page 272

 
page 273

only a few would give the right answer showing a clear understanding against what, or whom, we are now waging one of our last and decisive battles. It also seems to me that, in view of the political events which have caught the attention of the broad masses of workers and peasants, we ought once again to ascertain, or, at any rate, try to ascertain, against whom we are waging one of our last and crucial battles this spring, at this very moment. Let me go over this point.
    To sort it out we should, I think, start by reviewing as precisely and as soberly as possible, the opposed forces on whose struggle hinges the fate of the Soviet power, and, generally speaking, the course and development of the proletarian revolution, which is a revolution for the overthrow of the capitalists in Russia and elsewhere. What are these forces? How are they grouped against one another? How are they deployed at present? Any marked aggravation of the political situation, every new turn in the political events, even if it is not considerable, should always cause every thinking worker and peasant to ask himself: "What are the forces involved? How are they grouped?" And only when we are able to estimate these forces correctly and quite soberly, irrespective of our sympathies and desires, shall we be able to draw the proper conclusions concerning our policy in general, and our immediate tasks in particular. Let me, therefore, give you a brief description of these forces.
    There are basically three such forces. Take first the proletariat, the force that is closest to us. It is the first force, the first discrete class. You all know this very well, living in the very midst of it. What is its condition now? In the Soviet Republic it is the class that took power three and a half years ago, that has, since then, been exercising its domination -- dictatorship -- and has suffered and endured exhaustion, want and privation more than any other class. To the working class, to the proletariat, this period, during the greater part of which the Soviet state was engaged in a relentless civil war against the whole capitalist world, brought calamities, privation, sacrifice and intense want on a scale unparalleled in world history. A strange thing happened. The class that took political power did so in the knowledge that it was doing so alone.

 
page 274

That is intrinsic to the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It has meaning only when one class knows that it is taking political power alone, and does not deceive others or itself with talk about "popular government by popular consent through universal suffrage". You all know that there are very many -- far too many -- people who love to hold forth on that subject, but, at any rate, you will not find them among proletarians, because they have realised that theirs is a dictatorship of the proletariat, and they say as much in their Constitution, the fundamental law of the Republic. This class was well aware that it was taking power alone, under extremely difficult conditions. It has exercised its political power as any dictatorship does, that is, with grim determination. In these three and a half years, it has suffered distress, want, starvation and a worsening of economic positions such as no other class in history has suffered. It is not surprising that as a result of its superhuman effort it is uncommonly weary, exhausted and strained.
    How was a singie class able to exercise its power in the teeth of the resistance and attacks of the world bourgeoisie, in a country where the proletariat is numerically so much smaller than the rest of the population? How was it able to do that in a backward country artificially cut off by armed force from countries with a more numerous, class-conscious, disciplined and organised proletariat? How could it hold on for three and a half years? What was its mainstay? We know that it was the mass of the peasants, at home. About this second force more in a moment, after we finish our examination of the first. I have said that never has its suffering been so great and acute as in this epoch of its dictatorship; and you all know it, having observed the life of your mates in the factories, railway depots, and workshops. Never before has the country been so weary and worn out. Where did this class get the moral strength to bear these privations? Clearly it had to draw on some source for the moral strength to overcome these material privations. As you know, the question of moral strength and support is a vague one; you can give any reading to moral strength. To avoid the danger of reading anything vague or fantastic into "moral strength", I ask myself:

 
page 275

Is there a precise definition of that which gave the proletariat the moral strength to bear the unprecedented material privations connected with its political rule? I think this will give us a precise answer. Ask yourself: Could the Soviet Republic have borne its trials over three and a half years, and withstood the onslaught of the whiteguards supported by the capitalists of the world, if it had had to face backward instead of advanced countries? You have only to put the question to see the obvious answer.
    You know that for three and a half years the wealthiest powers of the world fought against us. The armed forces that were ranged against us and that supported Kolchak, Yudenich, Denikin and Wrangel -- you all know this very well, for you all fought in the war -- were immensely and clearly superior to our forces. You know perfectly well that these states are still very much stronger than we are. How is it, then, that they set out to vanquish the Soviet power, and failed? How did this happen? We have an exact answer: the proletariat of all the capitalist countries was on our side. Even when it was patently under the influence of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries -- in the European countries they go by another name -- it refused to support the fight against us. Eventually, the leaders were compelled to yield to the masses, and the workers disrupted the war. It was not we who won, for our armed forces were insignificant; the victory was won because the powers could not hurl the whole of their armed force against us. The course of a war depends on the workers of the advanced countries to such an extent that it cannot be waged against their will, and their passive and semi-passive resistance eventually disrupted the war against us. This incontrovertible fact gives the exact answer to the question as to the source on which the Russian proletariat drew for moral strength to hold out for three and a half years and win. The moral strength of the Russian worker lay in his knowledge and awareness of the tangible assistance and support which the proletariat of all the advanced countries of Europe was giving him in this struggle. The direction which the working-class movement in these countries is taking is indicated by this most important recent event: the split in the Socialist parties of Britain, France, Italy,

 
page 276

and other countries (both vanquished and victors) which differ in cultural and economic development. The main development of the year in all countries has been the formation of Communist Parties, with the support of all that is most advanced in the working class, on the ruins of the Socialist and Social-Democratic parties -- which in Russia are called Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary. And, of course, there can be no doubt that if we had been attacked by backward countries, without mighty proletarian masses, and not by advanced countries, we would have been unable to hold out for three and a half months, let alone three and a half years. Would our proletariat have had the moral strength if it had not relied on the sympathy of the workers of the advanced countries, who supported us in spite of the lies about the Soviet power circulated by the imperialists in millions of copies, and in spite of the efforts of the "labour leaders" -- the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries -- who could have been expected to, and did, hamper the workers' struggle for us? With this support, our proletariat -- numerically weak and tormented by poverty and privation -- won out because it had the moral strength.
    That is the first force.
    The second is that which stands between developed capital and the proletariat. It is the petty bourgeoisie, the small proprietors, which in Russia constitute the overwhelming majority of the population -- the peasantry. They are mainly small proprietors and small farmers. Nine-tenths of them are that way, and can be nothing else. They do not take part in the acute struggle daily waged by capital and labour. They have not been schooled; their economic and political conditions do not bring them together, but rather tend to separate, alienating them from each other, and transforming them into millions of lone-wolf small proprietors. Such are the facts and you are all perfectly well aware of them. It will take collectives, collective farms and communes years to change this. Thanks to the revolutionary energy and devotion of the proletarian dictatorship, this force was able to dispose of its enemies on the right -- the landowner class -- to sweep them right out and abolish their rule more swiftly than has ever been done before. But the more quickly it abolished the rule of the landowners,

 
page 277

the more quickly it turned to its farming on the nationalised land, the more resolutely it settled accounts with the small minority of kulaks, the sooner it itself became transformed into small proprietors. You know that there has been a levelling-off in the Russian countryside in this period. The number of peasants with large areas under crop and without any at all has decreased, while the number of medium farms has increased. The countryside has become more petty bourgeois. This is an independent class, which, once the landowners and capitalists are expelled and eliminated, is the only class capable of opposing the proletariat. That is why it is absurd to write on placards that the reign of the workers and peasants will last for ever.
    You know the political mood of this force. It is a vacillating force. We saw this to be true during our revolution all over the country. There were some local features in Russia proper, Siberia and the Ukraine, but the result was the same everywhere: it is a vacillating force. For a long time it was in the leading strings of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, with the aid of Kerensky, in the Kolchak period, under the Constituent Assembly in Samara, when the Menshevik Maisky was a Minister of Kolchak or of one of his predecessors, etc. This force wavered between the leadership of the proletariat and that of the bourgeoisie. Why didn't it lead itself? After all, it is the overwhelming majority. The fact is that the economic conditions of these masses are such that they are unable to organise and unite by their own efforts. This is clear to anyone who is not misled by empty talk about "universal suffrage", a constituent assembly and such like "democracy" which has served to dupe the people in all countries for hundreds of years and which the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in our own country played up for hundreds of weeks but fell through "on this very spot every blessed time". (Applause.) We know from our own experience -- and revolutions all over the world confirm it if we take the modern epoch of, say, a hundred and fifty years -- that the result has always been the same everywhere: the petty bourgeoisie in general, and the peasants in particular, have failed in all their attempts to realise

 
page 278

their strength, and to direct economics and politics their own way. They have had to follow the leadership either of the proletariat, or the capitalists -- there is no middle way open to them. Anyone who thinks of a middle way is an empty dreamer. There is much politics, economics, and history to prove it. The teachings of Marx show that once the small proprietors-become owners of the means of production and land, exchange between them necessarily gives rise to capital, and simultaneously to the antagonisms between capital and labour. The struggle between capital and the proletariat is inevitable; it is a law manifesting itself all over the world. This must be accepted by anyone-who refuses to fool himself.
    These fundamental economic facts explain why this force cannot manifest itself through its own efforts, and why it has always failed in all its attempts to do so in the history of all revolutions. Whenever the proletariat was unable to lead the revolution, this force always followed the leadership of the bourgeoisie. That was the case in all revolutions. The Russians, of course, are of the same clay, and if they choose to pretend they are not, they will only look ridiculous. History metes out the same treatment to all. We, in particular, saw the truth of this under the rule of Kerensky. At that time, the government had the support of very many more political leaders than the Bolsheviks have. They were clever, educated men, with vast experience in politics and state administration. If we were to count all the officials who sabotaged us, but who did not make it their business to sabotage the Kerensky government, which relied on the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, we would find that they made up an overwhelming majority. Still that government collapsed. That shows that there were factors which offset the enormous preponderance of intellectual and educated forces accustomed to administering the state, an art they had acquired decades before they actually took over. Events ran the same course, with some modifications, in the Ukraine, the Don and the Kuban regions, and the result was exactly the same. That could not have been a coincidence. Such is the economic and political law governing the second force: hence, either the leadership of the proletariat -- a hard

 
page 279

road, but one which can help it to escape the rule of the landowners and capitalists -- or the leadership of the capitalists, as it does in the advanced democratic republics, and even in America, where the free distribution of land (every settler was allotted sixty dessiatines[*] free of charge -- better conditions can hardly be imagined!) has not yet entirely stopped, and where this has led to the complete domination of capital.
    That is the second force.
    Over here it is wavering, and is particularly weary. It has had to bear the burdens of the revolution, and in the past few years fresh burdens have been thrust upon it: a year of crop failure, surplus-grain appropriations, with cattle dying off because of the fodder shortage, etc. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that this second force -- the masses of the peasantry -- should give way to despair. They could not think of improving their condition although three and a half years have passed since the landowners were driven out, yet the improvement is becoming an urgent necessity. The dispersing army fails to find proper employment for its labour-power, and so this petty-bourgeois force is being transformed into an anarchic element, whose restiveness is an expression of its demands.
    You are all familiar with the third force: the landowners and capitalists. It is no longer conspicuous in this country. But one crucial event, one critical lesson of the past few weeks -- the Kronstadt events -- was like a flash of lightning which threw more of a glare upon reality than anything else.
    There is now no country in Europe without some whiteguard elements. Russian �migr�s in Europe have been estimated to total about seven hundred thousand. These are fugitive capitalists and the mass of office workers who could not adapt themselves to Soviet rule. We see nothing of this third force, it has emigrated, but it lives and operates in alliance with the capitalists of the world, who are assisting it as they assisted Kolchak, Yudenich and Wrangel, with money and in other ways, because they have their international bonds. We all remember these people. You must have noticed the abundance of extracts from the

  [88] The Congress was held, under a decision of the Central Committee, in Moscow from March 22 to 31, 1921. Most of its 1,079 delegates were Communists. The items on the agenda were: report of Tsektran; report of the People's Commissar for Communications; report of the Central Board of the River Transport Workers section; wage rates; transport workers' food supplies, and international confederation of transport workers.
    Lenin was elected Honorary Chairman of the Congress. On the eve of the Congress, on March 25, 1921, Lenin had a talk with V. V. Fomin, Deputy Commissar for Communications, about the work of the Congress and the composition of the next Tsektran. Lenin's speech at the March 27 afternoon sitting was published as a pamphlet in 1921.
    The Congress drove out the Trotskyites from the Tsektran

 
page 551

leadership, and called on the transport workers to take an active part in the rehabilitation of the national economy.    [p. 272]