1. SPEECH AT A PLENARY MEETING OF THE MOSCOW SOVIET OF WORKERS' AND PEASANTS' DEPUTIES.1
[...]
Let me now turn from foreign policy to home affairs. Unfortunately I have been unable to hear the whole of Comrade Bryukhanov's report. He has given you the facts in detail and I need not go over them again.
I want to deal with the main thing which may possibly show us the causes of our terrible crisis. We shall have to set ourselves a task and find a way to solve it. We have found a way but we are not yet strong enough to follow it with the persistence and regularity demanded by our difficult post-war circumstances.
We are poverty-stricken in every respect and yet we are no more destitute than the workers of Vienna. They and their children are starving and dying without hope, but we have hope. They are dying crushed by capitalism; they have to endure sacrifices in a manner unlike ours: we make sacrifices for our declared war against the whole capitalist world. That is the difference between their stance and the stance of the workers of Petrograd and Moscow.
Presently in the spring our hardships due to the food shortage have once again worsened, following some improvement earlier on. The fact is we miscalculated. When the plan for the appropriation of the food surplus was drawn up we thought we could excel it. The people had gone hungry for so long that their lot had to be improved at all costs; it was essential not only to help but to improve their lot. We failed to see that by doing so then, we would be hard-pressed later on. This mistake is the reason why we face a food crisis now.
We made the same mistake during the Polish war and in the supply of fuel. The procurement of food and fuel (coal, oil, firewood) are different types of work but in all three we made identical mistakes. During the severest hardships we overestimated our reserves and did not take stock adequately. We failed to see that we were depleting our reserves rashly, we failed to estimate them and we put nothing by for a rainy day. Generally speaking, this is a good rule of thumb which every peasant follows in his simple lifestyle. But there we were, acting on a nation-wide scale as if we gave no thought to the morrow as long as we had enough for today, so that when we were finally faced with and brought up short by this question of reserves we were quite unable to put anything by for a rainy day.
[...]
We have accepted the policy of concessions decisively. You know that we had many arguments with the peasants and the workers about this, you know the workers said, "Have we gotten rid of our bourgeoisie only to let the foreigners in?" We explained to them that we cannot cross over from scarcity to abundance instantly and that in order to start, to obtain the quantities of grain and textiles we need, we must make every sacrifice. Let capitalists profit from their greed if we can better the livelihood of our workers and peasants.
It's not easy to get this concession business going. We published a decree about it in November,2 but to date not a single concession has been granted.
Of course this is the fault of the influential whiteguard and Menshevik press. Russian newspapers are published now in every country and in every one of them the Mensheviks are clamouring against concessions, saying that things in Moscow are not going well, that Soviet power is about to collapse and that the capitalists ought not to trust the Bolsheviks or have anything to do with them.
We shall not quit the fight: we have defeated the capitalists but we have not smashed them. They have now moved on to Warsaw, which used to be the centre of struggle against the Russian autocracy and is now the rallying point of the whiteguards against Soviet Russia. We shall fight them everywhere on the foreign and home fronts.
I have here a telegram from Comrade Zinoviev in Petrograd saying that, in connection with the arrests made there, a leaflet found on one of those detained makes it clear that he is a spy of the foreign capitalists. There is another leaflet entitled, To the Faithful, which is also counter-revolutionary in content. Furthermore Comrade Zinoviev informs us that Menshevik leaflets put up in Petrograd call for strikes. Over here in Moscow this ballooned into a rumour about some kind of demonstration. In actual fact one Communist was killed by an agent provocateur, and he is the only victim of these unhappy days.
When Denikin was at Orel, the whiteguard papers said he was advancing at almost 100 versts per hour. These papers will not surprise us. We take a sober view of things. We must rally closer, comrades. Otherwise what are we to do? Try another Kerensky or Kolchak "coalition" government? Kolchak, let us say, is no longer with us, but another might take his place. There are any number of Russian generals, quite enough for a large army. We must speak frankly and have no fear of the newspapers that are sold in all of the world's cities. These are all trifles, and we shall not keep silent about our difficulties, but we shall say this, comrades: we are carrying on this difficult and bloody struggle, and if they cannot presently attack us with guns, they do with lies and slander, magnifying every case of need and poverty in order to help our enemies.
I repeat, we have experienced all this and survived. We have lived through far-greater difficulties. We are acquainted with our enemy quite well and we shall defeat him this spring. We shall defeat him with more fruitful toil and with more careful calculations.
(Applause).
The majority on the Central Committee and I myself took the view that it was essential to grant these concessions, and we shall ask you to back it up with your authority. It is vital to have such an alliance with the state trusts of the advanced countries because our economic crisis is so deep that on our own we cannot rehabilitate our ruined economy without machinery and technical aid from abroad. Getting the equipment out here is not enough.
[...]
Negotiations have already started with some of the largest world trusts. Naturally, for their part, they are not simply doing us a good turn, they are in it exclusively for the fantastic profits. Modern capitalism ... is a robber baron, a ring. It is not the former capitalism of pre-war days. Because it currently runs the global market its profit margins run to hundreds percent. Of course this will exact a high toll on us, but there is no other way out because the world revolution is marking time. There is no other way for us to raise our technology to modern standards.
2. REPORT ON THE SUBSTITUTION OF A TAX IN KIND FOR THE SURPLUS GRAIN APPROPRIATION SYSTEM. TENTH PARTY CONGRESS.1
[...]
Can we satisfy this middle peasantry with its economic peculiarities and roots? Any Communist who thought that the economic base, the roots, of small farming could be reshaped in three years' time was a dreamer of course. We need not conceal the fact that there were a good many such dreamers among us. Nor is there anything particularly bad in this. How could one start a socialist revolution in a country like ours without dreamers?
Practice has of course shown the tremendous role that all kinds of experiments and undertakings can play in the sphere of collective agriculture. But it also exposed cases of negative outcomes, as when people—with the best intentions and wishes—went to the countryside to set up communes without knowing how to run them for lack of experience. The story of those collective farms merely provided examples of how not to run farms. The peasants roundabout either laughed or jeered.
[...]
The items on the agenda were: 1) Report of the Central Committee; 2) Report of the Control Commission; 3) The trade unions' economic role; 4) The Socialist Republic in a capitalist encirclement, foreign trade, concessions, etc.; 5) Food supply, surplus-food appropriation, the tax in kind and the fuel crisis; 6) Problems of Party organization; 7) The Party's current tasks in regard to the nationalities; 8) Reorganization of the Army and the militia question; 9) The Chief Administration for Political Education and the Party's propaganda and agitation work; 10) Report by the representative of the Russian Communist Party in the Comintern, and its current tasks; 11) Report of the representatives of the Russian Communist Party in the International Trade Union Council; 12) Elections to the Central Committee, the Control Commission and the Auditing Commission.
Lenin guided the entire work of the Congress. He delivered the opening and closing addresses and gave reports on the political activity of the Central Committee, the substitution of a tax in kind for the surplus appropriation system, Party unity and the anarcho-syndicalist deviation, the trade unions and the fuel crisis. He drafted the main resolutions. He gave a profound theoretical and political substantiation of the need to move from War Communism to the New Economic Policy (NEP).
The Congress paid special attention to Party unity. Lenin exposed and sharply criticized the anti-Marxist views of the opposition groups. The resolution, "On Party Unity," adopted on Lenin's motion ordered the immediate dissolution of all factions and groups tending to disrupt Party unity. The Congress authorized the Central Committee to apply in extremis the expulsion of Central Committee members who engaged in factional activity from the Party [later exploited by J. V. Stalin to crush his political opponents systematically].
The Congress also adopted Lenin's draft resolution, "On the Syndicalist and Anarchist Deviation in our Party," which exposed the views of the Workers' Opposition as an expression of petty-bourgeois, anarchist vacillations [implying the dominion of the Party over the working class]. The propaganda of anarcho-syndicalist ideas was found to be incompatible with membership in the Party. With the country engrossed in peaceful socialist construction the Congress rejected the plea for broader democracy inside the Party.
The Congress summed up the discussion on the role of the trade unions in economic development, condemned the ideas of the Trotskyites, the Workers' Opposition, the Democratic Centralism group and other opportunist trends [which viewed the trade unions as the sole genuine representatives of the will of the working class] and approved Lenin's platform by an overwhelming majority. Lenin's platform labelled the trade unions a school of communism [under the thumb of the Communist Party] and suggested measures to promote trade-union democracy [in order to infiltrate the unions with Communist Party members].
A commission headed by Lenin worked out the decisions of the Congress on the nationalities policy: to eliminate the disadvantage of the peoples oppressed in tsarist Russia and draw them into socialist construction. The Congress condemned the anti-Party deviations on the nationalities question [no self-determination, if you please], Great-Russian chauvinism and local nationalism which constituted a grave danger to communism and to proletarian internationalism [i.e., a grave danger to the preeminence of the Russian Communist Party].
Among the members elected to the 25-man Central Committee were: V. I. Lenin, Artyom (F. A. Sergeyev), F. E. Dzerzhinsky, M. I. Kalinin, G. K. Orjonikidze, M. V. Frunze, Y. E. Rudzutak, J. V. Stalin and Y. M. Yaroslavsky. Among the alternate members were S. M. Kirov, V. V. Kuibyshev and V. Y. Chubar.
The decisions of the Tenth Party Congress charted the transition from capitalism to socialism with methods of socialist construction in the new environment. The decisions of the Congress stressed the importance of greater unity between workers and peasants and of a stronger Party leadership in the construction of socialism.
3. REPORT ON CONCESSIONS AT A MEETING OF THE COMMUNIST GROUP OF THE ALL-RUSSIA CENTRAL COUNCIL OF TRADE UNIONS.1
Comrades, the question of concessions has rather unexpectedly brought out some differences among us. The question seemed to be finally settled in principle as long ago as the autumn of last year. When the Council of People's Commissars issued its concessions decree on November 23, 1920, there was no sign of any protest or disagreement in Party circles, at any rate among the responsible workers.
You are of course aware that the Party Congress had to make a special decision confirming the concessions decree and enlarging it to Baku and Grozny specifically. This was done at the Party Congress to obviate any vacillation in the Central Committee. Some Baku comrades resented the ideas about Baku having concessions or about the desirability of leasing out a big chunk of the oilfields. Their arguments were highly varied and ranged from references to their own "exploration" abilities which did not require the help of foreigners to assertions that the veterans who had spent a lifetime fighting the capitalists refuse to be saddled with their yoke anew, etc.
I am not going to say offhand to what extent these arguments were rooted on general principles, on Baku "patriotism" or on localism. Let me say for my part that I opposed their stance most vigorously in the conviction that if we do not institute a policy of concessions to attract foreign capital we can hardly concoct any serious measures to improve our economy. We cannot seriously entertain the prospect of an immediate improvement of the economy without a policy of concessions, without discarding our prejudices, our local patriotism, our trade patriotism and to some extent the notion that we can "explore" on our own. We must accept inconveniences, hardships and sacrifices. We must stand ready to alter our habits, and possibly our addictions, for the sake of markedly improving the status of our key industries. This must be done at all costs.
The Party Congress concentrated on the policy regarding peasants and the tax in kind which owns in general a high legislative priority and is central to the Party's political efforts in particular. In the context of both these issues we became aware of our inability to boost large-scale industry production fast enough to meet peasants' demands without reverting to unrestricted trade and freed production. These are the two crutches we must now use to walk forward. Otherwise we won't be able to keep pace with events, as anyone in his right mind can gauge.
After all, the situation is worsening if only because log driving has been hampered this spring by various factors, chiefly the weather. There is a looming fuel crisis. The spring also holds out the threat of another crop failure, again because of the weather, which may cause a fodder shortage and in turn cramp the supply of fuel. If on top of all this we happen to get a drought the brewing crisis may be truly exceptional.
We must understand that under these conditions what the Programme says, chiefly about the great need to increase the food supply, is not intended to incite admiration or a show of great love toward our various resolutions (which Communists have been doing with great zeal) but as a call to increase the provision of food at any cost. That is not something we can do without foreign capital. This should be plain to everyone who takes a realistic view of things. That's why the issue of concessions was important enough to go to the Party Congress.
After a short debate the Council of People's Commissars adopted the basic principles of concessions agreements.2 I shall now read them and underscore those which are of special importance or have given rise to disagreements. We cannot seriously entertain the idea of economic development unless all members of the Party, especially the leaders of the trade union movement, that is, of the organized masses of the proletariat—its organized majority—understand the present situation and draw the appropriate conclusions.
I shall read out the basic principles of the concession agreement one by one, as they were adopted by the Council of People's Commissars.
Let me add that we have not yet concluded a single concession agreement. We have already given expression to our disagreements of principle (we are masters at that sort of thing) but we have not yet secured one concession. I suppose this will make some people happy, which is unfortunate, because if we fail to attract capital to our concessions we shall merely be showing that we are poor businessmen. But in the event, of course, the Communists can always have a field day exhausting our stocks of paper with the redacting of resolutions.
Here is Point One:
"1. The concessionaire shall improve the condition of the workers employed at the concession enterprises (as compared with that of other workers employed at similar enterprises in the area) up to the average standard abroad."
[...]
"2. Account shall be taken of the lower productivity of the Russian worker and provision made for the possibility of a revision of the Russian worker's rate of labour productivity, depending on the improvement of his living conditions."
[...]
"3. It shall be the duty of the concessionaire to supply the workers employed at the concession enterprises with the necessary means of subsistence from abroad, selling them to the workers at no higher than cost price plus a certain percentage for overhead expenses."
[...]
"4. It shall also be the duty of the concessionaire, in the event of a request on the part of the R.S.F.S.R. [Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic] Government, to import another 50-100% over and above the supplies he brings in for the workers employed at the concession enterprises, handing it over to the R.S.F.S.R. Government in return for a payment of similar size (cost plus a certain percentage for overhead expenses). The R.S.F.S.R. Government shall have the right to meet this payment with a part of the product extracted by the concessionaire (that is, to deduct it from its own share)."
[...]
"5. It shall be the duty of the concessionaire to abide by the laws of the R.S.F.S.R., in particular, those relating to working conditions, terms of payment, etc.; and enter into agreements with the trade unions (in the event of the concessionaire's demand we are prepared to add that under such agreements both parties shall be bound by the average norm of American or West-European workers)."
[...]
"6. It shall be the duty of the concessionaire to observe strictly the scientific and technical regulations in conformity with Russian and foreign legislation (details to be elaborated for each agreement)."
[...]
"7. A rule similar to that set forth in Point Four shall also apply to the equipment imported by the concessionaire from abroad."
[...]
"8. A special clause in each agreement shall regulate the question of payment to the workers employed at the concession enterprises, of wages in foreign currency, special coupons, Soviet currency, etc."
[...]
"9. The concessionaire shall be free to make his own terms of employment, living conditions and remuneration with foreign skilled workers and employees. The trade unions shall not have the right to demand application of Russian pay rates or of Russian rules of employment to that category of workers."
[...]
"10. The concessionaire may, by agreement with the government organs of the R.S.F.S.R., be granted the right to invite highly skilled specialists from among Russian citizens, the terms of employment being agreed with central government bodies in each case."
[...]
All these points have been confirmed by the Council of People's Commissars, and I hope they give you a clear picture of the concessions policy we intend to conduct.
Each concession will undoubtedly constitute a new kind of war (an economic one); the fight on another plane. This calls for adaptation in line with the Party Congress. If we are to reach our goal we must have a respite and we must be prepared to make sacrifices and endure hardships.
Our goal is to make use of the capitalist greed for profit and of the rivalry between trusts in the capitalist encirclement to create the conditions for survival of the socialist republic, a republic that cannot exist without ties to the rest of the world and which must adjust its policy to the framework of capitalist relations under the present circumstances.
There is the question of the actual terms. For the oil agreements these are as follows: from a quarter to a third of the Grozny and Baku oilfields we will appropriate 30 to 40% of the total volume of oil extracted.
We have inserted a commitment to increase the output within a certain period to, say, 100 million barrels, and another commitment to extend the oil pipeline between Grozny and Petrovsk to Moscow. Whether we shall have to make extra payments is to be stipulated in each agreement. But we should be quite clear about the type of agreement concluded under these conditions. The important thing from the trade union perspective is for the Party leadership to vet the specific items of this policy and to go about the task of securing concessions at any cost in pursuance of the decisions made by the Party Congress and in the context of the tasks which face the socialist system in the capitalist encirclement.
Every concession will be a gain and an immediate improvement in the living standard of a section of the workers and peasants. The latter will also stand to gain because each concession will entail the production of additional goods which we cannot produce ourselves but will exchange for rather than use a tax.
This is a very difficult operation especially for the organs of Soviet power. With this as a pivotal point we must secure concessions and override prejudices, inertia, ingrained habits and the contradiction that some workers will earn higher wages than others.
We could come up with any number of excuses, objections and inconveniences to frustrate a tangible improvement in our economy. That's what foreign capitalists are really banking on.
I do not know of any other issue that has drawn so many objections from the most intelligent writers in the Russian whiteguard press. The men of the Kronstadt events proved to be head and shoulders above Martov and Chernov. The former are very well aware that if we fail to improve the standard of living of our workers and peasants because of our prejudices we shall multiply our difficulties and altogether undermine the prestige of Soviet power.
You know we must have that improvement at all costs. We shall not grudge the foreign capitalist even a 2,000% profit if we improve the standard of living for the workers and peasants. It is imperative that we do it.
4. SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE THIRD ALL-RUSSIA FOOD CONFERENCE.1
[...]
Food supply workers cannot go on thinking that their business just boils down to collecting so many millions of poods and distributing them in certain amounts fixed by the present ration cards, say, and that's it.
The immediate thing is to integrate the activity of all the People's Commissariats related to the economy. The conscientious food supply worker must not only be interested in food supply work but also in all economic activity. More is expected of him now. He cannot go on being just a food supply worker. He must be an economist appraising every step in the light of the economic work of all the People's Commissariats and their results.
It's wrong to think of food distribution as just a matter of fairness.2 We must bear in mind that it is a method, an instrument and a means of increasing output. State food supplies must be given only to those employees who are really needed on condition that their productivity rises to the utmost. And if the distribution of food is to be used as a political instrument, then it must be used to reduce the number of those who are not absolutely needed and to encourage those who actually are.3 If the distribution of food is a political instrument for restoring our industry, then we must maintain the industrial enterprises that are really needed and forsake those that are not, and so economize on fuel and food. For a number of years we have been managing these things very badly.4 This must be rectified now.
Thus you see that the closer you delve into the matter the broader you will find are the tasks confronting your food conference. However I hope that no one will be intimidated by their complexity and that, on the contrary, the unusual nature of your tasks as Soviet and Party workers will stimulate you to fresh efforts to get them done.
Past history of the work of other People's Commissariats clearly proves the necessity of combining Soviet and Party work. Food supply workers carried out a number of urgent tasks under extremely difficult conditions; and they did it successfully because the Soviet and Party bodies resorted to unconventional methods in those cases, urgent measures and shock-work campaigns.5 I repeat that the main subject of your food conference is the fundamental basis of our economic policy.6 It must engage all your attention.
In conclusion allow me to express the conviction that our joint efforts in the direction we have taken will lay a firm foundation for a successful economic policy that will create an alliance between the working class and the peasantry, the two main classes on which Soviet power rests, the economic alliance that alone can guarantee the success of all our work of socialist construction.
(Stormy applause).
5. APPEAL TO THE INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAT.1
Several gubernias in Russia have been hit by a famine whose proportions are apparently only slightly less than those of the 1891 calamity.
It is the painful aftermath of Russia's backwardness and of seven years of war (first the imperialist, then the Civil War) forced upon workers and peasants by the landowners and capitalists of all countries.
We need help. The Soviet Republic of workers and peasants expects this help from the working people, from the industrial workers and from the small farmers.
The mass of the former and the latter are themselves oppressed by capitalism and imperialism everywhere, but we are convinced that they will respond to our appeal despite their own hardships caused by unemployment and the rising cost of living.
Those who have suffered from capitalist oppression all their lives will understand the reality of the workers and peasants of Russia, they will grasp or sense, guided by the instinct of working and exploited people, the urgency of helping the Soviet Republic, the first one to undertake the hard but gratifying task of overthrowing capitalism.
That is why the capitalists of all countries are avenging themselves on the Soviet Republic; that's why they are planning a fresh campaign of military intervention and counter-revolutionary conspiracies against it.
All the greater, we trust, will in all countries be the vigour and self-sacrifice of the workers and small labouring farmers who will help us.
N. Lenin
August 2, 1921
6. APPEAL TO THE PEASANTS OF THE UKRAINE.
This year the Ukraine west of the Dnieper has had an excellent harvest. The workers and peasants in the famine-stricken Volga region who are now suffering hardships only a little less severe than the dreadful calamity of 1891 look to Ukrainian farmers for help. Help must come quickly. Help must be abundant. No farmer must refrain from sharing his surplus with the starving Volga peasants who have no seed to sow their fields with.
Let every uyezd that is well supplied with grain send two or three peasant delegates, say, to the Volga to deliver grain and see for themselves the terrible suffering, want and starvation; and to tell their fellow-countrymen upon their return home how urgently further help is needed.
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, V. Ulyanov (Lenin)
August 2, 1921
7. A LETTER TO G. MYASNIKOV.1
August 5, 1921
Comrade Myasnikov,I have only just managed to read both your articles. I am unaware of the nature of the speeches you made in the Perm (I think it was Perm) organization and of your conflict with it. I can say nothing about that; it will be dealt with by the Organization Bureau which, I hear, has appointed a special commission.
My object is a different one: it is to appraise your articles as literary and political documents.
They are interesting documents.
Your main mistake is, I think, most clearly revealed in the article, "Vexed Questions." And I consider it my duty to do all I can to try to convince you.
At the beginning of the article you make a correct application of dialectics. Indeed whoever fails to understand our substitution of the "civil peace" slogan for the "civil war" slogan lays himself open to ridicule, if not worse.2 In this you are right.
But precisely because you are right on this point, I am surprised to see how you have forsaken a proper application of dialectics in your conclusions.
"Freedom of the press for a slate from monarchists to anarchists inclusive" ... Very good! "But just a minute," every Marxist and every worker who ponders over the last four years of our revolution will say, "Let's look into this. What sort of freedom of the press? What for? For which class?"
We do not believe in "absolutes." We laugh at "pure democracy."
The "freedom of the press" slogan became a grand universal slogan at the close of the Middle Ages and remained so until the nineteenth century. Why? Because it expressed the ideas of the progressive bourgeoisie, i.e., its struggle against kings and priests, feudal lords and landowners.
No country in the world has done as much to liberate the masses from the influence of priests and landowners as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (R.S.F.S.R.) has done and is doing. We have been performing this function of "freedom of the press" better than anyone else in the world.
Wherever there are capitalists in the world, "freedom of the press" means the freedom to buy up newspapers, buy writers, bribe, buy and fake "public opinion" for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.
This is a fact.
No one will ever be able to refute it.
And what about us?
Can anyone deny that the bourgeoisie has been defeated in this country but not destroyed? That it has gone into hiding? Nobody can deny it.
"Freedom of the press" in the R.S.F.S.R., which is surrounded by the bourgeois enemies of the whole world, means freedom of political organization for the bourgeoisie and its most loyal servants, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries.
This is an irrefutable fact.
The bourgeoisie (all over the world) is still very much stronger than us. To place in its hands yet another weapon like freedom of political organization (= "freedom of the press" because the press is the core and foundation of political organization) means facilitating the enemy's task, means helping the class enemy.
We have no wish to commit suicide and therefore we will not do this.
We clearly see this fact: "freedom of the press" means in practice that the international bourgeoisie will immediately buy up hundreds and thousands of Cadet, Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik writers, will organize their propaganda and fight us.
That is a fact. "They" are wealthier than us and will buy a "fighting force" ten times larger than ours.
No, we will not do it; we will not help the international bourgeoisie.
How could you descend from class appraisal, from appraisal of the relations between all classes, to the sentimental philistine appraisal? This is a mystery to me.
[...]
And suddenly you slide down into the abyss of sentimentalism!
“Outrage and abuses are rife in this country: freedom of the press will expose them."
That, as far as I can judge from your two articles, is where you slipped up. You have allowed yourself to be depressed by certain sad and deplorable facts and lost the ability to appraise the social forces soberly.
[...]
You took the wrong fork in the road.
You wanted to cure the Communist Party of its maladies and have picked up a drug that will cause certain death, not at your hands, of course, but at the hands of the world bourgeoisie (+ Milyukov + Chernov + Martov).
[...]
Want and calamity abound.
They have been terribly intensified by the famine of 1921.
It will cost us a supreme effort to extricate ourselves, but we will get out and have already begun to do so.
We will extricate ourselves, for our policy is in the main a correct one which takes into account all the class forces on an international scale. We will extricate ourselves because we do not try to make our position look better than it is. We are aware of all the difficulties. We see all the maladies and are taking measures to cure them methodically, with perseverance and without giving way to panic.
You have allowed panic to get the better of you; panic is a downward slope. Once you step on it you slide down to a level that looks very much like you are forming a new party or are about to commit suicide.3
You must not give way to panic.
[...]
8. THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR (V).
|
October Revolution parade in Red Square (1987) |
My fatherland is dying (1917) |
London: Krasin has manifested to a London newspaper correspondent that Russia will soon be able to export to Europe meat, wheat, eggs and "manteca" (ambiguous Sp., either dairy cream or lard).
Stockholm: A newspaper here says that a mercantile society with a capital of 1,000 million (Swedish kronas?) has been constituted for trade with Russia.
Reval (Estonia): The Soviet Government received grave news from Donetz (Ukraine). The anti-Bolshevik movement among agricultural workers has the character of an insurrection. All railway tracks between Donetz and Kharkov have been dug up.
Helsingfors (Finland): The Soviet Government has ratified the treaty signed with Germany in Riga.
Helsingfors: The Siberian uprising caused great unease in Soviet circles. The region's features hamper the prosecution of a vigorous repression.
Reval: News from Moscow say that the Soviet Government recently transferred important quantities of gold bullion to southern Europe, to Vienna and Milan in particular, to intensify the distribution of Bolshevik propaganda there.
Helsingfors: The Soviet Government approved a project of the Foreign Trade Commissar to open the ports of Murmansk, Archangel, Odessa, Sevastopol, Theodosia, Novorossisk and Kronstadt to foreign vessels.
Copenhaguen: A report from Christiania states that a Norwegian trade delegation concluded the negotiations for a commercial treaty with Russia. The Bolsheviks are willing to compensate Norway for damages inflicted to the properties of their nationals during the Revolution.
Reval: Events in Moscow are heating up. The meetings of workers organized by the Soviet Government turned out to be counterproductive and wrapped up with a formidable anti-Bolshevik demonstration. The excitement was so great among the workers that Red troops broke up the demonstration with beatings and bullets. The workers formed a compact mass, defended themselves and shouted, "Down with the Soviets!" and "Long live the Constituent Assembly!" They attempted to reach the Kremlin but were repulsed.
Rio de Janeiro: The Government of Brazil has ordered the move of twenty thousand men from General Wrangel's army to the State of Sao Paulo. There the regional government will allot them land and agricultural implements in "very good" condition.
Reval: Trotsky has serious misgivings about events in the Far East where the Japanese shield two hundred thousand counter-revolutionaries whom Japan will equip "perfectly" over the next two months; Trotsky heads to Siberia to direct the defense of those territories.
Helsingfors: Steklov the chief correspondent of Izvestia dedicates an article to the peasant uprising headed by Antonov and Popov in central Russia. The political program of this movement is that of the Vienna International. The five-man junta plans to annul everything done by the Bolsheviks and restore the principles of the 1917 February Revolution.
Reval: The Bolshevik High Command received a telegram from Siberia stating that the Red troops suffered two serious defeats at the hands of peasants led by many former officers of Admiral Kolchak.
Reval: News from Moscow say that the peasants do not send their cereals to the market because of Russia's high cost of living. Their stance triggers numerous skirmishes with the Red troops tasked with the requisition. The Bolsheviks vow they will pay the peasants in gold bullion, but the peasants refuse to sell, having been hoodwinked several times before. The Government sent considerable contingents of troops to the provinces to enforce the decrees of the Revolution.
Riga: Lenin asked permission from the British Government to travel to London with the object of embarking on political and economic negotiations.1
London: The tenth number of Krasnya Gazetta this year publishes Krasin's report to the Supreme Council of the Economy. In it he states that Great Britain abolished the ban on exports to Russia and as a consequence Red Army requests of matérial were properly addressed. The next step must be the establishment of a strong Russian bank in London providing Red delegates with access to credit of 300 million (British pounds?).
London: The Bolshevik delegation to Great Britain endevours to send cargoes of food from Liverpool to Russia where the absence of basic necessities is almost total. Krasin's agents have stocked up 8,000 tonnes of flour, 4,000 of rice and 900 of various other items ready for shipment.
Reval: The Communist Party has accused Zinoviev of serious blunders in the exercise of his functions. Among other errors he is accused of failing to curtail the counter-revolution of Kronstadt.
London: In reply to a question raised in the British Chamber Sir Philip Lloyd George the Director of Trade announced that a commercial mission will leave for Russia within a few days to ascertain the commercial and industrial needs of the country in situ. Several Russian-speaking individuals will accompany said commission.
Reval: Reports from Vladivostok state that counter-revolutionaries have blown up a bridge between "Tabarensky" (?) and "Bagovestchenk" (?). Soviet gunboats servicing the Amur River bombard without pause those riverside villages that back the counter-revolution.
Berlin: The Minister of Foreign Affairs declared that both the Russian and German Governments consider the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk null and void and that the German Government recognizes the Soviets as the sole legitimate Government of Russia.
Madrid: The famine in Russia grows more frightening by the day. The situation is so awful and grave that Lenin is said to be willing to relinquish power and that many soldiers threaten to make common cause with the starving masses. It is also said that three million tonnes of wheat are needed to meet the needs of the population.
The Bolshevik delegation charged with negotiating the terms of North American aid to relieve the famine gripping Russia insisted initially on full Soviet control over the distribution of the American aid, but suddenly reversed their stand and presently accept all American terms unconditionally.
Apparently Trotsky also accepts the British proposal about the repatriation of Wrangel's troops. Their families will be eligible for Allied aid and Wrangel's troops will be housed in a camp supervised by Britain.
| And Now For Something Completely Different |