DRAFT RESOLUTION OF THE VTsIK ON THE REPORT OF THE DELEGATION TO THE GENOA CONFERENCE
Draft a resolution of the VTsIK on Ioffe’s report along the following lines, roughly:

1. The VTsIK delegation successfully fulfilled its mandate by steadfastly upholding the full sovereignty of the RSFSR—fought against attempts to subjugate the country and to restore private property—and concluded a treaty with Germany.

2. The international political and economic situation is characterized by the following features:
– Politically: the absence of peace and the looming threat of new imperialist wars [Ireland; India; China, among others; the escalating tensions between Britain and France, between Japan and the United States, and so forth ((more details)) |

3. – Economically: the “victor” nations, globally powerful and enriched by the war (i.e., through plunder), are unable, even 3½ years after the war’s end, to restore pre‑war capitalist relations | currency chaos; the failure to implement—and the utter impossibility of implementing—the Treaty of Versailles; the non‑payment of debts to the United States, and so on.
and so forth—(more details)].

4. Therefore, Section 1 of the Cannes Resolutions, while acknowledging the equal status of two systems of property—namely, the capitalist, or private, system of ownership, and the communist system, which has thus far been adopted only in the RSFSR—must, in this way,

DRAFT RESOLUTION OF THE VTsIK recognize, albeit indirectly, the collapse and bankruptcy of the first system of property, as well as the inevitable necessity of bringing it into accord with the second, treating both as equals.

5. The other sections of the Cannes Agreements, as well as the memoranda and other documents submitted by the various powers at Genoa, contradict this position—and in doing so, condemn themselves to sterility.

6. True equality between the two systems of property, at least as a temporary state of affairs—until the entire world has moved beyond private property and the economic chaos and wars it engenders, toward a higher, more advanced system of ownership—is realized only in the Rapallo Treaty. Accordingly, the VTsIK
welcomes the Rapallo Treaty as the sole correct path out of the difficulties, chaos, and dangers of war (as long as two systems of property persist, including such an antiquated form as capitalist property);
it regards as entirely appropriate for the RSFSR’s relations with capitalist states only those treaties of this kind;
– it instructs the Sovnarkom and the Narkomindel to pursue a policy in this spirit;
– it directs the Presidium of the VTsIK to formalize this agreement through a pact with all republics federated with the RSFSR;
– it mandates that the Narkomindel and the Sovnarkom permit deviations from the Rapallo‑style treaties—i.e., exceptions to this model—only in exceptional cases that yield distinctly special benefits for the working masses of the RSFSR and the like. 128
Written on May 15 or 16, 1922.
First published in 1950, in the fourth edition of the Collected Works
of V. I. Lenin, Volume 33.

Printed from the manuscript.