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    (Prolonged applause.) Comrades, allow me to declare the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party open. We have passed through a very eventful year both in international and in our own internal history. To begin with the international situation, let me say that this is the first time we have met in conditions in which the Communist International has ceased to be a mere slogan and has really been converted into a mighty organisation with foundations -- real foundations -- in the major advanced capitalist countries. What had only been a set of resolutions at the Second Congress of the Communist International[48] has been successfully implemented during the past year and has found expression, confirmation and consolidation in such countries as Germany, France and Italy. It is enough to name these three countries to show that the Communist International, since its Second Congress in Moscow last summer, has become part and parcel of the working-class movement in all the major advanced countries of Europe -- more than that, it has become the chief factor in international politics. This is such a great achievement, comrades, that however difficult and severe the various trials ahead of us -- and we cannot and must not lose sight of them -- no one can deprive us of it!

    Furthermore, comrades, this is the first congress that is meeting without any hostile troops, supported by the capitalists and imperialists of the world, on the territory of the Soviet Republic. The Red Army's victories over the past year have enabled us to open a Party Congress in such conditions for the first time. Three and a half years of

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unparalleled strugg]e, and the last of the hostile armies has been driven from our territory -- that is our achievement! Of course, that has not won us everything, not by a long shot; nor have we won all that we have to -- real freedom from imperialist invasion and intervention. On the contrary, their warfare against us has taken a form that is less military but is in some respects more severe and more dangerous. The transition from war to peace -- which we hailed at the last Party Congress[49] and in the light of which we have tried to organise our work -- is still far from completed. Our Party is still confronted with incredibly difficult tasks, not only in respect of the economic plan -- where we have made quite a few mistakes -- or the basis of economic construction, but also the basis of relations between the classes remaining in our society, in this Soviet Republic. These relations have undergone a change, and this -- you will all agree -- should be one of the chief questions for you to examine and decide here.

    Comrades, we have passed through an exceptional year, we have allowed ourselves the luxury of discussions and disputes within the Party.[50] This was an amazing luxury for a Party shouldering unprecedented responsibilities and surrounded by mighty and powerful enemies uniting the whole capitalist world.

    I do not know how you will assess that fact now. Was it fully compatible with our resources, both material and spiritual? It is up to you to appraise this. At all events, however, I must say that the slogan, task and aim which we should set ourselves at this Congress and which we must accomplish at all costs, is to emerge from the discussions and disputes stronger than before. (Applause.) You, comrades, cannot fail to be aware that all our enemies -- and their name is legion -- in all their innumerable press organs abroad repeat, elaborate and multiply the same wild rumour that our bourgeois and petty-bourgeois enemies spread here inside the Soviet Republic, namely: discussion means disputes; disputes mean discord; discord means that the Communists have become weak; press hard, seize the opportunity, take advantage of their weakening. This has become the slogan of the hostile world. We must not forget this for a moment. Our task now is to show that, to whatever

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extent we have allowed ourselves this luxury in the past, whether rightly or wrongly, we must emerge from this situation in such a way that, having properly examined the extraordinary abundance of platforms, shades, slight shades and almost slight shades of opinion, that have been formulated and discussed, we at our Party Congress could say to ourselves: at all events, whatever form the discussion has taken up to now, however much we have argued among ourselves -- and we are confronted with so many enemies -- the task of the dictatorship of the proletariat in a peasant country is so vast and difficult that formal cohesion is far from enough. (Your presence here at the Congress is a sign that we have that much.) Our efforts should be more united and harmonious than ever before; there should not be the slightest trace of factionalism -- whatever its manifestations in the past. That we must not have on any account. That is the only condition on which we shall accomplish the immense tasks that confront us. I am sure that I express the intention and firm resolve of all of you when I say: at all events, the end of this Congress must find our Party stronger, more harmonious, and more sincerely united than ever before. (Applause.)

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capitalism is too vitally interested in preventing it. I recall that in April 1918, i.e., three years ago, I had occasion to speak to the All-Russia Central Executive Committee about our tasks, which at the time were formulated as if the Civil War had in the main come to an end, when in actual fact it had only just begun. You will all recall that at the pre vious Party Congress we based all our plans on the transition to peaceful construction, having assumed that the enormous concessions then made to Poland[51] would assure us of peace. As early as April, however, the Polish bourgeoisie, which, with the imperialists of the capitalist countries, interpreted our peaceful stand as a sign of weakness, started an offensive for which they paid dearly: they got a peace that was much worse. But we were unable to switch to peaceful construction and had once again to concentrate on the war with Poland and subsequently on wiping out Wrangel. That is what determined the substance of our work in the year under review. Once again all our work turned on military problems.

    Then followed the trunsition from war to peace when the last enemy soldier was finally driven from the territory of the R.S.F.S.R.

    This transition involved upheavals which we had certainly never foreseen. That is undoubtedly one of the main causes of all our mistakes in policy during the period under review, from which we are now suffering. We now realise that some of the tasks we had grossly underrated were posed by the demobilisation of the army, which had to be created in a country that had suffered unparalleled strains and stresses, and that had gone through several years of imperialist war. Its demobilisation put a terrible strain on our transport facilities, and this was intensified by the famine due to the crop failure and the fuel shortage, which largely brought the railways to a standstill. That is largely the source of the series of crises -- economic, social and political -- that hit us. At the end of last year I had occasion to point out that one of the main difficulties of the coming spring would be that connected with the demobilisation of the army. I also pointed this out at the big discussion on December 30, which many of you may have attended. I must say that at the time we had scarcely any idea of the scale of these

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difficulties. We had not yet seen the extent of the possible technical difficulties; but then neither had we realised the extent to which the demobilisation would intensify all the misfortunes which befell the Soviet Republic, exhausted as it was by the old imperialist war and the new civil war. To some extent it would be right to say that the demobilisation brings out these difficulties to an even greater degree. For a number of years, the country had been dedicated to the solution of war tasks and had glven its all to solve them. It had ungrudgingly sacrificed all it had, its meagre reserves and resources, and only at tho end of the war were we able to see the full extent of that devastation and poverty which now condemn us to the simple healing of wounds for a long time to come. But even to this we cannot devote ourselves entirely. The technical difficulties of army demobilisation show a good part of the depth of that devastation which inevitably breeds, apart from other things, a whole series of economic and social crises. The war had habituated us -- hundreds of thousands of men, the whole country -- to war-time tasks, and when a great part of the army, having solved these military tasks, finds very much worse conditions and incredible hardships in the countryside, without any opportunity -- because of this and the general crisis -- to apply its labour, the result is something midway between war and peace. We find that it is a situation in which we cannot very well speak of peace. For it is the demobilisation -- the end of the Civil War -- that makes it impossible for us to concentrate on peaceful construction, because it brings about a continuation of the war, but in a new form. We find ourselves involved in a new kind of war, a new form of war, which is summed up in the word "banditism" -- when tens and hundreds of thousands of demobilised soldiers, who are accustomed to the toils of war and regard it almost as their only trade, return, impoverished and ruined, and are unable to find work.

    Failure to reckon with the scale of the difficulties connected with the demobilisation was undoubtedly a mistake on the part of the Central Committee. It must, of course, be said that we had nothing to go on, for the Civil War was so arduous an effort that there was only one guiding principle: everything for victory on the Civil War front,

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and nothing else. It was only by observing this principle, and by the Red Army's unparalleled efforts in the struggle against Kolchak, Yudenich and others, that we could hope to, achieve victory over the imperialists who had invaded Soviet Russia.

    From this crucial fact, which determined a whole series of mistakes and intensified the crisis, I should like to turn to the question of how a whole number of even more profound discrepancies, erroneous calculations or plans were brought to light in the work of the Party and the struggle of the entire proletariat. These were not only mistakes in planning, but in determining the balance of forces between our class and those classes in collaboration with which, and frequently in struggle against which, it had to decide the fate of the Republic. With this as a starting-point, let us turn to the results of the past, to our political experience, and to what the Central Committee, as the policy-making body, must understand and try to explain to the whole Party. These questions range from the course of our war with Poland to food and fuel. Our offensive, our too swift advance almost as far as Warsaw, was undoubtedly a mistake. I shall not now analyse whether it was a strategic or a political error, as this would take me too far afield. Let us leave it to future historians, for those of us who have to keep beating off the enemy in hard struggle have no time to indulge in historical research. At any rate, the mistake is there, and it was due to the fact that we had overestimated the superiority of our forces. It would be too difficult to decide now to what extent this superiority of forces depended on the economic conditions, and on the fact that the war with Poland aroused patriotic feelings even among the petty-bourgeois elements, who were by no means proletarians or sympathisers with communism, by no means giving unconditional support to the dictatorship of the proletariat; sometimes, in fact, they did not support it at all. But the fact remains that we had made a definite mistake in the war with Poland.

    We find a similar mistake in food. With regard to surplus food appropriation and its fulfilment there can be no doubt that the year under review was more favourable than the previous one. This year the amount of grain collected is

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over 250 million poods. By February 1, the figure was estimated at 235 million poods, as against the 210 million poods for the whole of the previous year; that is to say, more was collected in a much shorter period than for the whole of the previous year. It turned out, however, that of these 235 millions collected by February 1, we had used up 155 million poods within the first six months, that is, an average of 25 million or even more poods a month. Of course, we must on the whole admit that we were unable to space out our reserves properly, even when they were better than last year's. We failed to see the full danger of the crisis approaching with the spring, and succumbed to the natural desire to increase the starving workers' ration. Of course, it must be said that there again we had no basis for our estimates. All capitalist countries, in spite of the anarchy and chaos intrinsic to capitalism, have as a basis for their economic planning, the experience of many decades which they can compare, for they have the same economic system differing only in details. From this comparison it is possible to deduce a genuinely scientific law, a certain regularity and uniformity. We cannot have and have not had anything of the kind, and it was quite natural that when at the end of the war the possibility finally arose to give the starving population a little more, we were unable all at once to establish the correct proportion. We should have obviously limited the increase in the ration, so as to create a certain reserve fund for a rainy day, which was due to come in the spring, and which has now arrived. That we failed to do. Once again it is a mistake typical of all our work, a mistake which shows that the transition from war to peace confronted us with a whole number of difficulties and problems, and we had neither the experience, the training, nor the requisite material to overcome them, and this worsened, intensified and aggravated the crisis to an extraordinary extent.

    We undoubtedly had something similar in fuel. It is crucial to economic construction. The output estimates and proper distribution of fuel had, of course, to be the basis for the entire transition from war to peace -- to economic construction -- which was discussed at the previous Party Congress and which has been the main concern and the focal

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point of all our policy during the year under review. There can be no question of overcoming our difficulties or rehabilitating our industry without it. In this respect, we are clearly in a better position now than we were last year. We used to be cut off from the coal and oil districts, but we got the coal and oil after the Red Army's victories. In any case, our fuel resources have increased. We know that the fuel resources with which we entered upon the year under review were greater than before. Accordingly, we made the mistake of immediately permitting such a wide distribution of fuel that these resources were exhausted and we were faced with a fuel crisis beIore we had put everything in proper working order. You will hear special reports on all these problems, and I cannot even give you any approximate figures. But in any case, bearing in mind the experience of the past, we must say that this mistake was due to a wrong understanding of the state of affairs and the rapid pace of transition from war to peace. It turned out that the transition could only be made at a much slower pace than we had imagined. The lesson driven home to us over the past year is that the preparations had to be longer, and the pace slower. It is a lesson that the whole Party will need particularly to learn in order to determine our main tasks for the year ahead, if we are to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

    I must add that the crop failure aggravated these mistakes and especially the resultant crises. I have pointed out that the food effort during the year under review gave us very much better food reserves, but that too was one of the main sources of the crises, because the crop failure had led to an acute feed shortage, a great loss of cattle and widespread ruin among the peasants, so that these grain procurements fell mainly in places where the grain surplus was not very large. There are far greater surpluses in various outlying areas of the Republic, in Siberia and in the Northern Caucasus, but it is there that the Soviet power was less stable, the Soviet government apparatus least efficient, and transportation from over there was very difficult. That is why it turned out that we collected the increased food reserves from the gubernias with the poorer crops and this went to intensify the crisis in the peasant economy considerably.

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    Here again we clearly see that our estimates were not as accurate as they should have been. But then we were in such a tight corner that we had no choice. A country which, after a devastating imperialist war, survived such a thing as a long civil war, could not, of course, exist without giving the front everything it had. And, once ruined, what could it do but take the peasants' surpluses, even without compensating them by any other means. We had to do this to save the country, the army, and the workers' and peasants' government. We said to the peasants: "Of course, you are lending your grain to the workers' and peasants' state, but unless you do, you cannot expect to save the country from the landowners and the capitalists." We could do nothing else in the circumstances forced upon us by the imperialists and the capitalists through their war. We had no choice. But these circumstances led to such a weakening of the peasant economy after the long war that the crop failure was due also to the smaller sown area, worsening equipment, lower crop yields, shortage of hands, etc. The crop failure was disastrous, but the collection of surplus grain, which was rather better than we had expected, was accompanied by an aggravation of the crisis that may bring us still greater difficulties and calamities in the months to come. We must carefully reckon with this fact when analysing our political experience of the past year, and the political tasks we set ourselves for the year ahead. The year under review has left the following year with the same urgent problems.

    I shall now deal with another point from a totally different sphere -- the trade union discussion, which has taken up so much of the Party's time. I mentioned it earlier on today, and could naturally only venture the cautious remark that I thought many of you would consider this discussion as being too great a luxury. I must add, for my part, that I think it was quite an impermissible luxury, and we certainly made a mistake when we allowed it, for we had failed to realise that we were pushing into the forefront a question which for objective reasons cannot be there. We allowed ourselves to indulge in this luxury, failing to realise how much attention we distracted from the vital and threatening question before us, namely, this question of the crisis.

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What are the actual results of this discussion, which has been going on for so many months and which must have bored most of you? You will hear special reports on it, but I should like to draw your attention to one aspect of the matter. It is that in this case the saying, "Every cloud has a silver lining", has been undoubtedly justified.

    Unfortunately, there was rather a lot of cloud, and very little silver lining. (Laughter.) Still, the silver lining was there, for although we lost a great deal of time and diverted the attention of our Party comrades from the urgent tasks of the struggle against the petty-bourgeois elements surrounding us, we did learn to discern certain relationships which we had not seen before. The good thing was that the Party was bound to learn something from this struggle. Although we all knew that, being the ruling party, we had inevitably to merge the Party and government leadership -- they are merged and will remain so -- the Party nevertheless learned a certain lesson in this discussion which cannot be ignored. Some platforms mostly got the votes of the "top" section of the Party. Some platforms which were sometimes called "the platforms of the Workers' Opposition", and sometimes by other names, clearly proved to be an expression of a syndicalist deviation. That is not just my personal opinion, but that of the vast majority of those present. (Voices : "That's right.")

    In this discussion, the Party proved itself to have matured to such an extent that, aware of a certain wavering of the "top" section and hearing the leadership say: "We cannot agree -- sort us out," it mobilised rapidly for this task and the vast majority of the more important Party organisations quickly responded: "We do have an opinion, and we shall let you know it."

    During the discussion we got a number of platforms. There were so many of them that, although in view of my position I should have read them all, I confess I had not. (Laughter.) I do not know whether all those present had found the time to read them, but, in any case, I must say that this syndicalist, and to a certain degree even semi-anarchist, deviation, which has crystallised, gives food for thought. For several months we allowed ourselves to wallow in the luxury of studying shades of opinion.

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Meanwhile, the demobilisation of the army was producing banditry and aggravating the economic crisis. The discussion should have helped us to understand that our Party, with at least half a million members and possibly even more, has become, first, a mass party, and, second, the government party, and that as a mass party it reflects something of what is taking place outside its ranks. It is extremely important to understand this.

    There would be nothing to fear from a slight syndicalist or semi-anarchist deviation; the Party would have swiftly and decisively become aware of it, and would have set about correcting it. But it is no time to argue about theoretical deviations when one of them is bound up with the tremendous preponderance of peasants in the country, when their dissatisfaction with the proletarian dictatorship is mounting, when the crisis in peasant farming is coming to a head, and when the demobilisation of the peasant army is setting loose hundreds and thousands of broken men who have nothing to do, whose only accustomed occupation is war and who breed banditry. At the Congress, we must make it quite clear that we cannot have arguments about deviations and that we must put a stop to that. The Party Congress can and must do this; it must draw the appropriate lesson, and add it to the Central Committee's political report, consolidate and confirm it, and make it a Party law and duty. The atmosphere of the controversy is becoming extremely dangerous and constitutes a direct threat to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

    A few months ago, when I had occasion to meet and argue with some comrades in a discussion and said, "Beware, this constitutes a threat to working-class rule and the dictatorship of the proletariat," they replied, "This is intimidation, you are terrorising us." On several occasions I have had to hear my remarks being labelled in this manner, and accusations of intimidation thrown about, and I replied that it would be absurd for me to try to intimidate old revolutionaries who had gone through all sorts of ordeals. But when you see the difficulties the demobilisation is producing you can no longer say it was an attempt at intimidation, or even an unavoidable exaggeration in the heat of the controversy; it was, in fact, an absolutely exact indication

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of what we now have, and of our need for unity, discipline and restraint. We need all this not only because otherwise a proletarian party cannot work harmoniously, but because the spring has brought and will bring even more difficult conditions in which we cannot function without maximum unity. These two main lessons, I think, we shall still be able to learn from the discussion. I think it necessary to say, therefore, that whilst we did indulge in luxury and presented the world with a remarkable example of a party, engaged in a most desperate struggle, permitting itself the luxury of devoting unprecedented attention to the detailed elucidation of separate points of platforms -- all this in face of a crop failure, a crisis, ruin and demobilisation -- we shall now draw from these lessons a political conclusion -- not just a conclusion pointing to some mistake, but a political conclusion -- concerning the relations between classes, between the working class and the peasants. These relations are not what we had believed them to be. They demand much greater unity and concentration of forces on the part of the proletariat, and under the dictatorship of the proletariat they are a far greater danger than all the Denikins, Kolchaks and Yudeniches put together. It would be fatal to be deluded on this score! The difficulties stemming from the petty-bourgeois elemont are enormous, and if they are to be overcome, we must have great unity, and I don't mean just a semblance of unity. We must all pull together with a single will, for in a peasant country only the will of the mass of proletarians will enable the proletariat to accomplish the great tasks of its leadership and dictatorship.

    Assistance is on its way from the West-European countries but it is not coming quickly enough. Still it is coming and growing.

    I pointed out this morning that one of the most important factors of the period under review, one closely related to the work of the Central Committee, is the organisation of the Second Congress of the Comintern. Of course, compared with last year, the world revolution has made considerable headway. Of course, the Communist International, which at the time of last year's Congress existed only in the form of proclamations, has now begun to function as an independent

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party in each country, and not merely as an advanced party -- communism has become central to the working-class movement as a whole. In Germany, France and Italy the Communist International has become not only the centre of the working-class movement, but also the focus of political life in these countries. Any German or French newspaper you picked up last autumn contained abuse of Moscow and the Bolsheviks, who were called all sorts of names; in fact, the Bolsheviks and the 21 conditions for admission to the Third International[52] were made the central issue of their entire political life. That is an achievement no one can take away from us! It shows how the world revolution is growing and how it is paralleled by the aggravation of the economic crisis in Europe. But in any case, it would be madness on our part to assume that help will shortly arrive from Europe in the shape of a strong proletarian revolution, and I am sure no one here is making such an assumption. In these last three years, we have learned to understand that placing our stake on the world revolution does not mean relying on a definite date, and that the accelerating pace of development may or may not lead to a revolution in the spring. Therefore, we must be able to bring our work in line with the class balance here and elsewhere, so as to be able to maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat for a long time, and, however gradually, to remedy all our numerous misfortunes and crises. This is the only correct and sober approach.

    I shall now turn to an item concerning the work of the Central Committee during the present year which is closely related to the tasks facing us. It is the question of our foreign relations.

    Prior to the Ninth Party Congress, our attention and all our endeavours were aimed at switching from our relations of war with the capitalist countries to relations of peace and trade. For that purpose we undertook all sorts of diplomatic moves and bested men who were undoubtedly skilled diplomats. When, for instance, the representatives of America or of the League of Nations[53] proposed that we halt hostilities against Denikin and Kolchak on certain stated terms, they thought we would land in difficulties. In actual fact, it was they who landed in difficulties and we who scored a great diplomatic victory. They were made to look silly,

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they had to withdraw their terms, and this was subsequently exposed in all the diplomatic writings and press of the world. But we cannot rest content with a diplomatic victory. We need more than that: we need genuine trade relations. However, only this year has there been some development in trade relations. There is the question of trade relations with Britain, which has been central since the summer of last year. In this connection, the war with Poland was a considerable setback for us. Britain was ready to sign a trade agreement. The British bourgeoisie wanted it, but court circles in Britain were against it and hampered it, and the war with Poland delayed it. It so happens that the matter has not been settled yet.

    Today 's papers, I think, say that Krasin has told the press in London that he expects the trade agreement to be signed shortly.[54] I do not know whether these hopes are fully justified. I cannot be certain that it will actually take place, but for my part I must say that we in the Central Committee have devoted a great deal of attention to this question and considered it correct for us to compromise in order to achieve a trade agreement with Britain. Not only because we could obtain more from Britain than from other countries -- she is, in this respect, not as advanced as, say, Germany or America. She is a colonial power, with too great a stake in Asian politics, and is sometimes too sensitive to the successes of the Soviet power in certain countries lying near her colonies. That is why our relations with Britain are especially tenuous. This tenuousness arises from such an objective tangle of causes that no amount of skill on the part of the Soviet diplomatists will help. But we need a trade treaty with Britain owing to the possibility opening up for a treaty with America, whose industrial capacity is so much greater.

    The concession issue is bound up with this. We devoted far more attention to it last year than before. A decree of the Council of People's Commissars issued on November 23 set out the concession question in a form most acceptable to foreign capitalists. When certain misinterpretations or insufficient understanding of this problem arose in Party circles, a number of meetings of senior Party workers were held to discuss it. On the whole, there was not a great deal

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of disagreement, although we did hear of many protests from workers and peasants. They said: "We got rid of our own capitalists, and now they want to call in some foreign capitalists." Of course, the Central Committee had no statistics at its disposal to decide to what extent these protests were due to ignorance, or expressed the hopes of the kulak or outright capitalist section of the non-Party people who believe they have a legitimate right to be capitalists in Russia, and not like the foreign capitalists who are invited in without any power, but with real power. Indeed, it is most unlikely that statistics on such factors are available anywhere in the world. But this decree was, at any rate, a step towards establishing relations with a view to granting concessions. I must add that in practice -- and this is something we must never forget -- we have not secured a single concession. The point at issue is whether we should try to get them at all costs. Whether we get them or not does not depend on our arguments or decisions, but on international capital. On February 1 of this year, the Council of People's Commissars took another decision on the concessions. Its first clause says: "To approve in principle the granting of oil concessions in Grozny and Baku and at other working oilfields and to open negotiations which should be pressed forward."

    There was some difference of opinion on this point. Some comrades thought it was wrong to grant concessions in Grozny and Baku, as this would arouse opposition among the workers. The majority on the Central Committee, including myself, took the view that there were possibly no grounds for the complaints.

    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 we cannot, on our own, rehahilitate our ruined economy without machinery and technical aid from abroad. Getting the equipment out here is not enough. We could grant concessions to the biggest imperialist trusts on a wider basis: say, a quarter of Baku, a quarter of Grozny, and a quarter of our best forest reserves, so as to assure ourselves of an

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essential basis by the installation of the most modern machinery; on the other hand, in return for this we shall be getting badly needed machinery for the remaining part. In this way we shall be able to close a part -- say, a quarter or a half -- of the gap between us and the modern, advanced trusts of other countries. No one, with anything like a sober view of the present situation, will doubt that unless we do this we shall be in a very difficult position indeed, and shall be unable to overtake them without a superhuman effort. Negotiations with some of the largest world trusts have already begun. Naturally, for their part they are not simply doing us a good turn: they are in it only for the fantastic profits. Modern capitalism -- as a non-belligerent diplomat would put it -- is a robber, a ring. It is not the old capitalism of pre-war days: because of its monopoly of the world market its profit margins run to hundreds of per cents. Of course, this will exact a high price, 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 the modern level. And if one of the crises were to give a sharp spur to the world revolution, and if it were to arrive before the concession terms ran out, our concession obligations would turn out to be less onerous than they appear on paper.

    On February 1, 1921, the Council of People's Commissars decided to purchase 18,500,000 poods of coal abroad, for our fuel crisis was already in evidence. It had already become clear by then that we would have to expend our gold reserves not only on the purchase of machinery. In the latter case, our coal output would have increased, for we would have boosted our production if, instead of coal, we had bought machines abroad to develop our coal industry, but the crisis was so acute that we had to opt for the worse economic step and spend our money on the coal we could have produced at home. We shall have to make further compromises to buy consumer goods for the peasants and workers.

    I should now like to deal with the Kronstadt events.[55] I have not yet received the latest news from Kronstadt, but I have no doubt that this mutiny, which very quickly revealed to us the familiar figures of whiteguard generals, will be put down within the next few days, if not hours.

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There can be no doubt about this. But it is essential that we make a thorough appraisal of the political and economic lessons of this event.

    What does it mean? It was an attempt to seize political power from the Bolsheviks by a motley crowd or alliance of ill-assorted elements, apparently just to the right of the Bolsheviks, or perhaps even to their "left" -- you can't really tell, so amorphous is the combination of political groupings that has tried to take power in Kronstadt. You all know, undoubtedly, that at the same time whiteguard generals were very active over there. There is ample proof of this. A fortnight before the Kronstadt events., the Paris newspapers reported a mutiny at Kronstadt. It is quite clear that it is the work of Socialist-Revolutionaries and whiteguard émigrés, and at the same time the movement was reduced to a petty-bourgeois counter-revolution and petty-bourgeois anarchism. That is something quite new. This circumstance, in the context of all the crises, must be given careful political consideration and must be very thoroughly analysed. There is evidence here of the activity of petty-bourgeois anarchist elements with their slogans of unrestricted trade and invariable hostility to the dictatorship of the proletariat. This mood has had a wide influence on the proletariat. It has had an effect on factories in Moscow and a number of provincial centres. This petty-bourgeois counter-revolution is undoubtedly more dangerous than Denikin, Yudenich and Kolchak put together, because ours is a country where the proletariat is in a minority, where peasant property has gone to ruin and where, in addition, the demobilisation has set loose vast numbers of potentially mutinous elements. No matter how big or small the initial, shall I say, shift in power, which the Kronstadt sailors and workers put forward -- they wanted to correct the Bolsheviks in regard to restrictions in trade -- and this looks like a small shift, which leaves the same slogans of "Soviet power" with ever so slight a change or correction. Yet, in actual fact the whiteguards only used the non-Party elements as a stepping stone to get in. This is politically inevitable. We saw the petty-bourgeois, anarchist elements in the Russian revolution, and we have been fighting them for decades. We have seen them in action since February

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1917, during the great revolution, and their parties' attempts to prove that their programme differed little from that of the Bolsheviks, but that only their methods in carrying it through were different. We know this not only from the experience of the October Revolution, but also of the outlying regions and various areas within the former Russian Empire where the Soviet power was temporarily replaced by other regimes. Let us recall the Democratic Committee in Samara.[56] They all came in demanding equality, freedom, and a constituent assembly, and every time they proved to be nothing but a conduit for whiteguard rule. Because the Soviet power is being shaken by the economic situation, we must consider all this experience and draw the theoretical conclusions a Marxist cannot escape. The experience of the whole of Europe shows the practical results of trying to sit between two stools. That is why in this context we must say that political friction, in this case, is a great danger. We must take a hard look at this petty-bourgeois counter-revolution with its calls for freedom to trade. Unrestricted trade -- even if it is not as bound up initially with the whiteguards as Kronstadt was -- is still only the thin end of the wedge for the whiteguard element, a victory for capital and its complete restoration. We must, I repeat, have a keen sense of this political danger.

    It shows what I said in dealing with our platforms discussion: in face of this danger we must understand that we must do more than put an end to Party disputes as a matter of form -- we shall do that, of course. We need to remember that we must take a much more serious approach to this question.

    We have to understand that, with the peasant economy in the grip of a crisis, we can survive only by appealing to the peasants to help town and countryside. We must bear in mind that the bourgeoisie is trying to pit the peasants against the workers; that behind a façade of workers' slogans it is trying to incite the petty-bourgeois anarchist elements against the workers. This, if successful, will lead directly to the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat and, consequently, to the restoration of capitalism and of the old landowner and capitalist regime. The political danger here is obvious. A number of revolutions have clearly gone

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that way; we have always been mindful of this possibility and have warned against it. This undoubtedly demands of the ruling party of Communists, and of the leading revolutionary elements of the proletariat a different attitude to the one we have time and again displayed over the past year. It is a danger that undoubtedly calls for much greater unity and discipline; it undoubtedly requires that we should all pull harder together. Otherwise we shall not cope with the dangers that have fallen to our lot.

    Then there are the economic problems. What is the meaning of the unrestricted trade demanded by the petty-bourgeois elements? It is that in the proletariat's relations with the small farmers there are difficult problems and tasks we have yet to solve. I am-speaking of the victorious proletar iat's relations with the small proprietors when the proletarian revolution unfolds in a country where the proletariat is in a minority, and the petty bourgeoisie, in a majority. In such a country the proletariat's role is to direct the transition of these small proprietors to socialised and collective work. Theoretically this is beyond dispute. We have dealt with this transition in a number of legislative acts, but we know that it does not turn on legislative acts, but on practical implementation, which, we also know, can be guaranteed when you have a very powerful, large-scale industry capable of providing the petty producer with such benefits that he will see its advantages in practice.

    That is how Marxists and all socialists who have given thought to the social revolution and. its tasks have always regarded the question in theory. But Russia's most pronounced characteristic of which I have spoken is that we have, on the one hand, not only a minority, but a considerable minority of proletarians, and, on the other, a vast majority of peasants. And the conditions in which we have had to defend the revolution made the solution of our problems incredibly difficult. We have not been able to show all the advantages of large-scale production, for it lies in ruins, and is dragging out a miserable existence. It can only be rehabilitated by demanding sacrifices from these very same small farmers. To get industry on its feet you need fuel; if you need fuel, you must rely on firewood; and if you rely on firewood, you must look to the peasant and

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his horse. In conditions of crisis, the fodder shortage and the loss of cattle, the peasant must give his produce on credit to the Soviet power for the sake of a large-scale industry which has not yet given him a thing. That is the economic situation which gives rise to enormous difficulties and demands a deeper analysis of the conditions of transition from war to peace. We cannot run a war-time economy otherwise than by telling the peasants: "You must make loans to the workers' and peasants' state to help it pull through." When concentrating on economic rehabilitation, we must understand that we have before us a small farmer, a small proprietor and producer who will work for the market until the rehabilitation and triumph of large-scale production. But rehabilitation on the old basis is impossible; it will take years, at least a decade, and possibly longer, in view of the havoc. Until then we shall have to deal, for many long years, with the small producer as such, and the unrestricted trade slogan will be inevitable. It is dangerous, not because it covers up the aspirations of the whiteguards and Mensheviks, but because it may become widespread in spite of the peasants' hatred for the whiteguards. It is apt to spread because it conforms to the economic conditions of the small producer's existence. It is out of such considerations that the Central Committee adopted its decision to start a discussion on the substitution of a tax for surplus food appropriation and today placed this question squarely before the Congress, a motion which today's resolution approves.[57] The tax and appropriation problem had been brought up in our legislation a long time ago, back in late 1918. The tax law was dated October 30, 1918. The law on a tax in kind on the farmer was enacted, but never became operative. A number of instructions were issued in the few months after its promulgation, but it was never applied. On the other hand, the confiscation of surpluses from the peasants was a measure with which we were saddled by the imperative conditions of war-time, but which no longer applies to anything like the peace time conditions of the peasant's economy. He needs the assurance that, while he has to give away a certain amount, he will have so much left to sell locally.

    The whole of our economy and its various branches were

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affected throughout by war-time conditions. With this in mind, our task was to collect a definite quantity of food, regardless of what it did to the national turnover. As we turn from problems of war to those of peace, we take a different view of the tax in kind: we see it not only from the standpoint of meeting the needs of the state, but also those of the small farms. We must try to understand the economic forms of the petty farmer's indignation against the proletariat which has been in evidence and which is being aggravated in the current crisis. We must try to do our utmost in this respect for it is a matter of vital importance. We must allow the peasant to have a certain amount of leeway in local trade, and supplant the surplus food appropriation by a tax, to give the small farmer a chance to plan his production and determine its scale in accordance with the tax. We know quite well, of course, that in our conditions this is a very difficult thing to do. The sown area, the crop yield, and the farm implements have all been reduced, the surpluses have undoubtedly decreased, and in very many cases have disappeared altogether. These circumstances must be regarded as a fact. The peasant will have to go hungry for a while in order to save the towns and factories from famine. That is something quite understandable on a country-wide scale, but we do not expect the poverty-stricken lone-wolf farmer to understand it. And we know that we shall not be able to do without coercion, on which the impoverished peasants are very touchy. Nor must we imagine that this measure will rid us of the crisis. But we do regard it as our task to make the maximum concessions, to give the small producer the best conditions to come into his own. Up to now, we have been adapting ourselves to the tasks of war; we must now adapt ourselves to the conditions of peace. The Central Committee is faced with this task -- the task of switching to the tax in kind in conditions of proletarian power, and it is closely bound up with the question of concessions. You will be having a special discussion on this problem, and it requires your special consideration. By granting concessions, the proletarian power can secure an agreement with advanced capitalist states. On it depends our industrial growth, without which we cannot hope to advance towards communism.

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On the other hand, in this period of transition in a country where the peasants predominate, we must manage to go over to measures giving economic security to the peasants, and do the most we can to ease their economic condition. Until we have remoulded the peasant, until large-scale machinery has recast him, we must assure him of the possibility of running his economy without restrictions. We are now in a transitional phase, and our revolution is surrounded by capitalist countries. As long as we are in this phase, we are forced to seek highly complex forms of relationships. Oppressed by war, we were unable to concentrate on how to establish economic relations between the proletarian state power, with an incredibly devastated large-scale industry, and the small farmers, and how to find forms of coexistence with them, who, as long as they remain small farmers, cannot exist without their small economy having some system of exchange. I believe this to be the Soviet Government's most important question in the sphere of economics and politics at the present time. I believe that it sums up the political results of our work, now that the war period has ended and we have begun, in the year under review, to make the transition to peace.

    This transition is bound up with such difficulties and has so clearly delineated this petty-bourgeois element, that we must take a sober view of it. We view this series of events in terms of the class struggle, and we have never doubted that the relations between the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie are a difficult problem, demanding complex measures or, to be more accurate, a whole system of complex, transitional measures, to ensure the victory of the proletarian power. The fact that we issued our tax in kind decree at the end of 1918 proves that the Communists were aware of this problem, but were unable to solve it because of the war. With the Civil War on, we had to adopt war-time measures. But it would be a very great mistake indeed if we drew the conclusion that these are the only measures and relations possible. That would surely lead to the collapse of the Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat. When the transition to peace takes place in a period of economic crisis, it should be borne in mind that it is easier to build up a proletarian state in a country with large-

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scale production than in one with a predominantly small-scale production. This problem has to be approached in a whole number of ways, and we do not close our eyes to these difficulties, or forget that the proletariat is one thing, and the small-scale producer, another. We have not forgotten that there are different classes, that petty-bourgeois, anarchist counter-revolution is a political step to whiteguard rule. We must face this squarely, with an awareness that this needs, on the one hand, maximum unity, restraint and discipline within the proletarian party, and on the other, a series of economic measures which we have not been able to carry out so far because of the war. We must recognise the need to grant concessions, and purchase machinery and equipment to satisfy agriculture, so as to exchange them for grain and re-establish relations between the proletariat and the peasants which will enable it to exist in peace-time conditions. I trust that we shall return to this problem, and I repeat that, in my view, we are dealing here with an important matter, and that the past year, which must be characterised as a period of transition from war to peace, confronts us with some extremely difficult problems.

    Let me say a few words in conclusion about combating bureaucratic practices, the question which has taken up so much of our time. It came up before the Central Committee last summer; in August the Central Committee sent a circular to all organisations, and the matter was put before a Party conference in September. Finally, at the December Congress of Soviets, it was dealt with on a wider scale.[58] We do have a bureaucratic ulcer; it has been diagnosed and has to be treated in earnest. Of course, in the discussion that we have had some platforms dealt with the problem quite frivolously, to say the least, and, by and large, from a petty-bourgeois viewpoint. There is no doubt that some discontent and stirrings have recently been in evidence among non-Party workers. Non-Party meetings in Moscow have clearly turned "democracy" and "freedom" into slogans leading up to the overthrow of the Soviet power. Many, or, at any rate, some representatives of the Workers' Opposition have battled against this petty-bourgeois, counter-revolutionary evil, and have said: "We shall unite against this." And in actual fact they have been able to display

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the maximum unity. I cannot tell whether all the supporters of the Workers' Opposition group and other groups with semi-syndicalist platforms are like them. We need to learn more about this at the Congress, we need to understand that the struggle against the evils of bureaucracy is absolutely indispensable, and that it is just as intricate as the fight against the petty-bourgeois element. The bureaucratic practices of our state system have become such a serious malaise that they are dealt with in our Party Programme, because they are connected with this petty-bourgeois element, which is widely dispersed. This malaise can only be cured by the working people's unity and their ability not only to welcome the decrees of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection (have you seen many decrees that have not been welcomed?) but to exercise their right through the Inspection, something you don't find either in the villages, the towns, or even the capital cities. Those who shout loudest against the evils of bureaucracy very frequently do not know how to exercise this right. Very great attention needs to be paid to this fact.

    In this area, we often see those who battle against this evil, possibly with a sincere desire to help the proletarian party, the proletarian dictatorship and the proletarian movement, actually helping the petty-bourgeois, anarchist element, which on more than one occasion during the revolution has shown itself to be the most dangerous enemy of the proletarian dictatorship. And now -- and this is the main conclusion and lesson of the past year -- it has once again shown itself to be the most dangerous enemy, which is most likely to have followers and supporters in a country like ours, to change the mood of the broad masses and to affect even a section of the non-Party workers. That is when the proletarian state finds itself in a very difficult position. Unless we understand this, learn our lesson, and make this Congress a turning-point both in cconomic policy and in the sense of maximum unity of the proletariat, we shall have to apply to ourselves the unfortunate saying: we have forgotten nothing of what -- small and trifling at times -- deserves to be forgotten, and have learned nothing of the serious things this year of the revolution should have taught us. I hope that will not be the case! (Stormy applause.)

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    We have repeatedly said, and I have, in particular, that our task is to separate the wheat from the chaff in the Workers' Opposition, because it has spread to some extent, and has damaged our work in Moscow. There was no difference of opinion in the Central Committee on that score. There was evidence of damage to our work, the start of factionalism and a split in November, during the two-room conference[59] -- when some met here and others down at the other end of the floor, and when I had my share of the trouble, for I had to act as errand-boy and shuttle between the rooms.

    Back in September, during the Party Conference,[60] we regarded it as our task to separate the wheat from the chaff for the group could not be regarded as consisting entirely of good stuff. When we hear complaints about inadequate democracy, we say: it is absolutely true. Indeed, it is not heing practised sufficiently. We need assistance and advice in this matter. We need real democracy, and not just talk. We even accept those who call themselves the Workers' Opposition, or something worse, although I think that for members of the Communist Party no name can be worse or more disreputable. But even if they had adopted a much worse title, we say to ourselves: since this is a malaise that has affected a section of the workers we must pay the closest attention to it. And we should be given credit for the very thing that Comrade Osinsky has accused us of, though why he should have done so, I don't know.

    I now come to the Workers' Opposition. You have admitted that you are in opposition. You have come to the Party Congress with Comrade Kollontai's pamphlet which is entitled The Workers' Opposition. When you sent in the final proofs, you knew about the Kronstadt events and the rising petty-bourgeois counter-revolution. And it is at a time like this that you come here, calling yourselves a Workers' Opposition. You don 't seem to realise the responsibility you are undertaking, and the way you are disrupting our

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unity! What is your object? We will question you and put you through a test right here.

    Comrade Osinsky used this expression in a polemical sense; he seemed to think that we were guilty of some mistake or misdemeanour. Like Ryazanov, he saw political trickery in our policy towards the Workers' Opposition. It is not political trickery; it is the policy the Central Committee has been pursuing, and will continue to pursue. Since unhealthy trends and groups have arisen, let us more than redouble our attention to them.

    If there is anything at all sound in that opposition, we must make every effort to sift it from the rest. We cannot combat the evils of bureaucracy effectively, or practise democracy consistently because we lack the strength and are weak. We must enlist those who can help us in this matter, and expose and sift out those who produce such pamphlets on the pretext of helping us.

    This task of sifting is being facilitated at the Party Congress. Representatives of the ailing group have been elected to the Presidium and these "poor", "wronged", and "banished" people will no longer dare to complain and wail. There's the rostrum, up on it, and let's have your answer! You have spoken more than anyone else. Now let us see what you have in store for us, with this looming danger, which, you admit, is a greater one than Denikin! What have you come up with? What is the nature of your criticism? We must have this test now, and I think it will be the final one. We have had enough of that sort of thing! The Party will not be trifled with in this way! Whoever comes to the Congress with such a pamphlet is trifling with the Party. You can't play that kind of game when hundreds of thousands of demoralised veterans are playing havoc with our economy -- the Party will not stand for such treatment. You can't behave that way. You must realise that, and put a stop to it!

    After these preliminary remarks about the election to the Presidium and the character of the Workers' Opposition I want to draw your attention to Comrade Kollontai's pamphlet. It really deserves your attention, for it sums up the activity this opposition has been carrying on for several months, or the disintegration it has caused. It was

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said here, by a comrade from Samara, I think, that I had stuck the label of syndicalism on the Workers' Opposition, in an "administrative" fashion. The reference is altogether misplaced, and we must investigate which of the questions calls for an administrative solution. Comrade Milonov tried to score with a terrifying catchword, but it fell flat. He said that I stuck on a label in "administrative" fashion. I have said before that at our meetings Comrade Shlyapnikov and others have accused me of "intimidating" people with the word "syndicalism". When this was mentioned at one of our discussions, at the Miners' Congress, I think, I replied to Comrade Shlyapnikov: "Do you hope to take in any grown-ups?" After all, Comrade Shlyapnikov and I have known each other for many, many years, ever since the period of our underground work and emigration -- how can he say that I am trying to intimidate anyone by characterising certain deviations? And when I say that the stand of the Workers' Opposition is wrong, and that it is syndicalism -- what has administrating got to do with it?! And why does Comrade Kollontai write that I have been bandying the word "syndicalism" about in frivolous fashion? She ought to produce some proof before saying anything like that. I am prepared to allow that my proof is wrong, and that Comrade Kollontai's statement is weightier -- I am prepared to believe that. But we must have some little proof -- not in the form of words about intimidating or administrating (which, unfortunately, my official duties compel me to engage in a great deal), but in the form of a definite reply, refuting my accusation that the Workers' Opposition is a deviation towards syndicalism.

    I made it before the whole Party, with a full sense of responsibility, and it was printed in a pamphlet in 250,000 copies, and everyone has read it. Evidently, all the comrades have prepared for this Congress, and they should know that the syndicalist deviation is an anarchist deviation, and that the Workers' Opposition, which is hiding behind the backs of the proletariat, is a petty-bourgeois, anarchist element.

    That it has been penetrating into the broad masses is evident, and the Party Congress has thrown light on this fact. That this element has become active is proved by

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Comrade Kollontai's pamphlet and Comrade Shlyapnikov's theses. And this time you can't get away with talk about being a true proletarian, as Comrade Shlyapnikov is in the habit of doing.

    Comrade Kollontai starts her pamphlet with the following: "The opposition," we read on page one, "consists of the advanced section of the class-organised proletarians, who are Communists." A delegate from Siberia told the Miners' Congress[61] that over there they had discussed the same questions as were being discussed in Moscow, and Comrade Kollontai mentions this in her pamphlet:

    "'We had no idea that there were disagreements and discussions in Moscow about the role of the trade unions,' a delegate from Siberia told the Miners' Congress, 'but we were set astir by the same questions that you are faced with over here.'"

    Further:

    "The Workers' Opposition has the backing of the proletarian masses, or, to be more precise: it is the class-welded, class-conscious and class-consistent section of our industrial proletariat."

    Well, thank heaven, we now know that Comrade Kollontai and Comrade Shlyapnikov are "class-welded" and "class conscious". But, comrades, when you say and write such things you must have some sense of proportion! Comrade Kollontai writes on page 25, and this is one of the main points of the Workers' Opposition theses, the following:

    "The organisation of the management of the national economy is the function of an All-Russia Congress of Producers organised in trade and industrial unions, which shall elect a central body to run the whole of the national economy of the Republic."

    That is the very thesis of the Workers' Opposition that I have quoted in every case in the discussion and in the press. I must say that after reading it I did not trouble to read the rest, as that would have been a waste of time; for that thesis made it quite clear that these people had reached the limit, and that theirs is a petty-bourgeois, anarchist element. Now, in the light of the Kronstadt events, that thesis sounds queerer than ever.

    At the Second Congress of the Comintern last summer,

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I pointed to the significance of the resolution on the role of the Communist Party. It is a resolution uniting the Communist workers and the Communist Parties of the world. It explains everything. Does that mean that we are fencing off the Party from the whole of the working class, which is definitely exercising a dictatorship? That is what certain "Leftists" and very many syndicalists think, and the idea is now widespread. It is the product of petty-bourgeois ideology. The theses of the Workers' Opposition fly in the face of the decision of the Second Congress of the Comintern on the Communist Party's role in operating the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is syndicalism because -- consider this carefully -- our proletariat has been largely declassed; the terrible crises and the closing down of the factories have compelled people to flee from starvation. The workers have simply abandoned their factories; they have had to settle down in the country and have ceased to be workers. Are we not aware of the fact that the unprecedented crises, the Civil War, the disruption of proper relations between town and country and the cessation of grain deliveries have given rise to a trade in small articles made at the big factories -- such as cigarette lighters -- which are exchanged for cereals, because the workers are starving, and no grain is being delivered? Have we not seen this happen in the Ukraine, or in Russia? That is the economic source of the proletariat's declassing and the inevitable rise of petty-bourgeois, anarchist trends.

    The experience of all our hardships tells us how desperately hard it is to combat them. After two and a half years of the Soviet power we came out in the Communist International and told the world that the dictatorship of the proletariat would not work except through the Communist Party. At the time, the anarchists and syndicalists furiously attacked us and said: "You see, this is what they think -- a Communist Party is needed to operate the proletarian dictatorship.[62] But we said this before the whole Communist International. After all this, you have these "class conscious and class-welded" people coming and telling us that "the organisation of the management of the national economy is the function of an All-Russia Congress of Producers" (Comrade Kollontai's pamphlet). What is this "All-

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Russia Congress of Producers"? Are we going to waste more time on that sort of opposition in the Party? I think we have had enough of this discussion! All the arguments about freedom of speech and freedom to criticise, of which the pamphlet is full and which run through all the speeches of the Workers' Opposition, constitute nine-tenths of the meaning of these speeches, which have no particular meaning at all. They are all words of the same order. After all, comrades, we ought to discuss not only words, but also their meaning. You can't fool us with words like "freedom to criticise". When we were told that there were symptoms of a malaise in the Party, we said that this deserved our redoubled attention: the malaise is undoubtedly there, let us help to cure it; but tell us how you intend to go about it. We have spent quite a lot of time in discussion, and I must say that the point is now being driven farther home with "rifles" than with the opposition's theses. Comrades, this is no time to have an opposition. Either you're on this side, or on the other, but then your weapon must be a gun, and not an opposition. This follows from the objective situation, and you mustn't blame us for it. Comrades, let's not have an opposition just now! I think the Party Congress will have to draw the conclusion that the opposition's time has run out and that the lid's on it. We want no more oppositions! (Applause.)

    This group has long been free to criticise. And now, at this Party Congress, we ask: What are the results and the content of your criticism? What have you taught the Party by your criticism? We are prepared to enlist the services of those of you who stand closest to the masses, the really class-welded and class-mature masses. If Comrade Oinsky regards this as political trickery he will be isolated, for the rest will regard it as a real help to Party members. We must really help those who live with the workers' masses, who have intimate knowledge of them, who have experience and can advise the Central Committee. Let them call themselves what they like -- it makes no difference -- as long as they help in the work, as long as they help us, instead of playing at opposition and insisting on having groups and factions at all costs. But if they continue this game of opposition, the Party will have to expel them.

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    And when on this very same page of her pamphlet Comrade Kollontai writes in bold type about "lack of confidence in the working class", the idea is that they are a real "workers'" opposition. There is an even more striking expression of this idea on page 36:

    "The Workers' Opposition cannot, and must not, make any concessions. This does not mean calling for a split. . . . No, its aim is different. Even in the event of defeat at the Coneress, it must remain within the Party and firmly defend its point of view, step by step, saving the Party and straightening out its line."

    "Even in the event of defeat at the Congress" -- my word, what foresight! (Laughter.) You will pardon me if I take the liberty of saying, on my oun behalf, that I am sure that is something the Party Congress will certainly not permit! (Applause.) Everyone has the right to straighten out the Party's line, and you have had every opportunity of doing so.

    The condition has been laid down at the Party Congress that there must not be the slightest suspicion that we want to expel anybody. We welcome every assistance in getting democracy working, but when the people are exhausted it will take more than talk to do it. Everyone who wants to help is to be welcomed; but when they say that they will "make no concessions" and will make efforts to save the Party, while remaining in it, we say: yes, if you are allowed to stay! (Applause.)

    In this case, we have no right to leave any room for ambiguity. We certainly need help in combating bureaucracy, safeguarding democracy, and extending contacts with the truly working-class masses. We can and must make "concessions" in this respect. And though they keep saying that they will not make any concessions, we shall repeat: We will. That's not making concessions but helping the workers' Party. In this way, we shall win over all the sound and proletarian elements in the Workers' Opposition to the side of the Party, leaving outside the "class-conscious" authors of syndicalist speeches. (Applause.) This has been done in Moscow. The Moscow Gubernia Conference last November ended up in two rooms: some met in one, others, in another. That was the eve of a split. The last Moscow Conference said, "We will take from the Workers'

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Opposition those we want, and not those they want ", because we need the assistance of men who are connected with the masses of workers and who can teach us how to combat the evils of bureaucracy in practice. This is a difficult task. I think the Party Congress should take note of the Muscovites' experience and stage a test, not only on this point, but on all the points of the agenda. As a result, the people who declare that they "will make no concessions" must be told: "But the Party will." We must all pull together. By means of this policy we shall sift the sound elements from the unsound in the Workers' Opposition, and the Party will be strengthened.

    Just think: it was said here that production should be run by an "All-Russia Congress of Producers". I find myself groping for words to describe this nonsense, but am reassured by the fact that all the Party workers present here are also Soviet functionaries who have been doing their work for the revolution for one, two or three years. It is not worth criticising that sort of thing in their presence. When they hear such tedious speeches they close the discussion, because it is frivolous to speak of an "All-Russia Congress of Producers" running the national economy. A proposal of that kind could be made in a country where the political power has been taken but no start has been made on the work. We have made a start. And it is a curious fact that on page 33 of this pamphlet we find the following:

    "The Workers' Opposition is not so ignorant as to disregard the great role of technique and of technically trained forces. . . . It has no intention to set up its organs of administration of the national economy elected by the Producers' Congress and then to dissolve the economic councils, chief administrations and central boards. No, the idea is quite different: it is to subordinate these necessary, technically valuable centres of administration to its guidance, assign theoretical tasks to them and use them in the same way as the factory owners once used the services of technical experts."

    In other words, Comrade Kollontai and Comrade Shlyapnikov, and their "class-welded" followers, are to subordinate to their necessary guidance the economic councils, chief administrations and central boards -- all the Rykovs, Nogins and other "nonentities" -- and assign to them theoretical tasks! Comrades, are we to take that seriously? If

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you have had any "theoretical tasks", why had you not assigned them before? Why did we proclaim freedom of discussion? It was not merely to engage in verbal exchanges. During the war we used to say: "This is not the time for criticism: Wrangel is out there. We correct our mistakes by beating Wrangel." After the war, we hear shouts of "We want freedom of discussion!" When we ask, "Tell us our mistakes!", we are told, "The economic councils and chief administrations must not be dissolved; they must be assigned theoretical tasks." Comrade Kiselyov, as a representative of the "class-welded " Workers ' Opposition, was left in an insignificant minority at the Miners' Congress, but, when he was head of the Chief Administration of the Textile Industry, why did he not teach us how to combat the evils of bureaucracy? Why did not Comrade Shlyapnikov, when he was a People's Commissar, and Comrade Kollontai, when she too was a People's Commissar, why did they not teach us how to combat the evils of bureaucracy? We know that we have a touch of bureaucracy, and we, who have to deal with this bureaucratic machine at first hand, suffer as a result. You sign a paper -- but how is it applied in practice? How do you check up on it, when the bureaucratic machine is so enormous? If you know how to make it smaller, dear comrades, please share your knowledge with us! You have a desire to argue, but you give us nothing apart from general statements. Instead, you indulge in demagogy pure and simple. For it is sheer demagogy to say: "The specialists are ill-treating the workers; the workers are leading a life of penal servitude in a toilers' republic."

    Comrades, I entreat you all to read this pamphlet. You could not find a better argument against the Workers' Opposition than Comrade Kollontai's pamphlet, The Workers' Opposition. You will see that this is really no way to approach the question. We all admit that bureaucratic practices are a vexed question, and as much is stated in our Party Programme. It is very easy to criticise the chief administrations and economic councils, but your kind of criticism leads the masses of non-Party workers to think they should be dissolved. The Socialist-Rovolutionaries seize upon this Some Ukrainian comrades have told me

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that Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, at their conference,[63] formulated their proposals in exactly the same way. And what about the Kronstadt resolutions[64]? You have not all read them? We will show them to you: they say the same thing. I emphasised the danger of Kronstadt because it lies precisely in the fact that the change demanded was apparently very slight: "The Bolsheviks must go . . . we will correct the regime a little." That is what the Kronstadt rebels are demanding. But what actually happened was that Savinkov arrived in Revel, the Paris newspapers reported the events a fortnight before they actually occurred, and a whiteguard general appeared on the scene. That is what actually happened. All revolutions have gone that way. That is why we are saying: Since we are faced with that sort of thing, we must unite, and, as I said in my first speech, counter it with rifles, no matter how innocent it may appear to be. To this the Workers' Opposition does not reply, but says: "We shall not dissolve the economic councils but 'subordinate them to our guidance'." The "All-Russia Congress of .Producers" is to subordinate to its guidance the Economic Council's 71 chief administrations. I ask you: is that a joke? Can we take them seriously? This is the petty-bourgeois, anarchist element not only among the masses of the workers, but also in our own Party; and that is something we cannot tolerate in any circumstances. We have allowed ourselves a luxury: we gave these people the opportunity to express their opinions in the greatest possible detail and have heard their side of it several times. When I had occasion to debate with Comrades Trotsky and Kiselyov at the Second Miners' Congress, two points of view were definitely revealed. The Workers' Opposition said: "Lenin and Trotsky will unite." Trotsky came out and said: "Those who fail to understand that it is necessary to unite are against the Party; of course we will unite, because we are men of the Party." I supported him. Of course, Comrade Trotsky and I differed; and when more or less equal groups appear within the Central Committee, the Party will pass judgement, and in a way that will make us unite in accordance with the Party's will and instructions. Those are the statements Comrade Trotsky and I made at the Miners' Congress, and repeat here; but the Workers'

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Opposition says: "We will make no concessions, but we will remain in the Party." No, that trick won't work! (Applause.) I repeat that in combating the evils of bureaucracy we welcome the assistance of every worker, whatever he may call himself, if he is sincere in his desire to help. This help is highly desirable if sincere. In this sense we will make "concessions" (I take the word in quotation marks). No matter how provocative the statements against us, we shall make "concessions" because we know how hard the going is. We cannot dissolve the economic councils and chief administrations. It is absolutely untrue to say that we have no confidence in the working class and that we are keeping the workers out of the governing bodies. We are on the look-out for every worker who is at all fit for managerial work; we are glad to have him and give him a trial. If the Party has no confidence in the working class and does not allow workers to occupy responsible posts, it ought to be ousted! Go on, be logical and say it! I have said that that is not true: we are on our last legs for want of men and we are propared to take any assistance, with both hands, from any efficient man, especially if he is a worker. But we have no men of this type, and this creates the ground for anarchy. We must keep up the fight against the evils of bureaucracy -- and it demands hundreds of thousands of men.

    Our Programme formulates the task of combating the evils of bureaucracy as one of extremely long duration. The wider the dispersal of the peasantry, the more inevitable are bureaucratic practices at the centre.

    It is easy to write things like this: "There is something rotten in our Party." You know what weakening the Soviet apparatus means when there are two million Russian émigrés abroad. They were driven out by the Civil War. They have gratified us by holding their meetings in Berlin, Paris, London, and all the other capitals but ours. They support this element that is called the small producer, the petty-bourgeois element.

    We shall do everything that can be done to eliminate bureaucratic practices by promoting workers from below, and we shall accept every piece of practical advice on this matter. Even if we give this the inappropriate name of "concessions", as some here have done, there is no doubt

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that, despite this pamphlet, 99 per cent of the Congress will say, "In spite of this we will make 'concessions' and win over all that is sound." Take your place by the side of the workers and teach us how to combat the evils of bureaucracy, if you know how to do it better than we do; but don't talk as Shlyapnikov has done. That is not the sort of thing that one can brush aside. I shall not deal with the theoretical part of his speech because Kollontai said the same thing. I shall deal with the facts he quoted. He said that potatoes were rotting, and asked why Tsyurupa was not being prosecuted.

    But I ask: Why is Shlyapnikov not prosecuted for making such statements? Are we seriously discussing discipline and unity in an organised Party, or are we at a meeting of the Kronstadt type? For his is a Kronstadt, anarchist type of statement, to which the response is a gun. We organised members of the Party, have come here to rectify our mistakes. If Shlyapnikov thinks that Tsyurupa ought to be prosecuted, why had he not, as an organised member of the Party, lodged a complaint with the Control Commission? When we were setting up the Control Commission, we said: The Central Committee is swamped with administrative work. Let us elect people who enjoy the confidence of the workers, who will not have so much administrative work and will be able to examine complaints on behalf of the Central Committee. This created a means of developing criticism and rectifying mistakes. If Tsyurupa was so wrong why was not a complaint lodged with the Control Commission? Instead, Shlyapnikov comes to the Congress, the most responsible assembly of the Party and the Republic, and starts hurling accusations about rotting potatoes, and asking why Tsyurupa is not being prosecuted. But I ask, doesn't the Defence Department make any mistakes? Are not batt]es lost and waggons and supplies abandoned? Shall we then prosecute the military workers? Comrade Shlyapnikov comes here and hurls accusations which he himself does not believe, and which he cannot prove. Potatoes are rotting. Of course, many mistakes will be made, for our machinery wants adjustment, and our transport is not running smoothly. But when instead of a rectification of our mistakes such accusations are hurled at random, and when,

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in addition -- as several comrades here have noted -- there is an undertone of malice in this question of why Tsyurupa is not being prosecuted, then I say: Why not prosecute us, the Central Committee? We think that such talk is demagogy. Either proceedings should be started against Tsyurupa and us, or against Shlyapnikov; but no work can be done in such a spirit. When Party comrades talk as Shlyapnikov has done here -- and he always talks like that at other meetings -- and Comrade Kollontai's pamphlet says the same thing, although she mentions no names, we say: We cannot go on like this, for it is the kind of demagogy that the Makhno anarchists and the Kronstadt elements jump at. We are both members of the Party, and both of us are standing before this most responsible tribunal. If Tsyurupa has committed an unlawful act and we, the Central Committee, have condoned it, then why not come out with a definite charge, instead of throwing about words that will be caught up here, in Moscow, tomorrow, and immediately carried by the grapevine telegraph to the bourgeoisie. Tomorrow all the gossips in the Soviet offices will be rubbing their hands in glee and repeating your words with delight. If Tsyurupa is the kind of man Shlyapnikov accuses him of being, and if, as he demands, he ought to be prosecuted, then I say that we must seriously ponder over his words; such accusations are not lightly made. Those who make accusations of this sort should be either removed from the Party or told: We are putting you on this potato job; you go to such and such a gubernia and let's see whether you have less rotting potatoes than in the gubernias under Tsyurupa's charge.

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    Comrades, Comrade Trotsky was particularly polite in his polemics with me today and reproached me for being, or said that I was, extremely cautious. I thank him for the compliment, but regret that I cannot return it. On the contrary, I must speak of my incautious friend, so as to express my attitude to the mistake which has caused me to waste so much time, and which is now making us continue the debate on the trade union question, instead of dealing with more urgent matters. Comrade Trotsky had his final say in the discussion on the trade union question in Pravda of January 29, 1921. In his article, "There Are Disagreements, But Why Confuse Things?", he accused me of being responsible for this confusion by asking who started it all. The accusation recoils on Trotsky, for he is trying to shift the blame. The whole of his article was based on the claim that he had raised the question of the role of the trade unions in production, and that this is the subject that ought to have been discussed. This is not true; it is not this that has caused the disagreements, and made them painful. And however tedious it may be after the discussion to have to repeat it again and again -- true, I took part in it for only one month -- I must restate that that was not the starting point; it started with the "shake-up" slogan that was proclaimed at the Fifth All-Russia Conference of Trade Unions on November 2-6.[65] Already at that time it was realised by every one who had not overlooked Rudzutak's resolution -- and among those were the members of the Central Committee, including myself -- that no disagreements could be found on the role of the trade unions in production. But the three

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month discussion revealed them. They existed, and they were a political mistake. During a discussion at the Bolshoi Theatre, Comrade Trotsky accused me before responsible Party workers of disrupting the discussion.[66] I take that as a compliment: I did try to disrupt the discussion in the form it was being conducted, because with a severe spring ahead of us such pronouncements were harmful. Only the blind could have failed to see that.

    Comrade Trotsky now laughs at my asking who started it all, and is surprised that I should reproach him for refusing to serve on the commission. I did it because this is very important, Comrade Trotsky, very important, indeed; your refusal to serve on the trade union commission was a violation of Central Committee discipline. And when Trotsky talks about it, the result is not a controversy, but a shake up of the Party, and a generation of bitter feeling; it leads to extremes -- Comrade Trotsky used the expression "diabolical rage". I recall an expression used by Comrade Holtzmann -- I will not quote it because the word "diabolical" calls to mind something fiendish, whereas Holtzmann reminds one of something angelic. There is nothing "diabolical" about it, but we must not forget that both sides go to extremes, and, what is much more monstrous, some of the nicest comrades have gone to extremes. But when Comrade Trotsky's authority was added to this, and when in a public speech on December 25 he said that the Congress must choose between two trends, such words are unpardonable! They constitute the political mistake over which we are flghting. And it is naïve for people to try to be witty about two-room conferences. I should like to see the wag who says that Congress delegates are forbidden to confer to prevent their votes from being split. That would be too much of an exaggeration. It was Comrade Trotsky and Tsektran's political mistake to raise the "shake-up" question and to do it in an entirely wrong way. That was a political mistake, and it is yet to be rectified. As regards transport, we have a resolution.[67]

    What we are discussing is the trade union movement, and the relationship between the vanguard of the working class and the proletariat. There is nothing discreditable in our dismissing anybody from a high post. This casts no reflec-

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tion upon anybody. If you have made a mistake the Congress will recognise it assuch and will restore mutual relations and mutual confidence between the vanguard of the working class and the workers' mass. That is the meaning of the "Platform of Ten".[68] It is of no importance that there are things in it that can be substituted, and that this is emphasised by Trotsky and enlarged upon by Ryazanov. Someone said in a speech that there is no evidence of Lenin's having taken a hand in the platform or of his having taken any part in drafting it. I say to this: If I had a hand, by writing or phoning, in everything I sign, I would have gone mad long ago. I say that in order to estab]ish mutual relations and mutual confidence between the vanguard of the working class and the workers' mass, it was necessary, if Tsektran had made a mistake -- and anyone can make a mistake -- to rectify it. But it is a source of political danger to defend the mistake. We would have been faced with political bankruptcy if we had not done everything we could to turn the attitudes expressed here by Kutuzov to the service of democracy. Persuasion must come before coercion. We must make every effort to persuade people before applying coercion. We were not able to carry conviction to the broad masses, and disturbed the correct relationship between them and the vanguard.

    When people like Kutuzov devote part of a business-like speech to pointing out the scandalous bureaucratic practices in our machinery we say: That is true, our state is one with bureaucratic distortions. And we invite the non-Party workers to join us in righting them. I must say here that we should enlist comrades like Kutuzov for this work and promote them. That is the lesson of our experience.

    As for the syndicalist deviation -- it is ridiculous. That is all we have to say to Shlyapnikov, who maintained that the "All-Russia Congress of Producers", a demand set down in black and white in their platform and confirmed by Kollontai, can be upheld by a reference to Engels. Engels speaks of a communist society which will have no classes, and will consist only of producers.[69] Do we now have classes? Yes, we do. Do we have a class struggle? Yes, and a most furious one! To come in the midst of this furious class struggle and talk about an "All-Russia Congress of Producers" --

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isn't that a syndicalist deviation which must be emphatically and irrevocably condemned? We saw that in this platform hurly-burly even Bukharin was tripped up by the one-third nomination proposal. Comrades, in the history of the Party we must not forget such waverings.

    And now, since the Workers' Opposition has defended democracy, and has made some sound demands, we shall do our utmost to mend our fences with it; and the Congress as such should make a definite selection. You say that we are not doing enough to combat the evils of bureaucracy -- come and help us, come closer and help us in the fight; but it is not a Marxist, not a communist notion to propose an "All-Russia Congress of Producers". The Workers Opposition, with Ryazanov's help, is putting a false construction on our Programme which says: "The trade unions should eventually arrive at a de facto concentration in their hands of the whole administration of the whole national economy, as a single economic entity."[70] Exaggerating, as he always does, Shlyapnikov thinks that it will take us twenty-five centuries. . . . The Programme says: the trade unions "should eventually arrive", and when a Congress says that this has been done, the demand will have been carried out.

    Comrades, if the Congress now declares before the proletariat of the whole of Russia and of the whole world that it regards the proposals of the Workers' Opposition as a syndicalist semi-deviation, I am sure that all the truly proletarian and sound elements in the opposition will follow us and help us to regain the confidence of the masses, which has been shaken by Tsektran's slight mistake. I am sure that we shall strengthen and rally our ranks in a common effort and march forward together to the hard struggle that lies ahead. And marching forward unanimously, with firmness and resolution, we shall win out. (Applause.)

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