Written: Written April, not later than the 3rd, 1919
Published:
First published in 1963 in the Fifth Russian Edition of the Collected Works, Vol. 38.
Printed from the manuscript collated with the typewritten copy.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
2nd English Edition,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 42,
pages 133-134.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
D. Walters
Copyleft:
V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
© 2003
Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
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Text
This meeting of representatives of the working class and peasantry of the R.S.F.S.R. declares that the Soviet Republic has entered it most difficult month. The Allies are making their last desperate effort to crush us by force of arms. The food situation in the spring is the most difficult. The transport system is utterly disrupted.
Only the greatest effort can save us. Victory is possible. The revolution in Hungary has proved conclusively that the Soviet movement in Western Europe is growing and its victory is not far off. We have many allies all over the world, more than we imagine. We must hold on for another four or five difficult months in order to beat our enemies.
This meeting harshly condemns the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries,{1} the Mensheviks and the Right S.R.s who, while paying lip-service to Soviet power or protesting in word against the armed intervention of the Allies, are in fact helping the whiteguards when they agitate for strikes or for cessation of the civil war (although we offered peace to all!{3}) or for concessions to freedom of trade, and so on.
This meeting declares that all those Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who are prepared to help us in our difficult struggle shall be ensured full liberty as citizens of the Soviet Republic.
This meeting, however, declares relentless war upon those Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who, like the literary and political groups Vsegda Vperyod!{4} and Dyelo Naroda,{5} are actually impeding our struggle, actually assisting the whiteguards.
This meeting calls upon all workers, all workers渹 organisations and all working peasants to exert every effort to repel the enemies of Soviet power, to defend that power and improve the food supply and transport systems.
1. To enlist members of the middle section-i.e., people who are less experienced than the advanced workers and peasants-to replace the overworked advanced section.
2. To send more and more contingents of the advanced and rank-and-file workers out on food supply, transport and army work.
3. To enlist the largest possible number of politically conscious workers and peasants for work at the People渹s Commissariat for Railways and the State Control, in order to improve the functioning of these bodies and to eliminate bureaucracy and red tape.
4. To transfer as many people as possible from the starving cities to agricultural work, to vegetable gardening, to the rural districts, to the Ukraine, to the Don region, and so forth, in order to increase grain production.
All efforts to be exerted to assist the middle peasants, to put a stop to the abuses from which they so often suffer, and to render them comradely help. Those Soviet officials who refuse to carry out this policy-which is the only correct one-or who fail to understand it, must be immediately dismissed,
5. To combat all signs of weariness, faint-heartedness and vacillation, to enhearten in every way those who show such signs, strengthen their spirit, consciousness and comradely discipline. The working class and the peasantry of Russia have borne incredible burdens. The last few months have been incredibly difficult. But this meeting declares that the workers have not lost heart, that the working class remains at its post;, that it will overcome all difficulties and maintain at all costs the victory of the Soviet Socialist Republic in Russia and throughout the world.
{1} The first sheet of the manuscript is missing. The text up to the words "Left Socialist-Revolutionaries" is printed from the typewritten copy.—Ed.
{2} The Extraordinary Plenary Meeting of the Moscow Soviet of April l3, 1919, was held jointly with representatives of the district Soviets, factory committees and trade union executives in connection with the aggravation of the food situation in Moscow and the consequent agitation carried on among the railwaymen by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. The latter called upon the railwaymen to strike and sabotage work in the railway repair shops. This counter-revolutionary agitation led to a strike in the shops of the: Alexandrovsky Railway, as a result of which the central workshops were closed on March 31 by order of the People’s Commissariat for Railways and work in them was not resumed until April 3, after the kulak elements had been dismissed.
Lenin made a report at the meeting on the domestic and foreign situation of the Soviet Republic. A report on the state of railway transport was made by L. B. Krasin, and on the food policy by A. I. Svidersky. Speakers in the debate denounced the counter-revolutionary agitation of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. In winding up the debate, A. V. Lunacharsky moved the resolution on the domestic and foreign situation of the Soviet Republic drafted by Lenin. This volume contains the original version of this draft resolution. The meeting of the Moscow Soviet also adopted a special resolution branding the counter-revolutionary agitation and approving the measures taken by the Commissariat for Railways in regard to the Aleiandrovsky railway shops.
For Lenin’s report and resolution see present edition, Vol. 29 pp. 255-74.
{3} In January 1919 the Soviet Government made two offers of peace (on the 12th and 17th). On February 4 it notified the Governments of Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S.A. by radio that it was ready to attend the proposed peace conference on Princes Islands.
{4} Vsegda Vperyod! (Ever Forward!)—a Menshevik newspaper published in Moscow; in 1918 one issue appeared, and in 1919 it was published from January 22 to February 25.
{5} Dyslo Naroda (People’s Cause)—organ of the S.R. Party, published in Petrograd, then at intervals in Samara and Moscow under different names from March 1917 to March 1919. After the October Socialist Revolution the paper adopted an anti-Soviet attitude. It was closed down for counter-revolutionary activities.
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