Comrades, I cannot possibly agree with the preceding speaker, because I am sure that under no circumstances will you go straight to work in the rural districts after this evening. We members of the commission assumed that we were not speaking at this Congress only for the benefit of the gathering in this small hall, but for the benefit of the whole of Russia, which will not only peruse the decisions of our Congress, but will also want to know how much interest the Party is displaying in the question of work in the rural districts. Therefore, it is necessary to hear what the comrades from the districts have to say. If you spend an hour or an hour and a half on this, the work in the rural districts will not suffer in the least. Therefore, on behalf of the commission, I earnestly request that you do not grudge this hour or hour and a half. It is not likely that the practical workers who will speak here will add much that is new, but for the newspaper-reading public all over Russia these few hours of our work will be very beneficial.

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    Basing itself on the Party Programme adopted on March 22, 1919, insofar as it concerns work in the rural areas, and giving full support to the law already promulgated by the Soviet government on socialist land settlement and the measures for the transition to socialist farming, the Eighth Congress recognises that at the present time it is particularly important to adhere more strictly to the line of the Party in respect of the middle peasants, to display a more considerate attitude towards their needs, end arbitrary action on the part of the local authorities, and make an effort towards agreement with them.

    1) To confuse the middle peasants with the kulaks and to extend to them in one or another degree measures directed against the kulaks is to violate most flagrantly not only all the decrees of the Soviet government and its entire policy, but also all the basic principles of communism, according to which agreement between the proletariat and the middle peasants is one of the conditions for a painless transition to the abolition of all exploitation in the period of decisive struggle waged by the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie.

    2) The middle peasants, who have comparatively strong economic roots owing to the lagging of agricultural techniques behind industrial techniques even in the leading capitalist countries, to say nothing of Russia, will continue to exist for quite a long time after the beginning of the proletarian revolution. Therefore, the tactics of the functionaries of the Soviets in the villages, as well as of Party functionaries,

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must envisage a long period of co-operation with the middle peasants.

    3) The Party must at all costs ensure that all Soviet functionaries in the countryside have a clear and thorough grasp of the axiom of scientific socialism that the middle peasants are not exploiters since they do not profit by the labour of others. Such a class of small producers cannot lose by socialism, but, on the contrary, will gain a great deal by casting off the yoke of capital which exploits it in a thousand different ways even in a most democratic republic.

    The correctly applied policy of Soviet power in the countryside, therefore, ensures alliance and agreement between the victorious proletariat and the middle peasants.

    4) While encouraging co-operatives of all kinds as well as agricultural communes of middle peasants, representatives of Soviet power must not allow the slightest coercion to be used in setting them up. Associations are only worth while when they have been set up by the peasants themselves, on their own initiative, and the benefits of them have been verified in practice. Undue haste in this matter is harmful, for it can only strengthen prejudices against innovations among the middle peasants.

    Representatives of Soviet power who permit themselves to employ not only direct but even indirect compulsion to bring peasants into communes must be brought strictly to account and removed from work in the countryside.

    5) All arbitrary requisitioning, i.e., requisitioning not in conformity with the exact provisions of laws issued by the central authority, must be ruthlessly punished. The Congress insists on the strengthening of control in this field by the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, People's Commissariat of the Interior, and the All-Russia Central Executive Committee.

    6) At the present time the extreme chaos which has been caused in all countries of the world by the four years of imperialist war in the predatory interests of the capitalists, and which has become particularly acute in Russia, places the middle peasants in a difficult position.

    In view of this, the law issued by the Soviet government on the emergency tax, as distinct from all the laws issued by all the bourgeois governments in the world, makes a point

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of laying the burden of the tax wholly on the kulaks, the inconsiderable number of peasant exploiters who particularly enriched themselves during the war. The middle peasants must be taxed very mildly, so that the sum levied is fully within their means and not burdensome to them.

    The Party demands, in any case, lenience towards the middle peasants in collecting the emergency tax, even if this reduces the total revenue.

    7) The socialist state must extend the widest possible aid to the peasants, mainly by supplying the middle peasants with products of urban industries and, especially, improved agricultural implements, seed and various materials in order to raise efficiency in agriculture and ensure improvement of the peasants' working and living conditions.

    If the present economic chaos does not allow the immediate and full implementation of these measures, it remains the duty of local Soviet authorities to explore all possible avenues to render the poor and middle peasants any real aid to support them at the present difficult moment. The Party finds it necessary to establish a large state fund for this purpose.

    8) In particular, efforts must be made to give real and full effect to the law issued by the Soviet government which requires of state farms, agricultural communes, and all other similar associations that they render immediate and all-round assistance to the middle peasants in their neighbourhood. Only on the basis of such actual assistance is it possible to achieve agreement with the middle peasants. Only in this way can and must their confidence be won.

    The Congress draws the attention of all Party workers to the need to put into effect immediately all the points set forth in the agrarian section of the Party Programme, namely:

    (a) regulation of the use of land by the peasants (elimination of scattered holdings, the open field system, etc.), (b)supply of improved seeds and artificial fertilisers to the peasants, (c) improvement of the breeds of the peasants' livestock, (d) spreading of agronomical knowledge, (e) agronomical assistance to the peasants, (f) repair of the peasants' farm implements at repair shops belonging to the Soviets, (g) organisation of centres hiring out implements, experi-

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mental stations, model fields, etc., (h) improvements to the peasants' land.

    9) Peasants' co-operative associations with the object of increasing agricultural production, and especially of processing farm produce, improvements to the peasants' land, support of handicraft industries, etc., must be accorded extensive aid, both financial and organisational, by the state.

    10) The Congress reminds all concerned that neither the decisions of the Party nor the decrees of Soviet power have ever deviated from the line of agreement with the middle peasants. In the cardinal matter of the organisation of Soviet power in the countryside, for instance, a circular letter signed by the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and the People's Commissar for Food was issued when the Poor Peasants' Committees were established, pointing to the need to include in these Committees representatives of the middle peasants. When the Poor Peasants' Committees were abolished, the All-Russia Congress of Soviets again pointed to the need to include representatives of the middle peasants in the volost Soviets. The policy of the workers' and peasants' government and the Communist Party must in the future too be permeated by this spirit of agreement between the proletariat and the poor peasants on the one hand, and the middle peasants on the other.

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    Comrades, all the items on our agenda have been dealt with. Permit me to say a few words in closing the Congress.

    Comrades, it is not only the loss of one of our best organisers and practical leaders, Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, that has made the time at which we assembled here a very difficult one. It is a particularly difficult time because international imperialism is making a last and exceptionally strenuous effort to crush the Soviet Republic -- of this there is now no doubt. We do not doubt that the fierce attacks launched in the West and the East, accompanied as they are by a number of whiteguard revolts and attempts to dismantle the railway line in several places, are deliberate measures apparently decided on in Paris by the Entente imperialists. We all know, comrades, how difficult it was for Russia, after four years of imperialist war, to take up arms in defence of the Soviet Republic against the imperialist plunderers. We all know what a burden this war is, how it is exhausting us. But we also know that this war is being fought with redoubled vigour and dauntless courage only because for the first time in world history, an army, an armed force, has been created, which knows what it is fighting for; and because, for the first time in world history, workers and peasants are making incredible sacrifices in the knowledge that they are defending the Soviet Socialist Republic, the rule of the working people over the capitalists; they know that they are defending the cause of the world proletarian socialist revolution.

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    Amidst these difficult conditions we accomplished a great deal in a very short time. We managed to endorse our programme unanimously, as was the case with every vital decision of the Congress. We are convinced that in spite of its numerous literary and other shortcomings, this programme has already gone into the history of the Third International as the programme which sums up the results of the new stage in the world movement for the emancipation of the proletariat. We are convinced that in many countries, where we have far more allies and friends than we imagine, the mere translation of our programme will provide the most effective answer to the question as to what has been done by the Russian Communist Party, which is one of the units of the international proletariat. Our programme will serve as extremely effective material for propaganda and agitation; it is a document which will lead the workers to say, "Here are our comrades, our brothers; here our common cause is becoming reality."

    Comrades, we succeeded in passing a number of other important decisions at this Congress. We approved of the formation of the Third, Communist International, which was founded here in Moscow. We adopted a unanimous decision on the military question. Vast though the differences of opinion may have appeared at first, diverse as may have been the views of the many comrades who very frankly criticised the shortcomings of our military policy, we on the commission found no difficulty in arriving at an absolutely unanimous decision, and we shall leave this Congress convinced that our chief defender, the Red Army, for the sake of which the whole country is making such incalculable sacrifices, will find in every delegate to the Congress, in every member of the Party, a warm, unselfish and devoted assistant, leader, friend and collaborator.

    Comrades, we were able to solve the organisational problems confronting us with such ease because the solutions had been indicated by the entire history of the relations between the Party and the Soviets. All we were called upon to do was sum up. On the subject of our work in the rural districts; the Congress, in a unanimous decision speedily arrived at, laid down our policy on a question that is particularly important and particularly difficult, and one that

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in other countries is even regarded as insoluble -- the attitude of the proletariat which has overthrown the bourgeoisie towards the vast masses of middle peasants. We are all convinced that this Congress decision will help to consolidate our power. We are convinced that in the trying period through which we are now passing, when the imperialists are making their final effort to overthrow the Soviet government by force, and when an acute food shortage and the chaotic state of the transport have once again rendered the position of hundreds, thousands and millions of people desperate, the resolution we adopted and the spirit which animated the delegates to this Congress will help us to bear these trials and to live through this difficult half-year.

    We are convinced that this will be the last difficult half-year. This conviction of ours is greatly strengthened by the news we announced to the Congress the other day -- the news of the success of the proletarian revolution in Hungary. Up to now Soviet power has been victorious in only one country, among the peoples which once constituted the former Russian Empire; and short-sighted people, who found it exceptionally difficult to abandon routine and old habits of thought (even though they may have belonged to the socialist camp), imagined that this surprising swing towards proletarian Soviet democracy was due entirely to the peculiar conditions prevailing in Russia; they thought that perhaps the specific features of this democracy reflected, as in a distorting mirror, the peculiar features of former, tsarist Russia. If there was ever any foundation for such an opinion, there is certainly none whatever now. Comrades, the news received today gives us a picture of the Hungarian Revolution. We learn from today's news that the Allied powers have presented a brutal ultimatum to Hungary demanding free passage for their troops. The bourgeois government, seeing that the Allied powers wanted to move their troops through Hungary, seeing that Hungary would be subjected to the frightful sufferings of a new war -- this government of bourgeois compromisers voluntarily resigned, voluntarily opened negotiations with the Communists, our Hungarian comrades, who were in prison, and voluntarily admitted that there was no way out of the situation except by transferring power to the working people. (Applause.)

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    It was said that we were usurpers. At the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918, the only words with which the bourgeoisie and many of their followers described our revolution were "violence" and "usurpation". Even now we hear statements to the effect that the Bolshevik government is holding on by force, although we have repeatedly demonstrated that this is absurd. But if such absurdities could be uttered in the past, they have now been silenced by what has occurred in Hungary. Even the bourgeoisie has realised that there can be no government authority except that of the Soviets. The bourgeoisie of a more cultured country sees more clearly than our bourgeoisie did on the eve of October 25 that the country is perishing, that trials of increasing severity are being imposed on the people, and that, therefore, political power must be transferred to the Soviets, that the workers and peasants of Hungary, the new, Soviet, proletarian democracy must save her.

    Comrades, the difficulties which face the Hungarian revolution are immense. Hungary is a small country compared with Russia and can be stifled by the imperialists much more easily. However great the difficulties which undoubtedly still face Hungary, we have achieved a moral victory in addition to a victory for Soviet power. A most radical, democratic and compromising bourgeoisie realised that at a moment of extreme crisis, when a new war is menacing a country already exhausted by war, a Soviet government is a historical necessity, that in such a country there can be no government but a Soviet government, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

    Comrades, behind us there is a long line of revolutionaries who sacrificed their lives for the emancipation of Russia. The lot of the majority of these revolutionaries was a hard one. They suffered the persecution of the tsarist government, but it was not their good fortune to see the triumph of the revolution. A better fortune has fallen to our lot. Not only have we seen the triumph of our revolution, not only have we seen it become consolidated amidst unprecedented difficulties, create new forms of government and win the sympathy of the whole world, but we are also seeing the seed sown by the Russian revolution springing up in Europe. This imbues us with the absolute and unshakable conviction that no mat-

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ter how difficult the trials that may still befall us, and no matter how great the misfortunes that may be brought upon us by that dying beast, international imperialism, that beast will perish, and socialism will triumph throughout the world. (Prolonged applause.)

    I declare the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party closed.

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NOTES



  ^[23] This Congress of the R.C.P.(B.), held in Moscow, was attended by 301 delegates with the right to vote who represented 313,766 Party members and 102 delegates with voice but no vote. Lenin opened the Congress with a short speech. The Congress agenda was: report of the Central Committee, the Programme of the R.C.P.(B.), the foundation of the Communist International, the war situation and war policy, work in the countryside, organisational problems, and other business.
    Lenin delivered the report of the Central Committee and also reported on the Party Programme and work in the countryside.
    In a resolution on the report of the Central Committee the Congress expressed its full "approval of the political activities of the Central Committee".
    The Congress adopted the new Party Programme that had been drafted by Lenin. During the discussion on the Programme the Congress rejected the anti-Bolshevik views of Bukharin who proposed removing from the Programme the description of pre-monopoly capitalism and petty commodity production. Bukharin's views amounted to the same thing as the denial by the Mensheviks and Trotsky of the role of the middle peasant in socialist construction. Bukharin also slurred over the fact that kulaks emerge and develop from petty commodity economy. The Congress also rejected the anti-Bolshevik views of Bukharin and Pyatakov on the national question- they spoke against the right of nations to self-determination and, therefore. against equal rights for all nations. The Programme adopted by the Congress defined the tasks of the Communist Party in the building of a socialist society in Russia.
    The Congress passed a resolution on Lenin's report on work in the countryside which called for a transition from the policy of neutralising the middle peasants to that of a sound alliance with them, placing reliance on the poor peasants in the struggle against the kulaks and retaining in that alliance the leading role of the proletariat. The Congress decision on the alliance with the middle peasants was of great importance in mustering all working people in the struggle against the intervention and the whiteguards and for the building of socialism.
    In the sphere of military affairs the Congress adopted a decision to strengthen the regular Red Army, and inculcate iron discipline, stressing especially the role of the proletarian hard core of the army and the role of the commissars and Party cells in the political

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and military training of the Red Army. The Congress pointed to the need to employ old army specialists and to make use of the highest achievements of the bourgeois art of war. The Congress vehemently rejected the proposal from the group known as the "army opposition" that was against the formation of a regular Red Army and defended the survivals of the guerrilla spirit in the army. At the same time the Congress condemned Trotsky's non-Party acts in the War Department and demanded an improvement in the work of the central army institutions.
    The Congress adopted a decision on Party and Soviet organisation and defeated the opportunist group headed by Sapronov and Osinsky who denied the leading role of the Party in the Soviets.
    Owing to the large influx of new members into the Party the Congress decided to carry out the re-registration of the entire membership and to improve the Party's social composition.
    Among the members of the Central Committee elected by the Congress were Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Kalinin and Stasova; among the alternative members were Artyom (Sergeyev), Vladimirsky and Yaroslavsky.    [p. 141]

  ^[24] The conference to be held on Prinkipo, one of the Princes Islands, was proposed by the Entente powers and was to include representatives of all governments existing on the territory of Russia; its purpose was to establish peace. The Soviet Government did not receive a direct invitation to attend the conference and learned from foreign press reviews transmitted by wireless that since there had been no answer from the Soviet Government the imperialist powers were trying to prove to their peoples that this was a refusal to take part in the conference. The Soviet Government, in order to put a stop to all misrepresentations of its actions, on February 4, 1919 sent a wireless telegram to the governments of Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S.A. consenting to start negotiations immediately and pointing out that it was prepared to make important concessions for the sake of peace. The Entente governments left the Soviet telegram unanswered and the conference did not take place.    [p. 146]

  ^[25] This refers to the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, a Centrist party that was founded in April 1917. At the Halle Congress in October 1920 a split took place and a considerable number of members joined the Communist Party of Germany in December 1920. Right elements formed a separate party and retained the name of Independent Social-Democratic Party; it continued in existence until 1922.    [p. 150]

  ^[26] See Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. I, Moscow, 1962, pp. 481-82.    [p. 152]

  ^[27] This refers to Rosa Luxemburg's speech at the Inaugural Congress of the Communist Party of Germany held in Berlin from December 30, 1918 to January 1, 1919. She spoke in support of some of the

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delegates who favoured the abolition of the trade unions. She was of the opinion that the functions of the trade unions should go to the Councils of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and to the Council's of Workers and Clerks at factories.    [p. 155]

  ^[28] See pp. 38-46 of this volume.  [Transcriber's Note: See Lenin's "Session of the First Congress of Farm Laborers of Petrograd Gubernia". -- DJR]    [p. 158]

  ^[29] See present edition, Vol. 28, pp. 201-24.  [Transcriber's Note: See Lenin's "Moscow Party Workers' Meeting". -- DJR]    [p. 159]

  ^[30] The Federation of Foreign Groups was organised in May 1918 as the guiding body of foreign Communists for work among prisoners of war in Russia. The Federation was abolished at the beginning of 1920.    [p. 161]

  ^[31] Bednota (Poor Peasants ) -- a daily newspaper issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party that appeared in Moscow from March 27, 1918 to January 31, 1931. It was founded by a decision of the Central Committee of the Party to replace the newspaper Derevenskaya Bednota (Rural Poor ), Derevenskaya Pravda (Rural Truth ) and Soldatskaya Pravda (Soldiers' Truth ). On February 1, 1931 Bednota merged with the newspaper Sotsialisticheskoye Zemledeliye (Socialist Farming ).    [p. 162]

  ^[32] See F. Engels, Einleitung zu Sigismund Borkheims Schrift Zur Erinnerung für die deutschen Mordspatrioten 1806-1807 (Introduction to Sigismund Borkheim's Pamphlet In Memory of the German Arch-Patriots of 1806-1807 ); in K. Marx, F. Engels, Werke, B. 21, Berlin, 1962, S. 346.    [p. 166]

  ^[33] See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1959, p. 368.    [p. 168]

  ^[34] The Programme adopted by the Second Party Congress in 1903 consisted of two parts -- the minimum and maximum programmes. The minimum programme contained demands that could be effected within the framework of the capitalist system -- the overthrow of tsarism, the establishment of a democratic republic, the introduction of the eight-hour day, etc. The maximum programme formulated the final aims of the working class -- the socialist revolution, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transition to socialism.    [p. 171]

  ^[35] See present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 169-73.  [Transcriber's Note: See Lenin's "Revision of the Party Programme". -- DJR]    [p. 171]

  ^[36] On December 18 (31), 1917, Lenin handed to Svinhufvud, head of the Finnish bourgeois government, the decision of the Council of People's Commissars to recognise the independence of Finland. The decision was confirmed by a session of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on December 22, 1917 (January 4, 1918).    [p. 171]

  ^[37] Here Lenin refers to the negotiations in Moscow in March 1919 with a Bashkirian delegation on the question of forming an autonomous Bashkirian Soviet Republic. On March 23, 1919 the newspaper

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Izvestia published the "Agreement Between Central Soviet Power and the Bashkirian Government on the Formation of Autonomous Soviet Bashkiria". The agreement set up an Autonomous Bashkirian Soviet Republic on the basis of the Soviet Constitution, defined the Republic's frontiers and its administrative divisions.    [p. 171]

  ^[38] The Warsaw Soviet of Workers' Deputies was established on November 11, 1918. Soviets of Workers' Deputies were also set up in many Polish towns and industrial districts. The Warsaw Soviet of Workers' Deputies set about the factual introduction of the eight-hour day in factories, began a struggle against the sabotage of the factory owners, took a decision on contacts with revolutionary Russia, etc. The Soviets were abolished in the summer of 1919 by the Polish bourgeois government.    [p. 174]

  ^[39] This appeal was published on March 20, 1919.    [p. 176]

  ^[40] The Erfurt Programme of the German Social-Democratic Party was adopted in October 1891 at a Congress held in Erfurt, it replaced the Gotha Programme of 1875. Engels criticised the errors in the Erfurt Programme in his "Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Programmentwurfes 1891" (Die Neue Zeit, XX . Jg ., Bd . I, 1901-1903, S. 5).    [p. 190]

  ^[41] The Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) instructed Lenin to send greetings in the name of the Congress to the Hungarian Soviet Re public in connection with the information received to the effect that a Soviet Republic had been formed there on March 21, 1919 and the dictatorship of the proletariat had been established. The Hungarian Soviet Republic continued in existence until August 1919.    [p. 197]

  ^[42] The committee on work in the countryside was set up at the first sitting of the Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) on March 18, 1919. It held three sessions which heard reports on the land policy, and work in the countryside, and elected a commission to draw up resolutions. Lenin's resolution on the attitude to the middle peasantry and a resolution on political propaganda and cultural and educational work in the countryside were then approved by the Congress.    [p. 198]

  ^[43] See Frederick Engels, "The Peasant Question in France and Germany" (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II, Moscow, 1962, pp. 436-39).    [p. 205]

  ^[44] The delegates from the Nizhni-Novgorod (now Gorky) Party organisation handed in a statement to the Presidium of the Eighth Congress in which they pointed out that the pamphlet quoted by Lenin contained a printer's error.    [p. 207]