Comrades! On behalf of the Central Committee of the Party, I hereby declare the Eleventh Congress of the RCP open.
Comrades! You have gathered for this congress for the first time in a full year—during which the intervention and onslaught of capitalist states, at least in their most direct forms, have not troubled us. We now have the opportunity to devote our energies to the truly paramount, fundamental tasks of socialist construction.
In this regard, we have undoubtedly taken only the first steps. But I am confident that if we assess what we have accomplished with proper sobriety and do not shy away from facing reality squarely—though that reality is not always pleasant, and at times it is downright unpleasant—then we will surely overcome all the difficulties that are only now beginning to reveal themselves in their full magnitude.
The calamities that have befallen us this year were scarcely less severe than those of previous years.
Indeed, all the consequences of the imperialist war—and of the war that the capitalists imposed upon us—have converged and descended upon us in the form of famine and utter, desperate ruin. These calamities are far from being overcome even now. Nor does any one of us expect that they can be surmounted quickly.
But if we preserve and strengthen the unity of our Party; if we emerge from international difficulties as successfully as we have done up to this point; if we direct all our efforts toward resolving those tasks that now arise with absolute necessity from the current conditions, then there is no doubt that we shall overcome all these difficulties.
Worldwide, the communist movement is growing—in fact, though perhaps not as rapidly as some among us had hoped, given their measure of its pace by the tempo of wartime and the postwar period—it is nonetheless solid, firm, broad, and deep. And if, in cooperation with the communist parties that now exist in virtually every country on earth—or, with but a few exceptions, in all countries—we can soberly assess our own situation and dare to acknowledge our mistakes, then we shall emerge victorious from all these difficulties.
A brief newspaper report was published on March 28, 1922, in Izvestia of the VTsIK, No. 70.