hardened and stronger than ever. In this country we won the support of increasing numbers of working people. What the compromisers formerly regarded as propagandist talk and the bourgeoisie were accustomed to sneer at, has been transformed in these years of our revolution, and particularly in the year under review, into an absolute and indisputable historical fact, which enables us to say with the most positive conviction that our having accomplished this is evidence that we possess a world-wide basis, immeasurably wider than was the case in any previous revolution. We have an international alliance, an alliance which has nowhere been registered, which has never been given formal embodiment, which from the point of view of "constitutional law" means nothing, but which, in the disintegrating capitalist world, actually means everything. Every month that we gained positions, or merely held out against an incredibly powerful enemy, proved to the whole world that we were right and brought us millions of new supporters.

    This process has been a difficult one; it has been accompanied by tremendous defeats. In this very year under review the monstrous White terror in Finland[139] was followed by the defeat of the Hungarian revolution, which was stifled by the governments of the Entente countries that deceived their parliaments and concluded a secret treaty with Rumania.

    It was the vilest piece of treachery, this conspiracy of the international Entente to crush the Hungarian revolution by means of a White terror, not to mention the fact that in order to strangle the German revolution they were ready for any understanding with the German compromisers,[140] and that these people, who had declared Liebknecht to be an honest German, pounced on this honest German like mad dogs together with the German imperialists. They exceeded all conceivable bounds; but every such act of suppression on their part only strengthened and consolidated us, while it undermined them.

    And it seems to me that we must first and foremost draw a lesson from this fundamental experience. Here we must make a special point of basing our agitation and propaganda on an analysis, an explanation of why we were victorious, why the sacrifices made in the Civil War have been repaid a hundredfold, and how we must act, on the basis of this

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experience, in order to succeed in another war, a war on a bloodless front, a war which has only changed its form, but which is being waged against us by those same representatives, lackeys and leaders of the old capitalist world, only still more vigorously, still more furiously, still more zealously. More than any other, our revolution has proved the rule that the strength of a revolution, the vigour of its assault, its energy, determination, its victory and its triumph intensify the resistance of the bourgeoisie. The more victorious we are the more the capitalist exploiters learn to unite and the more determined their onslaught. For, as you all distinctly remember -- it was not so long ago when judged by the passage of time, but a long time ago when judged by the march of events -- at the beginning of the October Revolution Bolshevism was regarded as a freak; this view, which was a reflection of the feeble development and weakness of the proletarian revolution, very soon had to be abandoned in Russia and has now been abandoned in Europe as well. Bolshevism has become a world-wide phenomenon, the workers' revolution has raised its head. The Soviet system, in creating which in October we followed the traditions of 1905, developing our own experience -- this Soviet system has become a phenomenon of world-historic importance.

    Two camps are now quite consciously facing each other all over the world; this may be said without the slightest exaggeration. It should be noted that only this year have they become locked in a decisive and final struggle. And now, at the time of this very Congress, we are passing through what is perhaps one of the greatest, most acute but not yet completed periods of transition from war to peace.

    You all know what happened to the leaders of the imperialist powers of the Entente who loudly announced to the whole world: "We shall never stop fighting those usurpers, those bandits, those arrogators of power, those enemies of democracy, those Bolsheviks" -- you know that first they lifted the blockade, that their attempt to unite the small states failed, because we succeeded in winning over not only the workers of all countries, but also the bourgeoisie of the small countries, for the imperialists oppress not only the workers of their own countries but the bourgeoisie of the small states as well. You know that we won over the vacil-

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lating bourgeoisie in the advanced countries. And the present position is that the Entente is breaking its former promises and assurances and is violating the treaties which, incidentally, it concluded dozens of times with various Russian whiteguards. And now, as far as these treaties are concerned, the Entente is the loser, for it squandered hundreds of millions on them but failed to complete the job.

    It has now lifted the blockade and has virtually begun peace negotiations with the Soviet Republic. But it is not completing these negotiations, and therefore the small states have lost faith in it and in its might. So we see that the position of the Entente, its position in foreign affairs, defies all definition from the standpoint of the customary concepts of law. The states of the Entente are neither at peace with the Bolsheviks nor at war with them; they have recognised us and they have not recognised us. And this utter confusion among our opponents, who were so convinced that they represented something, proves that they represent nothing but a pack of capitalist beasts who have fallen out among themselves and are absolutely incapable of doing us any harm.

    The position today is that Latvia has officially made peace proposals[141] to us. Finland has sent a telegram which officially speaks of a demarcation line but actually implies a swing to a policy of peace.[142] Lastly, Poland, the Poland whose representatives have been, and still are, sabre-rattling so vigorously, the Poland that has been, and still is, receiving so many trainloads of artillery and promises of help in everything, if only she would continue the war with Russia -- even Poland, the unstable position of whose government compels her to consent to any military gamble, has invited us to begin negotiations for peace.[143] We must be extremely cautious. Our policy demands the most careful thought. Here it is hardest of all to find the proper policy, for nobody as yet knows on what track the train is standing; the enemy himself does not know what he is going to do next. The gentlemen who represent French policy and who are most zealous in egging Poland on, and the leaders of landowner and bourgeois Poland do not know what will happen next; they do not know what they want. Today they say, "Gentlemen, let us have a few trainloads of guns and a few hundred

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millions and we are prepared to fight the Bolsheviks." They are hushing up the news of the strikes that are spreading in Poland; they are tightening up the censorship so as to conceal the truth. But the revolutionary movement in Poland is growing. The spread of revolution in Germany, in its new phase, in its new stage, now that the workers, after the German Kornilov-type putsch, are creating Red Armies, plainly shows (as can be seen from the recent dispatches from Germany) that the temper of the workers is rising more and more. The Polish bourgeoisie and landowners are themselves beginning to wonder whether it is not too late, whether there will not be a Soviet Republic in Poland before the government acts either for war or for peace. They do not know what to do. They do not know what the morrow will bring.

    But we know that our forces are growing vastly every month, and will grow even more in future. The result is that our international position is now more stable than ever. But we must watch the international crisis with extreme care and be prepared for any eventuality. We have received a formal offer of peace from Poland. These gentlemen are in desperate straits, so desperate that their friends, the German monarchists, people with better training and more political experience and knowledge, plunged into a venturous gamble, a Kornilov-type putsch. The Polish bourgeoisie are throwing out offers of peace because they know that any venturous gamble may prove to be a Polish Kornilov-type affair. Knowing that our enemy is in desperate straits, that our enemy does not know what he wants to do or what he will do tomorrow, we must tell ourselves quite definitely that in spite of the peace overtures war is possible. It is impossible to foretell what their future conduct will be. We have seen these people before, we know these Kerenskys, these Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. During the past two years we have seen them one day drawn towards Kolchak, the next day almost towards the Bolsheviks, and then towards Denikin -- and all this camouflaged by talk about freedom and democracy. We know these gentlemen, and therefore we grasp at the proposal of peace with both hands and are prepared to make the maximum concessions, in the conviction that the conclusion of peace with the small states will further our cause infinitely more than war. For the

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imperialists used war to deceive the working masses, they used it to conceal the truth about Soviet Russia. Any peace, therefore, will open channels for our influence a hundred times wider, which, as it is, has grow n considerably in these past few years. The Third, Communist International has achieved unparalleled successes. But at the same time we know that war may be forced upon us any day. Our enemies do not themselves know as yet what they are capable of doing in this respect.

    That war preparations are under way, of that there is not the slightest doubt. Many of the states bordering on Russia -- and perhaps many of those not bordering on Russia -- are now arming. That is why we must manoeuvre so flexibly in our international policy and adhere so firmly to the course we have taken, that is why we must be prepared for anything. We have waged the war for peace with extreme vigour. This war is yielding splendid results. We have made a very good showing in this sphere of the struggle, at any rate, not inferior to the showing made by the Red Army on the front where blood is being shed. But the conclusion of peace with us does not depend on the will of the small states even if they desire it. They are up to their ears in debt to the countries of the Entente, who are wrangling and competing desperately among themselves. We must therefore remember that peace is of course possible from the point of view of the world situation, the historical situation created by the Civil War and by the war against the Entente.

    But the measures we take for peace must be accompanied by intensified preparedness for defence, and in no case must our army be disarmed. Our army offers a real guarantee that the imperialist powers will not make the slightest attempt or encroachment on us; for although they might count on certain ephemeral successes at first, not one of them would escape defeat at the hands of Soviet Russia. That we must realise, that must be made the basis of our agitation and propaganda, that is what we must prepare for, in order to solve the problem which, in view of our growing fatigue, compels us to combine the one with the other.

    I now pass to those important considerations of principle which induced us to direct the working masses so resolutely along the lines of using the army for the solution

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of certain basic and immediate problems. The old source of discipline, capital, has been weakened, the old source of unity has disappeared. We must create a different kind of discipline, a different source of discipline and unity. Coercion evokes the indignation, the howls, the yells and outcries of the bourgeois democrats, who make great play of the words "freedom" and "equality", but do not understand that freedom for capital is a crime against the working people, that equality between the rich and the destitute is a crime against the working people. In our fight against falsehood, we introduced labour conscription and proceeded to unite the working people, not hesitating to use coercion. For no revolution has ever been effected without coercion, and the proletariat has a right to exercise coercion in order to hold its own at all costs. When those gentry, the bourgeois, the compromisers, the German Independents, the Austrian Independents, and the French Longuetists, argued about the historical factor, they always forgot such a factor as the revolutionary determination, firmness and steadfastness of the proletariat. And that factor is precisely the steadfastness and firmness of the proletariat of our country, which declares, and has proved by its deeds, that we are prepared to perish to a man rather than yield our territory, rather than yield our principle, the principle of discipline and firm policy, for the sake of which everything else must be sacrificed. At the time when the capitalist countries and the capitalist class are disintegrating, at this moment of crisis and despair, this political factor is the only decisive one. Talk about minority and majority, about democracy and freedom decides nothing, however much the heroes of a past historical period may invoke them. It is the class-consciousness and firmness of the working class that count here. If the working class is prepared to make sacrifices, if it shows that it is able to strain every nerve, the problem will be solved. Everything must be directed to the solution of this problem. The determination of the working class, its inflexible adherence to the watchword "Death rather than surrender!" is not only a historical factor, it is the decisive, the winning factor.

    We are now going over from this victory and this conviction to problems of peaceful economic development, the

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solution of which is the chief function of our Congress. In this respect we cannot, in my opinion, speak of a report of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, or, rather, of a political report of the Central Committee. We must say frankly and bluntly that this, comrades, is a question which you must decide, which you must weigh with all your authority as the supreme Party body. We have laid the question before you quite clearly. We have taken up a definite stand. It is your duty finally to endorse, correct or amend our decision. But in its report the Central Committee must say that on this fundamental and urgent question it has adopted an absolutely definite stand. Yes, the thing now is to apply to the peaceful work of economic development, to the restoration of our shattered industry, everything that can weld the proletariat into an absolute unity. Here we need the iron discipline, the iron system, without which we could not have held on for two months, let alone over two years. We must be able to utilise our success. On the other hand, it must be realised that this transition will demand many sacrifices, of which the country has already made so many.

    On the principle involved the Central Committee was quite clear. Our activities were entirely governed by this policy and conducted in this spirit. Take, for example, the question of corporate management versus individual management, which you will have to settle -- a question which may appear to be a subsidiary one, and which in itself, if torn from its context, cannot of course claim to be a fundamental question of principle. This question should be examined only from the point of view of our basic knowledge, experience and revolutionary practice. For instance, we are told that "corporate management is one of the forms in which the masses participate in the work of administration". But we on the Central Committee discussed this question and took our decision, which we have to report to you -- comrades, such theoretical confusion cannot be tolerated. Had we permitted a tenth part of this theoretical confusion in the fundamental question of our military activities, of our Civil War, we would have been beaten, and would have deserved to be beaten.

    Permit me, comrades, in connection with the report of the Central Committee and with this question of whether the

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new class should participate in the work of administration on a corporate or an individual basis, to introduce a little bit of theory, to point out how a class governs and what class domination actually is. After all, we are not novices in these matters, and what distinguishes our revolution from former revolutions is that there is nothing utopian about it. The new class, having replaced the old class, can maintain itself only by a desperate struggle against other classes; and it will finally triumph only if it can bring about the abolition of classes in general. That is what the vast and complex process of the class struggle demands; otherwise you will sink into a morass of confusion. What is class domination? In what way did the bourgeoisie dominate over the feudal lords? The Constitution spoke of freedom and equality. That was a lie. As long as there are working men, property-owners are in a position to profiteer, and indeed, as property-owners, are compelled to profiteer. We declare that there is no equality, that the well-fed man is not the equal of the hungry man, that the profiteer is not the equal of the working man.

    How is class domination expressed today? The domination of the proletariat consists in the fact that the landowners and capitalists have been deprived of their property. The spirit and basic idea of all previous constitutions, even the most republican and democratic, amounted to one thing -- property. Our Constitution has the right, has won itself the right, to a place in history by virtue of the fact that the abolition of property is not confined to a paper declaration. The victorious proletariat has abolished property, has completely annulled it -- and therein lies its domination as a class. The prime thing is the question of property. As soon as the question of property was settled practically, the domination of the class was assured. When, after that, the Constitution recorded on paper what had been actually effected, namely, the abolition of capitalist and landed property, and added that under the Constitution the working class enjoys more rights than the peasantry, while exploiters have no rights whatever -- that was a record of the fact that we had established the domination of our class, thereby binding to ourselves all sections and all small groups of working people.

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    The petty-bourgeois property-owners are disunited; those who have more property are the enemies of those who have less property; and the proletarians, by abolishing property, have declared open war on them. There are still many unenlightened and ignorant people who are wholly in favour of any kind of freedom of trade, but who cannot fight when they see the discipline and self-sacrifice displayed in securing victory over the exploiters; they are not with us, but are powerless to come out against us. It is only the domination of a class that determines property relations and which class is to be on top. Those who, as we so frequently observe, associate the question of the nature of class domination with the question of democratic centralism create such confusion that all successful work on this basis becomes impossible. Clarity in propaganda and agitation is a fundamental condition. When our enemies said and admitted that we had performed miracles in developing agitation and propaganda, that was not to be understood in the superficial sense that we had large numbers of agitators and used up large quantities of paper, but in the intrinsic sense that the truth contained in that propaganda penetrated to the minds of all; there is no escaping from that truth.

    Whenever classes displaced each other, they changed property relations. When the bourgeoisie superseded the feudals, it changed property relations; the Constitution of the bourgeoisie says: "The man of property is the equal of the beggar." That was bourgeois freedom. This kind of "equality" ensured the domination of the capitalist class in the state. But do you think that when the bourgeoisie superseded the feudals they confused the state with the administration? No, they were no such fools. They declared that the work of administration required people who knew how to administer, and that they would adapt feudal administrators for that purpose. And that is what they did. Was it a mistake? No, comrades, the art of administration does not descend from heaven, it is not inspired by the Holy Ghost. And the fact that a class is the leading class does not make it at once capable of administering. We have an example of this: while the bourgeoisie were establishing their victory they took for the work of administration members of another class, the feudal class; there was nowhere else to get them from.

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We must be sober and face the facts. The bourgeoisie had recourse to the old class; and we, too, are now confronted with the task of taking the knowledge and training of the old class, subordinating it to our needs, and using it all for the success of our class. We, therefore, say that the victorious class must be mature, and maturity is attested not by a document or certificate, but by experience and practice.

    When the bourgeoisie triumphed, they did not know how to administer; and they made sure of their victory by proclaiming a new constitution and by recruiting, enlisting administrators from their own class and training them, utilising for this purpose administrators of the old class. They began to train their own new administrators, fitting them for the work with the help of the whole machinery of state; they sequestrated the feudal institutions and admitted only the wealthy to the schools; and in this way, in the course of many years and decades, they trained administrators from their own class. Today, in a state which is constructed on the pattern and in the image of the dominant class, we must act as every state has acted. If we do not want to be guilty of sheer utopianism and meaningless phrase-mongering, we must say that we must take into account the experience of the past; that we must safeguard the Constitution won by the revolution, but that for the work of administration, of organising the state, we need people who are versed in the art of administration, who have state and business experience, and that there is nowhere we can turn to for such people except the old class.

    Opinions on corporate management are all too frequently imbued with a spirit of sheer ignorance, a spirit of opposition to the specialists. We shall never succeed with such a spirit. In order to succeed we must understand the history of the old bourgeois world in all its profundity; and in order to build communism we must take technology and science and make them available to wider circles. And we can take them only from the bourgeoisie -- there is nowhere else to get them from. Prominence must be given to this fundamental question, it must be treated as one of the basic problems of economic development. We have to administer with the help of people belonging to the class we have overthrown; they are imbued with the prejudices of their class and we must re-educate them. At the same time we must recruit our own

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administrators from our own class. We must use the entire machinery of state to put the schools, adult education, and all practical training at the service of the proletarians, the factory workers and the labouring peasants, under the guidance of the Communists.

    That is the only way to get things going. After our two years' experience we cannot argue as though we were only just setting about the work of socialist construction. We committed follies enough in and around the Smolny period. That is nothing to be ashamed of. How were we to know, seeing that we were undertaking something absolutely new? We first tried one way, then another. We swam with the current, because it was impossible to distinguish the right from the wrong; that requires time. Now that is all a matter of the recent past, which we have got beyond. That past, in which chaos and enthusiasm prevailed, is now over. One document from that past is the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. It is a historic document -- more, it was a period of history. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was forced upon us because we were helpless in every way. What sort of period was it? It was a period of impotence, from which we emerged victorious. It was a period in which corporate management was universal. You cannot escape that historical fact by declaring that corporate management is a school of administration. You cannot stay for ever in the preparatory class of a school! (Applause.) That will not do. We are grown-up now, and we shall be beaten and beaten again in every field if we behave like schoolboys. We must push forward. We must push higher with energy and unanimity of will. Tremendous difficulties face the trade unions. We must get them to regard this task in the spirit of the fight against the survivals of the celebrated democracy. All these outcries against appointees, all this old and dangerous rubbish which finds its way into various resolutions and conversations must be swept away. Otherwise we cannot succeed. If we have failed to master this lesson in these two years, we are lagging, and those who lag, get beaten.

    The task is an extremely difficult one. Our trade unions have been of tremendous assistance in building the proletarian state. They were a link between the Party and the unenlightened millions. Let us not close our eyes to the fact

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that the trade unions bore the brunt of the struggle against all our troubles when the state needed help in food work. Was this not a tremendous task? The recent issue of the Bulletin of the Central Statistical Board contains summaries by statisticians who certainly cannot be suspected of Bolshevism. Two interesting figures are given: in 1918 and 1919 the workers in the consuming gubernias received seven poods a year, while the peasants in the producing gubernias consumed seventeen poods a year. Before the war they used to consume sixteen poods a year. There you have two figures illustrating the relation of classes in the struggle for food. The proletariat continued to make sacrifices. People shout about coercion! But the proletariat justified and legitimatised coercion; it justified it by making the greatest sacrifices. The majority of the population, the peasants of the producing gubernias of our starving and impoverished Russia, for the first time had more food than throughout the centuries of tsarist and capitalist Russia. And we say that the masses will go on starving until the Red Army is victorious. The vanguard of the working class had to make this sacrifice. This struggle is a school; but when we leave this school we must go forward. This step must now be taken at all costs. Like all trade unions, the old trade unions have a history and a past. In the past they were organs of resistance to those who oppressed labour, to capitalism. But now that their class has become the governing class, and is being called upon to make great sacrifices, to starve and to perish, the situation has changed.

    Not everybody understands this change, not everybody grasps its significance. And certain Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries who are demanding that corporate management be substituted for individual management have helped us in this matter. No, comrades, that won't work. We have got beyond that. We are now faced with a very difficult task; having gained victory on the bloody front, we must now gain victory on the bloodless front. This war is a more difficult one. This front is the most arduous. We say this frankly to all class-conscious workers. The war which we have withstood at the front must be followed by a bloodless war. The fact is that the more we were victorious, the more regions we secured like Siberia, the Ukraine and the

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Kuban. In those regions there are rich peasants; there are no proletarians, and what proletariat there is, has been corrupted by petty-bourgeois habits. We know that everybody who has a piece of land in those parts says: "A fig for the government, I'll get all I can out of the starving. A fat lot I care for the government." The peasant profiteer who, when left to the tender mercies of Denikin, was swinging towards us will now be aided by the Entente. The war has changed its front and its forms. It is now taking the form of trade, of food profiteering, which it has made international. In Comrade Kamenev's theses published in the Bulletin of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) the underlying principles are stated fully. They want to make food profiteering international. They want to turn peaceful economic development into the peaceful disintegration of Soviet power. No you don't, my imperialist gentlemen! We are on our guard. We declare: we have fought and won, and we shall therefore retain as our basic slogan the one which helped us to victory; we shall fully preserve that slogan and apply it to the field of labour. That slogan is the firmness and unity of will of the proletariat. The old prejudices, the old habits that still remain, must be discarded.

    I should like in conclusion, to dwell on Comrade Gusev's pamphlet,[144] which in my opinion deserves attention for two reasons. It is a good pamphlet not only from the formal standpoint, not only because it has been written for our Congress. Somehow, up to now we have all been accustomed to writing resolutions. They say that all literature is good except tedious literature. Resolutions, I take it, should he classed as tedious literature. It would be better if we followed Comrade Gusev's example and wrote fewer resolutions and more pamphlets, even though they bristled with errors as his does. The pamphlet is good in spite of these errors, because it centres attention on a fundamental economic plan for the restoration of industry and production throughout the country, and because it subordinates everything to this fundamental economic plan. The Central Committee has introduced into the theses distributed today a whole paragraph taken entirely from Comrade Gusev's theses. This fundamental economic plan can be worked out in greater detail with the help of experts. We

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must remember that the plan is designed for many years to come. We do not promise to deliver the country from hunger all at once. We say that the struggle will be much harder than the one on the war front. But it is a struggle that interests us more; it brings us nearer to our immediate and main tasks. It demands that maximum exertion of effort and that unity of will which we have displayed before and must display now. If we accomplish this, we shall gain no less a victory on the bloodless front than on the front of civil war. (Applause.)

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class begins to put its principles into effect, nobody, absolutely nobody, has refuted it. After it has seized power, the working class maintains it, preserves it and consolidates it as every other class does, namely, by a change of property relations and by a new constitution. That is my first and fundamental thesis; and it is incontrovertible. My second thesis that every new class learns from its predecessor and takes over administrators from the old class, is also an absolute truth. And, lastly, my third thesis is that the working class must increase the number of administrators from its own ranks, establish schools, and train executives on a nation-wide scale. These three theses are indisputable, and they fundamentally contradict the theses of the trade unions.

    At the meeting of the group, when we examined their theses, and when Comrade Bukharin and I were defeated,[145] I told Comrade Tomsky that article 7 in the theses is the result of complete theoretical confusion. It says:

    "The basic structural principle of the regulation and management of industry, the only one that can ensure the participation of broad masses of non-party workers through the trade unions, is the existing principle of corporate management of industry, from the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council down to the factory managements. Only in special cases, and by mutual agreement between the Presidiums of the Supreme Economic Council and the All-Russia Central Trade Union Council, or the Central Committees of the trade unions concerned should one-man management be permitted in certain enterprises but only on the obligatory condition that control be exercised over the administrators by the trade unions and their bodies."

    This is sheer nonsense, because everything -- the role of the working class in winning state power, the interrelation of methods -- everything is muddled! Such things cannot be tolerated. Such things drag us back theoretically. The same must be said of the democratic centralism of Comrades Sapronov, Maximovsky and Osinsky. Comrade Osinsky forgets that when he comes forward and claims that I call democratic centralism nonsense. You cannot distort things in that way! What has the question of appointments, of endorsement by local organisations, got to do with it? You can have things endorsed by collegiums and you can also appoint collegiums. That has nothing to do with the case. They say that democratic centralism consists not only in the

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All-Russia Central Executive Committee ruling; but in the All-Russia Central Executive Committee ruling through the local organisations. What has corporate management or individual management got to do with it?

    Comrade Trotsky recalled his report made in 1918 and, reading the speech he then made, pointed out that at that time not only did we argue about fundamental questions but a definite decision was taken by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee. I dug up my old pamphlet The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, which I had completely forgotten, and find that the question of individual management was not only raised but even approved in the theses of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee. We work in such a way that we forget not only what we ourselves have written but even what has been decided by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, and subsequently dig up these decisions. Here are some passages from this pamphlet.

    "Those who deliberately (although most of them probably do not realise it) promote petty-bourgeois laxity would like to see in this granting of 'unlimited' (i.e., dictatorial) powers to individuals a departure from the collegiate principle, from democracy and from the principles of Soviet government. Here and there, among Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, a positively hooligan agitation, i.e., agitation appealing to the base instincts and to the small proprietor's urge to 'grab all he can', has been developed against the dictatorship decree. . . . [146]

    "Large-scale machine industry -- which is precisely the material source, the productive source, the foundation of socialism -- calls for absolute and strict unity of will, which directs the joint labours of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of people. The technical, economic and historical necessity of this is obvious, and all those who have thought about socialism have always regarded it as one of the conditions of socialism" . . . this is the only way in which "strict unity of will can be ensured. . . .

    "But be that as it may, unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of processes organised on the pattern of large-scale machine industry. On the railways it is twice and three times as necessary. . . .

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    "And our whole task, the task of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which is the class-conscious vehicle of the strivings of the exploited for emancipation, is to appreciate this change, to understand that it is necessary, to stand at the head of the exhausted people who are wearily seeking a way out and lead them along the true path, along the path of labour discipline, along the path of co-ordinating the task of arguing at mass meetings about the conditions of work with the task of unquestioningly obeying the will of the Soviet leader, of the dictator, during the work. . . .

    "It required precisely the October victory of the working people over the exploiters, it required a whole historical period in which the working people themselves could first of all discuss the new conditions of life and the new tasks, in order to make possible the durable transition to superior forms of labour discipline, to the conscious appreciation of the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat, to unquestioning obedience to the orders of individual representatives of the Soviet government during the work. . . .

    "We must learn to combine the 'public meeting' democracy of the working people -- turbulent, surging, overflowing its banks like a spring nood with iron discipline while at work, with unquestioning obedience to the will of a single person, the Soviet leader, while at work."

    On April 29, 1918, the All-Russia Central Executive Committee adopted a resolution fully endorsing the basic propositions set forth in this report and instructed its Presidium to recast them as theses representing the principal tasks of the Soviet government. We are thus reiterating what was approved two years ago in an official resolution of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee! And we are now being dragged back on a matter that was decided long ago, a matter which the All-Russia Central Executive Committee endorsed and explained, namely, that Soviet socialist democracy and individual management and dictatorship are in no way contradictory, and that the will of a class may sometimes be carried out by a dictator, who sometimes does more alone and is frequently more necessary. At any rate, the attitude towards the principles of corporate management and individual management was not only explained long ago, but was even endorsed by the All-Russia Central Executive

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Committee. In this connection our Congress is an illustration of the sad truth that instead of advancing from the explanation of questions of principle to concrete questions, we are advancing backward. Unless we get away from this mistake we shall never solve the economic problem.

    I should also like to say a few words about certain remarks of Comrade Rykov's. He asserts that the Council of People's Commissars is putting obstacles in the way of the amalgamation of the commissariats running the economy. And when Comrade Rykov is told that he wants to swallow up Comrade Tsyurupa, he replies, "I don't care if it is Tsyurupa that swallows me up, as long as the economic commissariats are amalgamated." I know where this leads, and I must say that the attempt of the Supreme Economic Council to form a sort of separate bloc of the economic commissariats, separate from the Council of Defence and the Council of People's Commissars, did not pass unnoticed by the Central Committee, and met with disfavour. The Council of Defence has now been renamed the Council of Labour and Defence. You want to separate yourselves from the Commissariat of the Army, which is giving its best forces to the war and is an institution without which you cannot even carry out labour conscription. And we cannot carry out labour conscription without the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs either. Take the post office; we cannot send a letter without the Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs. Take the People's Commissariat of Health. How will you conduct the economy if seventy per cent are down with typhus? What it amounts to is that every matter must be co-ordinated and referred to an economic commissariat. Is not such a plan absolutely absurd? Comrade Rykov had no serious argument. That is why it was opposed and the Central Committee did not support it.

    Further, Comrade Rykov joked about a bloc with Comrade Holtzmann, which Comrade Trotsky seems to be forming. I should like to say a few words on this. A bloc is always needed between Party groups that are in the right. That should always be regarded as an essential condition for a correct policy. If Comrade Holtzmann, whom, I regret to say, I know very little, but of whom I have heard as a representative of a certain trend among the metalworkers, a trend that

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particularly insists on sensible methods -- which I stress in my theses, too -- if it, is on these grounds that he insists on individual management, that, of course, can only be extremely useful. A bloc with this trend would be an exceedingly good thing. If the representation of the trade unions on the Central Committee is to be increased, it would be useful to have on it representatives of this trend too -- though it may be wrong on certain points, it is at least original and has a definite shade of opinion of its own -- side by side with the extremist champions of corporate management who are battling in the name of democracy but who are mistaken. Let them both be represented on the Central Committee -- and you will have a bloc. Let the Central Committee be so constituted that, with the help of a bloc, a field of operation may be found that functions all the year round, and not only during the week a Party Congress is held. We have always rejected the principle of regional representation, because it leads to a lot of regional cliquism. When it is a question of closer fusion with the trade unions, of being alive to every shade of opinion in the trade unions, of maintaining contacts -- it is essential for the Central Committee to be constituted in such a way as to have a transmission belt to the broad masses of the trade unions (we have 600,000 Party members and 3,000,000 trade union members) to connect the Central Committee simultaneously with the united will of the 600,000 Party members and the 3,000,000 trade union members. We cannot govern without such a transmission belt. The more we won back of Siberia, the Kuban area and the Ukraine, with their peasant population, the more difficult the problem became, and the more laboriously the machine revolved, because in Siberia the proletariat is numerically small, and it is weaker in the Ukraine too. But we know that the Donets Basin and Nikolayev workers have bluntly refused to defend the semi-demagogic corporate principle into which Comrade Sapronov has lapsed. There can be no question but that the proletarian element in the Ukraine differs from the proletarian element in Petrograd, Moscow and Ivanovo Voznesensk -- not because it is no good, but for purely historical reasons. They did not have occasion to become, so steeled by hunger, cold and strife as the proletarians of Moscow and Petrograd. We therefore need such a bond with the trade

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unions, such a form of organisation of the Central Committee, as would enable it to know every shade of opinion, not only among the 600,000 Party members, but also among the 3,000,000 trade union members, so that it may be able at any moment to lead them all as one man! Such an organisation is essential. That is the basic factor, the political factor without which the dictatorship of the proletariat will not be a dictatorship. If we are to have a bloc, let it be a real bloc! We should not be afraid of it, but should welcome it and practise it more vigorously and more extensively right in the central institutions of the Party.

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    It was only last night and today that I have had an opportunity of partially acquainting myself with the two resolutions. I think that the resolution of the minority of the commission is the more correct. Comrade Milyutin attacked it with a great battery of terrifying words: he discovered half measures in it, even quarter-measures; he accused it of opportunism. But it seems to me that the devil is not as black as he is painted. If you get down to the root of the matter you will see that Comrade Milyutin, who tried to give the matter a basis in principle, showed by his own arguments that the resolution he advocated was incorrect and unsuitable specifically from the standpoint of practice and of Marxism. It is incorrect for the following reasons; Milyutin stated that his resolution, the resolution of the majority of the commission, advocated fusion with the volost executive committees, subordination to the volost executive committees, and that is why he sees in his resolution directness and decisiveness as compared with the insufficiently revolutionary character of the minority resolution. During the long course of our revolutionary campaign we have seen that whenever we made proper preparations for our revolutionary actions they were crowned with success; but that when they were merely imbued with revolutionary fervour they ended in failure.

    What does the resolution of the minority of the commission say? The resolution of the minority says: direct your attention to intensifying communist work in the consumers' societies and to securing a majority within them; first make

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ready the organs to which you want to hand them over, then you can hand them over. Compare this with the line pursued by Milyutin. He says: the co-operatives are no good, therefore hand them over to the volost executive committees. But have you a communist basis in the co-operatives you want to hand over? The essence of the matter -- preparation -- is ignored; only the ultimate slogan is given. If this communist work has been done, and organs have been set up to take them over and guide them, the transfer is quite natural, and there is no need to proclaim it at a Party congress. But have you not been threatening the peasants enough? Has not the Supreme Economic Council shaken its fist enough at the peasants and the co-operatives in the matter of the flax procurement? If you recall the practical experience of our work in the localities and in the Council of People's Commissars, you will admit that this is a wrong attitude to take, and that the right resolution is the one which declares that the work of communist education and the training of executives are necessary, for otherwise the transfer will be impossible.

    The second question of cardinal importance is that of contacts with the consumers' co-operatives. Here Comrade Milyutin says something utterly inconsistent. If the consumers' co-operatives are not fulfilling all their assignments -- which is what we have been saying for two years in a number of decrees directed against the kulaks -- it must be remembered that government measures against the kulaks can also be applied against the co-operative societies. And this is being done in full. The most important thing at the moment is to increase production and the quantity of goods. If the consumers' co-operatives do not get this done, they will be punished for it. But if, owing to their connection with the producers' co-operatives, they give even a small increase of products, we must welcome it and foster the initiative. If the consumers' co-operatives, in spite of their closer, intimate local connections with production, do not show an increase, it will mean that they have not fulfilled the direct assignment of the Soviet government. If there are even two or three energetic comrades in a district who are prepared to combat the kulaks and the bourgeoisie, victory is assured. In what way was Comrade Chuchin's initiative thwarted? He did not cite a single instance. But the idea

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    It was only last night and today that I have had an opportunity of partially acquainting myself with the two resolutions. I think that the resolution of the minority of the commission is the more correct. Comrade Milyutin attacked it with a great battery of terrifying words: he discovered half measures in it, even quarter-measures; he accused it of opportunism. But it seems to me that the devil is not as black as he is painted. If you get down to the root of the matter you will see that Comrade Milyutin, who tried to give the matter a basis in principle, showed by his own arguments that the resolution he advocated was incorrect and unsuitable specifically from the standpoint of practice and of Marxism. It is incorrect for the following reasons; Milyutin stated that his resolution, the resolution of the majority of the commission, advocated fusion with the volost executive committees, subordination to the volost executive committees, and that is why he sees in his resolution directness and decisiveness as compared with the insufficiently revolutionary character of the minority resolution. During the long course of our revolutionary campaign we have seen that whenever we made proper preparations for our revolutionary actions they were crowned with success; but that when they were merely imbued with revolutionary fervour they ended in failure.

    What does the resolution of the minority of the commission say? The resolution of the minority says: direct your attention to intensifying communist work in the consumers' societies and to securing a majority within them; first make

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ready the organs to which you want to hand them over, then you can hand them over. Compare this with the line pursued by Milyutin. He says: the co-operatives are no good, therefore hand them over to the volost executive committees. But have you a communist basis in the co-operatives you want to hand over? The essence of the matter -- preparation -- is ignored; only the ultimate slogan is given. If this communist work has been done, and organs have been set up to take them over and guide them, the transfer is quite natural, and there is no need to proclaim it at a Party congress. But have you not been threatening the peasants enough? Has not the Supreme Economic Council shaken its fist enough at the peasants and the co-operatives in the matter of the flax procurement? If you recall the practical experience of our work in the localities and in the Council of People's Commissars, you will admit that this is a wrong attitude to take, and that the right resolution is the one which declares that the work of communist education and the training of executives are necessary, for otherwise the transfer will be impossible.

    The second question of cardinal importance is that of contacts with the consumers' co-operatives. Here Comrade Milyutin says something utterly inconsistent. If the consumers' co-operatives are not fulfilling all their assignments -- which is what we have been saying for two years in a number of decrees directed against the kulaks -- it must be remembered that government measures against the kulaks can also be applied against the co-operative societies. And this is being done in full. The most important thing at the moment is to increase production and the quantity of goods. If the consumers' co-operatives do not get this done, they will be punished for it. But if, owing to their connection with the producers' co-operatives, they give even a small increase of products, we must welcome it and foster the initiative. If the consumers' co-operatives, in spite of their closer, intimate local connections with production, do not show an increase, it will mean that they have not fulfilled the direct assignment of the Soviet government. If there are even two or three energetic comrades in a district who are prepared to combat the kulaks and the bourgeoisie, victory is assured. In what way was Comrade Chuchin's initiative thwarted? He did not cite a single instance. But the idea

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organ and test it in action, check whether production is increasing -- that is what the resolution of the minority says. First of all create a basis, and then -- then we shall see. What has to be done will follow from this of itself. We have enough decrees saying that counter-revolutionaries should be handed over to the Cheka, and if there is no Cheka, to the Revolutionary Committee. We need less of this fist-shaking. We must adopt the resolution of the minority, which lays down a basic line of policy.

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  [138] The Ninth Party Congress was held in Moscow from March 29 to April 5, 1920. The Congress opened in the Bolshoi Theatre with an introductory speech by Lenin. The following meetings of the Congress took place in one of the buildings of the Kremlin. Present at the Congress were 715 delegates, of whom 553 had the right to vote and 162 were delegates with voice but no vote; they represented 611,973 Party members. At the Congress there were delegates from the Party organisations of Central Russia, the Ukraine, Urals Siberia and of other districts recently liberated by the Red Army. Many delegates came to the Congress straight from the front.
    The Congress adopted the following agenda: (1) Report of the Central Committee; (2) Immediate tasks of economic development; (3) Trade union movement; (4) Organisational questions; (5) Tasks of the Communist International, (6) Attitude to the co-operatives; (7) Transition to the militia system; (8) Election to the Central Committee, (9) Other business.
    Lenin guided the work of the Congress. He delivered the report on the political work of the Central Committee and closed the debate on the report. He also spoke on economic development and on co-

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operation, and made the speech on the closing of the Congress. He submitted a proposal on the list of candidates for membership to the C.C.
    In its resolution "The Immediate Tasks of Economic Construction" the Congress pointed out that "the basic condition of economic rehabilitation of the country is steady implementation of the single economic plan for the coming historical epoch".
    The Ninth Congress directives were taken as the basis for a plan by the State Commission for the Electrification of Russia (GOELRO); the final draft of which was approved in December 1920 by the All-Russia Congress of Soviets. It was the first long-term scientific plan in history for the economic development of a vast country; it was calculated to create the production and technical basis of socialism.
    Special attention was devoted to the organisation of production management. The resolution on the question pointed out the necessity of competent, firm and energetic one-man management.
    The Congress emphasised the importance of utilising the achievements of science, technology and culture in the interests of socialist economy. The Congress put forward the task of enlisting specialists into the sphere of production and of establishing the atmosphere of comradely co-operation between workers and specialists.
    The anti-Party group of Democratic Centralists (Sapronov, Osinsky, V. Smirnov and others) opposed the Party line on economic development. Using phrases about democratic centralism, this group spoke against the use of specialists, against centralised state administration, against one-man management and the personal responsibility of managers of enterprise's; they insisted on unlimited corporate management. That group was supported at the Congress by Rykov, Tomsky, Milyutin, and Lomov, who also spoke against the principle of one-man management and claimed that corporate management was the only principle of management of industry from the Supreme Economic Council down to the management of a single factory.
    The Congress resolutely denounced the democratic centralism group and rejected their anti-Party proposals.
    Another important question discussed at the Congress was that of trade unions in connection with the adaptation of their work for economic tasks. The Congress severely criticised anarcho-syndicalist elements (Shlyapnikov, Lozovsky, Tomsky, Lutovinov), who advocated the "independence" of trade unions and counterposed them to the Communist Party and the Soviet power. Guided by Lenin's teaching the Congress pointed out that the trade unions, as school of communism, should organise the proletarian masses, train them in the work of management, raise their cultural and political level to the standards of communism, and prepare them for the role of active builders of communism.
    At its closed meeting on April 4, the Congress elected a new Central Committee of 19 members and 12 alternate members. A .A. Andreyev, F. E. Dzerzhinsky, M. I. Kalinin, V. I. Lenin, Y. E. Rudzutak, F. A. Sergeyev (Artyom) were among the newly elected C.C. members.    [p. 439]

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  ^[139] Lenin refers to the savage terror resorted to by the Finnish bourgeoisie to suppress the proletarian revolution in 1918. Over 90,000 people were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps, nearly 18,000 were executed and nearly as many died of hunger or tortures. The number of victims of White Terror ten times exceeded the number of Finnish workers killed in the battles for the revolution.    [p. 449]

  ^[140] After the November revolution of 1918 in Germany the Right-wing leaders of German Social-Democracy exerted every effort to save the capitalist system. The Right Social-Democrats and the Independents seized the majority of seats in the Arbeiterräte which had sprung up during the revolution, and at their First All-Germany Congress, held December 16-21, 1918, in Berlin, succeeded in carrying through a resolution on handing over power to a government representing the interests of the bourgeoisie and on convening a Constituent Assembly. This actually meant the end of the Arbeiterräte. In January 1919 counter-revolutionary detachments set up by the War Minister Noske, Right Social-Democrat, brutally suppressed the revolutionary action of the Berlin proletariat. On January 15, armed detachments arrested and brutally murdered the leaders of the German working class, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Having crushed the January uprising and destroyed the best leaders of the German working class, the German bourgeoisie ensured the victory of the bourgeois parties during the elections to the Constituent Assembly on January 19, 1919.    [p. 449]

  ^[141] The rout of the foreign interventionists and whiteguards in 1919 and the consolidation of Soviet Russia's position in the world compelled the bourgeois rulers of Latvia to seek a peace treaty with the R.S F.S.R. On March 25, 1920, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Latvia addressed a proposal to the Soviet Government to start peace negotiations. The peace conference of R.S.F.S.R. and Latvian representatives opened on April 16 in Moscow. The peace treaty was signed in Riga on August 11.    [p. 451]

  ^[142] By the beginning of 1920 Soviet Russia's position at home and abroad had been consolidated, and the ruling circles of Finland had to conclude a peace treaty with the R.S.F.S.R. On March 25 the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland proposed to the Soviet Government to demarcate the frontier that was tantamount to starting negotiations on peace. The peace treaty between the R.S.F.S.R. and Finland was signed on October 14, 1920 in the town of Yuryev (now Tartu). It confirmed the independence and sovereignty of Finland granted her by the Soviet Government in 1917.    [p. 451]

  ^[143] The Polish Government's agreement to start negotiations was merely a manoeuvre to cover war preparations against the Soviet Republic. In reply to the Soviet Government's many proposals (De-

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cember 22, 1919, January 28, February 2, March 6 1920), the Polish Government gave its consent only on March 2, 1920. But the Polish reactionaries sabotaged the negotiations and started hostilities on April 25, 1920. In the autumn of 1920, however, as a result of the Red Army's offensive the Polish Government had to agree to sign a peace treaty. The Treaty on an Armistice and Preliminary Peace Terms was signed in Riga on October 12, and the Peace Treaty between the R.S.F.S.R. and the Ukrainian S.S.R. on the one side and Poland on the other was signed in Riga on March 18, 1921.    [p. 451]

  ^[144] Lenin refers to S. I. Gusev's pamphlet "Immediate Problems of Economic Development (On C.C., R.C.P.[B.] Theses. Materials for the Ninth Party Congress, Saratov, 1920)". The paragraph referred to by Lenin was included in the draft resolution with slight alterations.
    In Gusev's pamphlet this point is worded as follows: "All enterprises which are not subsidiary to the chief economic task of the period should be developed to the extent that they do not interfere with the fulfilment of the main task. Subsidiary enterprises should be developed as required by the main task. In view of this a single economic plan should not be the sum total of production programmes worked out by individual industries and local economic councils on the basis of orders received from central and local organisations, but, on the contrary, such a plan should envisage the volume of production for each industry.    [p. 461]

  ^[145] Lenin refers to the meeting of the group of the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions on March 15, 1920, at which Tomsky's theses on the "Tasks of the Trade Unions" were discussed. Lenin sharply criticised the theses, particularly article 7 on corporate management as the main method. But the All-Russia C.C.T.U. group took up an incorrect stand, and its majority voted for Tomsky's theses.    [p. 474]

  ^[146] The Decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On Centralisation of Management, Protection of Roads and Raising Their Traffic Capacity", published in Izvestia No. 59, March 28, 1918, was demagogically called the "Decree on Dictatorship" by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries.    [p. 475]

  ^[147] The Ninth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) set up a special committee to discuss the co-operative movement. At its meeting of April 2, 1920, the committee examined several variants of the theses on the co-operatives submitted for discussion at the Congress. The committee took as the basis the theses by V. P. Milyutin, who proposed to subordinate co-operatives to the state. After Lenin's speech against Milyutin's theses, the Congress by a majority vote passed a resolution which Lenin had supported.    [p. 480]