, but will set Russia hack from the
revolution for many decades. The only conclusion that you,
representatives of railway and water transport workers, can and
should draw is—let’s have much more proletarian solidarity and discipline. Comrades, we must achieve this at all
costs, and win. ( Stormy applause.)

Endnotes

[1] The Congress was
held, under a decision of the Central Committee, in Moscow from
March 22 to 31, 1921. Most of its 1,079 delegates were
Communists. The items on the agenda were: report of Tsektran;
report of the People’s Commissar for Communications; report of the Central Board of the River Transport Workers
section; wage rates; transport workers’ food supplies, and
international confederation of transport workers.

Lenin was elected Honorary Chairman of the Congress. On the eve
of the Congress, on March 25, 1921, Lenin had a talk with
V. V. Fomin, Deputy Commissar for Communications, about the work
of the Congress and the composition of the next
Tsektran. Lenin’s speech at the March 27 afternoon sitting
was published as a pamphlet in 1921.