Comrades, I think I can confine myself to the briefest of remarks. As you know, we convened the present conference as an emergency measure, setting ourselves the main task of achieving complete clarity between the centre and the localities, between Party and all Soviet functionaries, on the question of economic policy. I believe the conference has unquestionably accomplished this task. Comrades here have noted more than once that Comrade Osinsky quite correctly expressed the mood of very many, indeed probably the majority, of Party functionaries in the localities when he said that all doubts must be dispelled, that the policy laid down by the Tenth Party Congress and subsequently reinforced by decrees and decisions is unreservedly accepted by the Party as a policy to be pursued in earnest and for a long time to come. This is what the conference has expressed with the utmost insistence, and has supplemented with a whole series of points. Once the comrades have departed for the localities, not a shadow of a possibility of misinterpretation will remain. Of course, when we outline a policy destined to last for many years, we do not for a moment forget that the international revolution, its tempo and the conditions of its development, may change everything. At present the international situation is such that a certain temporary, unstable, but nevertheless real equilibrium has been established—an equilibrium of a type in which the imperialist powers, for all their hatred and their desire to

throw themselves upon Soviet Russia, have abandoned this idea because the disintegration of the capitalist world is steadily advancing, unity is diminishing and diminishing, and the pressure exerted by the forces of the oppressed colonial peoples, who number over a billion, is growing stronger with every year, every month, and even every week. But we cannot indulge in guesswork about this. At the present moment our principal impact on the international revolution is exerted by our economic policy. All eyes are on the Soviet Russian Republic; all the working people in all the countries of the world, without any exception and without any exaggeration, are watching it. This has been achieved. The capitalists can neither hush up nor conceal anything, and that is why they seize above all on our economic mistakes and our weakness. The struggle has shifted to this arena on a world scale. If we solve this task, we shall have won on an international scale definitely and conclusively. That is why questions of economic construction acquire absolutely exceptional importance for us. On this front we must achieve victory by slow, gradual—rapid progress is impossible—but unswerving improvement and advance. And it seems to me that, as a result of the work of our conference, we have unconditionally and in any case attained this goal. (Applause.)

Published June 2, 1921 in *Pravda* No. 119. Printed according to the newspaper text.