Date: 1922-03-06
Source: ru:PSS/v45

On the International and Domestic Situation of the Soviet Republic
SPEECH DELIVERED AT A MEETING OF THE COMMUNIST FRACTION

OF THE ALL-RUSSIAN CONGRESS OF METALLURGISTS

6 MARCH 1922 1 (Stormy applause.) Comrades! Permit me to deviate somewhat from your usual agenda and, instead of addressing the topics already on the order of business for today’s session and for this congress, to share with you my conclusions and reflections on the principal tasks of political strategy. We have, on numerous occasions, turned to those who, while not official representatives of any particular state institution, nonetheless bear a tremendous share of the burden of state administration in practice. And you all know that the actual day-to-day work in most of our state institutions is carried out by various representatives of the working class—and among them, of course, metallurgists, who rank among the foremost in this regard.
That is why I believe it would be entirely appropriate, in this instance, to break with your customary routine and to speak less about professional or party matters and more about political questions—about our international and domestic situation. For I am convinced that both in our international relations and in our domestic affairs there exists something akin to a turning point in policy; a development that demands the special attention of every party member—and, naturally, of every conscious worker—in order to fully grasp this shift in policy, to assimilate it correctly, and to incorporate it into one’s own work—

whether it be Soviet work, party work, professional work, or any other form of activity.
You are, of course, all familiar, comrades, with the fact that Genoa 2 continues to loom large as the central issue in our foreign policy. To be honest, I am not entirely certain that Genoa still stands as a legitimate undertaking—for when we speak of “Genoa,” we have in mind the well-known conference that was once scheduled to take place in Italy, in Genoa, almost fully prepared, yet which, unfortunately, now finds itself in such a state of uncertainty that no one knows—indeed, I fear that even the very initiators and organizers of Genoa themselves do not know—whether the conference has much chance of coming to fruition, or whether it has scarcely any chance at all. In any case, we must tell ourselves—and everyone who has any stake in the fate of the workers’ and peasants’ republic—that our position on this matter, namely the question of the Genoa Conference, has been utterly firm from the very beginning, and has remained just as steadfast ever since. It is not our fault if others lack not only firmness but even the most basic resolve, the most elementary capacity to carry out their own intentions. From the outset, we declared that we welcomed Genoa and were going there; we understood perfectly well—and made no secret of it—that we were heading there as merchants, for trade with the capitalist countries (while they had not yet completely collapsed) was absolutely essential to us, and that we went there solely to discuss, in the most appropriate and most advantageous manner, the political conditions under which such trade could be conducted. This, of course, is no secret at all to those capitalist states whose governments first formulated the plan for the Genoa Conference and set it in motion. These states know full well that the number of trade agreements binding us to various capitalist nations is steadily increasing, that the volume of practical commercial transactions is growing, and that the number of trade ventures—meticulously negotiated between Russian and foreign partners, in the most diverse combinations of foreign enterprises—

and various branches of our industry—is currently enormous. Thus, the practical foundations upon which the discussions at Genoa will primarily revolve are perfectly clear to the capitalist states. And if, in addition to these foundations, a host of political debates, speculations, and grandiose schemes are piled on top, then we must recognize that these are nothing more than superstructures—often artificially constructed, contrived, and implemented by those who stand to gain from them.
Over the more than four years of Soviet power, we have, of course, acquired ample practical experience (in addition to what we already knew in theory) to properly assess this diplomatic game that the representatives of the bourgeois states have played according to all the rules of outdated bourgeois diplomatic art. We understand perfectly well what lies at the heart of this game: we know that its essence is trade. The bourgeois states need to trade with Russia—they know that without some form of economic interdependence, their decline will continue, as it has done up to now; despite all their magnificent victories, despite the endless boasts with which they fill newspapers and telegrams around the world, their economies are still unraveling—and even the simplest task—not to build anything new, but merely to restore what has been lost—they have, after their greatest triumphs, been unable to accomplish for four long years, still circling around the question of how, in groups of three, four, or five (a number, as you can see, extraordinarily large, making agreement exceedingly difficult), they might put together a combination that would allow them to trade.
I understand that it takes time for communists to learn how to trade, and that anyone who seeks to master this art will inevitably make gross errors for several years—but history will forgive them, for this is a new endeavor. Here, one must also make one’s thinking more flexible, cast off all traces of communist—

or, rather, of Russian “Oblomovism”—and much more besides. But for the representatives of the bourgeois states to have to relearn the craft of trade, a craft they have practiced for hundreds of years and upon which their entire social existence is built—this is truly strange. For us, however, it is not so strange: we have long said—and we have known—that they misjudged the imperialist war far more profoundly than we did. They assessed it from the standpoint of what lay right before their eyes, yet three years after their colossal victories, they still cannot find a way out of their predicament.
We communists have said that we assess the war more deeply and more accurately, that its contradictions and its calamities extend far more widely than the capitalist states suppose. And looking from the outside at the victorious bourgeois nations, we have said: they will remember our predictions and our assessment of the war and its consequences again and again. We are not surprised that they have become entangled—perhaps less so than in four pine trees. But at the same time, we say: we need trade with the capitalist states as long as they exist as such. We go to negotiations with them as merchants—and the fact that we can indeed accomplish this is proven by the growing number of trade agreements with capitalist powers, by the increasing volume of transactions. We cannot publish these agreements until they are concluded. When a capitalist merchant comes to us and says, “Until we reach the end of our discussions, this must remain between us,”—of course, from a commercial standpoint, one cannot refuse such a request. But we know how many agreements are in preparation—one list alone runs for several pages, containing dozens of concrete, practically oriented proposals discussed with substantial financial groups. Of course, the gentlemen representing the bourgeois powers who are gathering in Genoa know this no less well than we do: as for anything else, the ties between these governments and their capitalist firms have, of course, remained intact. Even among them, the degree of laxity is still not so great that they would fail to know this.

On the International and Domestic Situation
And so, when we receive constant reports from overseas via telegram, as if they do not quite know what will happen in Genoa, as if they are inventing something new, as if they wish to surprise the world by presenting Russia with new terms, let us tell them (and I hope to be able to say this personally to Lloyd George in Genoa): you will not surprise anyone, gentlemen. You are traders, and you trade exceedingly well. We are still learning the art of trade—and we trade very poorly. But we have dozens, even hundreds, of agreements and draft agreements that reveal how we trade, what kinds of deals we make—or will make—and under what conditions. And when we encounter in the newspapers all sorts of reports designed to frighten people, claiming that some kind of trial will be imposed upon us, we smile rather calmly at such warnings. We have seen enough threats—and more serious threats than the threat of a merchant who might slam the door shut while offering his very last price. We have seen threats leveled by the guns of the Allied Powers, who hold nearly the entire world in their hands. We were not frightened by those threats. Please, European diplomats, do not forget this.
We are not at all seeking to bolster our own diplomatic prestige or our own reputation—as is so crucial for the bourgeois states. We will not even officially speak of this. But we have not forgotten it. Not a single worker, not a single peasant has forgotten—and never will forget—that he fought to defend the workers’ and peasants’ power against the alliance of all the most powerful nations that supported intervention. We possess an entire collection of treaties that these states concluded over the years with Kolchak and Denikin. They have been published; we know them; the whole world knows them. Why then play hide-and-seek and pretend as though we have all become Ivan the Unremembered? Every peasant and every worker knows that he fought against these powers—and that they did not defeat him.

And if you wish, gentlemen representatives of the bourgeois states, to amuse yourselves and waste your paper—(you have far more than you need)—your ink, to burden your wires and your radio stations with the task of informing the entire world: “We will put Russia in a position of being tested,” then we shall see who tests whom. We have already been tested—and we were tested not with words, not with trade, not with rubles, but with clubs. And we have already earned, through hard, bloody, agonizing wounds, that it is not we ourselves, but our adversaries who must say of us: “For one who has been beaten, two who have not been beaten are given.”
We have earned this in the realm of military affairs. As for trade, it is a pity that few of us communists are beaten—but I hope that in the near future this shortcoming will be remedied, with equal success.
I said that I intend to speak personally with Lloyd George in Genoa on these matters and to tell him that we should not be frightened by trifles, for those who frighten others only lose their prestige in the process. I hope that my illness—which has kept me from directly participating in political affairs for several months and has prevented me from fulfilling the Soviet duties to which I have been appointed—will not interfere with this. I have reason to believe that in a few weeks I will be able to return to my direct work. But whether they will manage, in a few weeks, to come to an agreement in groups of three or four regarding what they have announced to the entire world—that they have reached an understanding—I am not sure. I even venture to assert that no one in the world is truly certain of this—and, moreover, that they themselves do not know it, for when the victorious powers, who hold sway over the entire world, gathered in Cannes—after having met countless times, with an infinite number of conferences, and even the European bourgeois press laughs at this—still could not clearly articulate what they wanted. 3
It was therefore most appropriate, from the standpoint of practical tasks rather than from the perspective of diplomatic maneuvering, for Comrade Trotsky to clarify the situation. On the following day,

On the International and Domestic Situation
after news broke that Genoa had been fully organized, fully agreed upon, that there was complete consensus regarding Genoa—but that the instability of one of the bourgeois governments (which had somehow become suspiciously unstable) had forced a temporary postponement 4—he issued an order: “Let every Red Army soldier internalize the international situation; we know with certainty that they have a steadfast faction eager to try intervention; we will remain vigilant, and let every Red Army soldier know what diplomatic maneuvering is, and what the power of arms is—the power that has, until now, settled all class conflicts.”
Let every Red Army soldier know what this game is, what the power of arms is—and then we shall see. Although capitalism has collapsed in every capitalist country, many influential parties may still attempt to try their hand at this. And if governments are so unstable that they cannot convene meetings in a timely manner, then who knows whose hands these governments will fall into? We know that they have influential parties eager to wage war, influential figures, and economic magnates—we know this perfectly well—and we are sufficiently informed about the true substance underlying economic agreements. We have endured extraordinary hardship and know the calamities and sufferings that a new attempt at war might bring upon us, and we say that we will endure it once more—just try to attempt it. The conclusion drawn by Comrade Trotsky, who, instead of indulging in diplomatic maneuvering, issued his firm order, was to explain the international situation anew to every Red Army soldier: that the postponement of the Genoa Conference due to the instability of the Italian cabinet represents a danger of war. We will ensure that every Red Army soldier knows this. It is all the easier for us to achieve this because it is rare to find a family, a Red Army soldier in Russia, who does not know this—not only from newspapers, circulars, or orders, but from their own village, where they have seen the crippled, seen families who survived that war, where they witness crop failures, famine—

agonizing hardship and ruin, devilish need—and know the causes behind it, even though they do not read the Parisian publications of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries in order to attribute it to the malignant traits of the Bolsheviks. Hardly any mood in his entire being is now more firmly rooted than the mood of resistance (let me put it that way)—the resistance against those who imposed upon us and supported against us the war waged by Kolchak and Denikin. On this score, we need not create new commissions for agitation and propaganda.
When it comes to the Genoa Conference, we must strictly distinguish the real substance of the matter from the newspaper hoaxes that the bourgeoisie spreads; to them, these seem like terrifying bombs, but they do not frighten us, for we have seen them many times and they do not always deserve even a smile in response. Any attempt to impose conditions upon us as if we were defeated is mere nonsense—nonsense that is not worth responding to. As merchants, we establish relationships and know what you owe us and what we owe you, and we know what lawful profit you may earn—and even what increased profit is rightfully yours. We see many proposals; the number of agreements we have is growing and will continue to grow, no matter how the figures of the three or four victorious powers may unfold; by postponing the conference, you will only lose, for you will prove to your own people that you do not know what you want—and that you are afflicted with what is called the “disease of will.” This disease consists in failing to understand the economics and politics that we have assessed more deeply than you. Soon it will be ten years since we made that assessment, yet all the subsequent devastation and collapse remain unclear to the bourgeois states.
We already clearly see the situation that has arisen for us, and we can say with complete confidence that the retreat we have begun we can—and are—already in the process of halting. That is enough. We see quite clearly, and we do not hide it, that the New Economic Policy is a retreat; we have gone further than we could have held, but such is the logic of struggle. If anyone remembers what happened in October 1917, or if anyone was politically immature at that time but later came to understand the situation that existed in 1917, then he

On the International and Domestic Situation
knows the multitude of compromise proposals that the Bolsheviks made at that time toward the bourgeoisie. They said, “Gentlemen, your empire is crumbling, but we will remain in power and we will hold onto it. Would you consider, to put it in peasant terms, settling this matter without scandal?” We know that there were not only scandals, but also attempts at uprisings—uprisings that were stirred up and supported by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. They had said earlier, “We will hand power over to the Soviets, even now.” Just the other day, I had to read Kerensky’s article against Chernov in a Parisian journal (there is plenty of such material there) 5; Kerensky says: “Did we cling to power? Even during the Democratic Conference, I stated that if individuals emerged who would take responsibility for forming a homogeneous government, then power would be transferred to the new government without any upheaval.”
We did not refuse to take power alone. We had already declared this in June 1917 *. In October 1917, this was realized at the Congress of Soviets. The Congress of Soviets elected a Bolshevik majority. At that time, Kerensky turned to the Junkers, rode off to Krasnov, sought to gather an army and march on Petrograd. We gave them a bit of a beating, and now they are offended and say, “What bullies, what invaders, what executioners!” We reply, “Blame yourselves, friends! Do not think that the Russian peasants and workers have forgotten your actions! You provoked us into battle in the most desperate of forms in October—and in response, we introduced terror, and triple terror, and if necessary, we will introduce even more—if you dare to try again.” Not a single worker, not a single peasant doubts that he is needed; apart from the intellectual cliques, no one doubts this.
In the face of unprecedented economic hardships, we were forced to fight a war against an enemy a hundred times stronger than ourselves; it was only natural that we would have to go far beyond what was necessary in the realm of emergency communist measures—far beyond what was required; we were driven to do so

* See Collected Works, 5th ed., vol. 32, p. 267. Ed.

by our opponents. Our adversaries thought they would finish us off; they did not merely talk about subduing us—they intended to force us to submit in practice. They said, “We will make no concessions.” We replied, “If you think we will not resort to extreme communist measures, you are mistaken.” And we did resort to them, we carried them out, and we prevailed. Now we say that we cannot hold these positions—we are retreating, for we have already won enough to secure the positions we need. All the White Guard forces, led by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, rejoice and say, “Aha! You are retreating!”—Rejoice, for by doing so you are merely pleasing yourselves, we say. It benefits us if our adversary, instead of engaging in practical work, indulges in self-satisfaction. Rejoice—you put us in an even more favorable position by delighting yourselves with illusions. We have won vast territories—and if, from 1917 to 1921, we had not won these positions, we would not have had the space to retreat—not only geographically, but economically and politically as well. We retain power in alliance with the peasants, and if you do not wish to accept the terms that were offered to you before the war, then after the war you will receive worse terms. This is precisely recorded in the history of diplomacy, economics, and politics from 1917 to 1921—so there is nothing boastful about it. It is simply a statement of fact, a simple reminder. If the capitalist gentlemen had accepted our proposals in October 1917, they would have possessed five times as much as they do now. You fought for three years. What did you gain? Do you still wish to fight? We know very well that not all of you desire to fight. On the other hand, we know that in the midst of desperate famine, in the current state of industry, with all the positions we gained from 1917 to 1921, we cannot hold them. We have surrendered a number of them. But we can now say that this retreat—measured by the concessions we are making to the capitalists—is over. We have weighed our own strength against the strength of the capitalists. We have undertaken a series of exploratory moves aimed at concluding agreements with Russian and foreign capitalists—