How understandable, how familiar that speech sounds today, eighteen years after!
At that time, to be sure, not everyone had grasped its significance, but it had stirred people's minds, kindled the flame of enthusiasm among the masses.
On March 29 after the Fourth Congress of Soviets, the "Left Communists" at the head of the Moscow Regional Bureau of the Communist Party decided after all to publish their own weekly journal Communist to propound their views. The first issue, which appeared on April 20, contained the editorial "Theses on the Present Situation." Ilyich's speech at the Central Executive Committee on April 29 was largely a reply to these views. He dealt with them more fully in his articles "'Left-Wing' Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality," published in Pravda on May 9 and 11, 1918. An interesting feature of these articles was the passage concerning socialization, in which Ilyich wrote:
"We will pass to the misfortunes of our 'Left' Communists in the sphere of home policy. It is difficult to read phrases such as the following in the theses on the present situation without smiling.
"...'The systematic use of the surviving means of production is conceivable only if a most determined policy of socialization is pursued'...'not capitulation to the bourgeoisie and its servile petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, but the utter rout of the bourgeoisie and the complete break-down of sabotage.
"Dear 'Left Communists, how determined they are... but what little judgement they display! What do they mean by pursuing a most determined policy cf socialization'?
"One may or may not be determined on the question of nationalization or confiscation. But the whole point is that even the greatest possible 'determination' is not enough to pass from nationalization and confiscation to socialization. The misfortune of our 'Lefts' is that by their naive, childish combination of words: 'most determined policy of socialization' they reveal their utter failure to understand the crux of the question, the crux of the'present' situation. The misfortune of our 'Lefts is that they have missed the essence of the 'present situation,' viz., the transition from confiscation (the carrying out of which requires above all a determined policy) to socialization (the carrying out of which requires a different quality in the revolutionary).
"Yesterday, the main task of the moment was, as determinedly as possible, to nationalize, confiscate, beat down and crush the bourgeoisie and break down sabotage. Today, only a blind man could fail to see that we have nationalized, confiscated, beaten down and broken more than we have been able to keep count of. And the difference between socialization and simple confiscation lies precisely in the fact that confiscation can be carried out by means of determination' alone, without the ability to count up and distribute property whereas socialization cannot be brought about without this ability." (Ibid., pp. 300-01.)
Today, when the long path of collective-farm organization is behind us and we have witnessed the "dizzy-with-success" phenomenon, we are better able to appreciate these utterances of Lenin's.
Analyzing the material of the "Left Communists" published in the journal Communist, Lenin gave the following critical appraisal of the "Left Communists":
"Every page of the Communist shows that our 'Lefts have no conception of iron proletarian discipline and how it is achieved; that they are thoroughly imbued with the mentality of the declassed petty-bourgeois intellectual." (Works, Vol. 27, p. 296.)
Only four issues of the Communist were published, the June issue being the last.
The opposition of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to Lenin's policy was far more vigorous.
On May 2-3, 1918, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries headed by Spiridonova and Karelin demanded that the People's Commissariat of Agriculture should be fully controlled by them. Their demand was made in the form of an ultimatum. Lenin consulted the Bolsheviks then working in the Commissariat of Agriculture (V. N. Meshcheryakov, S. Sereda and others). The Bolshevik group was emphatically against it. The Central Committee of the Party rejected this demand of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. The influence of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in the Commissariat of Agriculture was curtailed.
On May 22 Ilyich wrote to the workers of Petrograd:
"Comrades, the other day your delegate, a Party comrade, a worker in the Putilov Works, called on me. This comrade drew a detailed and extremely harrowing picture of the famine in Petrograd. We all know that the food situation is just as acute in a number of the industrial gubernias, that famine is knocking just as cruelly at the door of the workers and the poor generally.
"And side by side with this we observe an orgy of profiteering in grain and other food products. The famine is not due to the fact that there is no grain in Russia, but to the fact that the bourgeoisie and the rich generally are putting up a last decisive fight against the rule of the toilers, against the state of the workers, against the Soviet power, on this most important and acute of issues, the issue of bread. The bourgeoisie and the rich generally, including the rural rich, the kulaks, are sabotaging the grain monopoly; they are disrupting the distribution of grain undertaken by the state for the purpose and in the interests of supplying bread to the whole of the population, and in the first place to the workers, the toilers, the needy. The bourgeoisie are disrupting the fixed prices, they are profiteering in grain, they are making a hundred, two hundred and more rubles profit on every pood of grain; they are disrupting the grain monopoly and the proper distribution of grain by resorting to bribery and corruption and by deliberately supporting everything tending to destroy the power of the workers, which is endeavouring to put into effect the prime, basic and root principle of socialism: 'He who does not work, neither shall he eat.' " (Ibid., p. 355.)
Profiteering was rife in Moscow at the time. I recollect an amusing incident. Ilyich and I went for a ride to Vorobyovy Hills. Few people knew Ilyich by sight at the time, and when he walked about the streets he attracted no attention. I saw a well-fed looking peasant sitting with an empty sack, rolling himself a cigarette. I went up to him and started a conversation, asked him how he was living, how he was off for grain. "We're not bad off at all these days," he said. "We've got lots of grain and do a good trade. People in Moscow are hungry, they're afraid there won't be any bread at all soon. Bread fetches a good price these days, it's a very profitable business. You've got to be careful the way you go about it, though. I've got some regular families I deliver bread to, and get paid cash down without any bother...."
Ilyich came up and listened to our talk. "I've got one family living at Boloto..." the peasant was saying. "Boloto?" I queried. "Where's that?" The peasant stared at me. "Where do you come from that you don't even know Boloto?" As I afterwards found out, Boloto was the name of a market-place (Government House now stands there) where vegetables and apples were sold. "I'm a Petrograder," I said. "I'm new to Moscow."
"Oh, a Petrograder," the peasant said. The word started him off on a new train of thought, and after a pause he added: "That Lenin's a nuisance. I don't understand the man. Muddle-headed, if you ask me. His wife wanted a sewing machine, so he goes and gives orders for all the sewing machines to be taken away in all the villages. My niece had hers taken away too. The whole Kremlin is cluttered up with sewing machines, they say." I avoided looking at Ilyich for fear that I would burst out laughing.
That well-to-do farmer and petty proprietor could not imagine Lenin not helping himself to something or other when he had the chance. This suburban farmer had heard that Lenin had spoken something about machines, and he could not understand why Lenin should be bothering his head about machines.
Daft though this conversation was, it showed what a difficult path confronted the Party and the Soviet Government in the struggle for socialism, the struggle against the rich, the kulaks, against the psychology of the petty proprietor, against inefficiency, ignorance and the economic backwardness of our country.
At the end of May Ilyich wrote a letter to the workers of Petrograd. Not all of Ilyich's articles and speeches are written in the same vein. It all depended on whom they were intended for. His letter of May 22 was written for people in whom he placed his hopes and in whose constructive genius he implicitly believed—the Petrograd workers. He wrote to them:
"Petrograd is not Russia. The Petrograd workers are only a small part of the workers of Russia. But they are one of the best, the advanced, most class-conscious, most revolutionary, most steadfast detachments of the working class and of all the working people of Russia, and one of the least liable to succumb to empty phrases, to spineless despair and to the intimidation of the bourgeoisie. And it has frequently happened at critical moments in the life of nations that even small advanced detachments of advanced classes have carried the rest after them, have fired the masses with revolutionary enthusiasm and have accomplished tremendous historic feats." (Works, Vol. 27, pp. 358-59.)
Vladimir Ilyich wrote to the Petrograd workers about the immense organizing job that confronted them. He attached the greatest importance to organizing work.
"Heroism displayed in prolonged and persevering organizational work on a national scale is immensely more difficult than, but at the same time immensely superior to, heroism displayed in an uprising," wrote Ilyich. "But the strength of working-class parties, the strength of the working class always lay in that it looks danger boldly squarely and openly in the face, that it does not fear to admit danger and soberly weighs the forces in its 'own' camp and in 'the other' camp, the camp of the exploiters. The revolution is progressing, developing and growing. The tasks we face are also growing. The struggle is broadening and deepening." (Ibid., p. 360.)
Ilyich's confidence in the victory of the revolution fired the enthusiasm of the masses.
His own hard work was an example of that heroic organizing job of which he had spoken.
Besides organizing the country's defence against its foreign and internal enemies, and assuming the leadership in the civil war, which had already started by that time, Vladimir Ilyich did a tremendous job in organizing socialist construction. He put through decrees on the nationalization of industry, wrote instructions for the workers of the nationalized enterprises, made reports at the tradeunion congresses, the Supreme Council of National Economy and the First Congress of Councils of National Economy, addressed the Congress of Labour Commissars, delegate meetings of the factory Party units, and conferences of the factory committees, received delegations of the Petrograd, Yelets and other workers, spoke to the mobilized Communists leaving for the front, and at the same time, at the moments of gravest crisis—on May 25, just before the introduction of martial law in Moscow, he submitted to the Council of People's Commissars a draft decree concerning the inauguration of a Socialist Academy of Social Sciences; on June 5 he addressed a meeting of internationalist teachers, on June 10 he drew up an appeal in connection with the Czechoslovak counter-revolutionary insurrection, and later in the day submitted a proposal to the Council of People's Commissars for enlisting the services of the engineers; two days before the attempt upon his life he addressed the Education Congress where he spoke about the school being a tremendous factor in the building up of socialism.
Every week Ilyich spoke at district meetings, sometimes twice a day or more.
This directional work among the masses bore fruit. It was this, more than anything, that helped to achieve victory.
