Library:A History of the U.S.S.R./Part 3/Post-revolution

The Second Congress of Soviets

The Second Congress of Soviets was opened in the Smolny at 10:45 p. m. on October 25 (November 7). The assault on the Winter Palace was still in progress. Many of the congress delegates had taken part in the insurrection. The Smol ny Institute looked like a military camp. Armoured cars, automobiles, motor trucks filled with armed workers, columns of Red Guards and sailors with machine-gun cartridge belts across their chests and hand grenades strung around their belts, Red Cross nurses in ambulance carts and Red Cross cars moved in an endless stream to and from the Smolny. At tiie congress there were 650 delegates, of whom 390 were Bolsheviks.

When the congress was opened the Mensheviks, the Bundists and the Bight Socialist-Revolutionaries called upon the soldier and non Party delegates to leave, but only a handful of Menshevik and Social ist-Revolutionary leaders left the hall.

As they left the indignant delegates shouted at them: "Kornilov ites!", "Deserters!"

A delegate from the Twelfth Army got up and said amidst general approval: "We must take power into our hands. Let them go. The army is not with them! "

At 2:10 a. m. the Winter Palace was captured. The wretched group of friglitened Ministers of the Provisional Government was arrested and taken to the Portress of Peter and Paul.

At 5 a. m. on October 26 (November 8), the Congress of Soviets passed the historic decision declaring that all power had passed to the Soviets and approved the appeal to the working people, written by Lenin, announcing this great historic event. The appeal read: "Backed by the will of the vast majority of workers , soldiers and peasants, backed by the victorious uprising of the workers and the garrison which has taken place in Petrograd, the congress takes the power into its own hands" (V. I. Lenin, Selected WorJcs, Two-Vol. ed,, Vol II, Moscow, 1947, p. 226).

The second session of the congress opened at 8:40 p. m. on the same day (October 26 [Novembers]). At this session Lenin, who was greeted with indescribable rejoicing, read the Decree on Peace, which called upon all the belligerent peoples and their governments to conclude a just, democratic peace without annexations and without indemnities, on the basis of the self-determination of oppressed nations. The congress unanimously passed this decree.

Lenin next read the Decree on Land, which proclaimed that all landord, appanage, monasterial and church lands, with their livestock, farm buildings' and implements, were to pass without compensation under the control of Volost Land Committees and Uyezd Soviets of Peasants' Deputies. In all Soviet rule brought to the peasants over 150,000,000 hectares of land and relieved the peasants of the payment of rent to the landlords amounting to about 500,000,000 gold rubles per annum.

The Decree on Land proved to the peasants that "there are no more landlords in the countryside/' as Lenin expressed it.

This decree was based on the General Peasant Instructions which had been drawn up on the basis of 242 local Peasant Mandates, the main one of which had been the abolition of the private ownership of land and the transfer of the land to the peasants without compen sation through the Land Committees and Soviets.

At 2:30 a. m. the congress passed a decree announcing the forma tion of the first Soviet government — ^the Council of People's Commis sars. The congress endorsed Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) as Chair man of the Coimoil of People's Commissars, and Lenin's unfailing colleague, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, as People's Commissar of Nationalities, the function of which was to help to unite the oppressed nations in a single fraternal socialist federation of nations. The activ ities of the Coimcil of People's Commissars were to be controlled by a Central Executive Committee elected by the All-Russian Congi'ess of Soviets.

The first Soviet government consisted exclusively of Bolsheviks, although the latter had invited the "Left" .Socialist-Revolutionaries to join it. Before the Second Congress of Soviets was opened the "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries were still organizationally connected with the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries. It was only after the latter had left the congress together with the Mensheviks that the "Left" Socialist-Rev olutionaries formed their own se]parate party. Conscious of the pressure of the entire mass of the peasantry who were thirsting for land, the "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries had been constantly wavering be tween the Bolsheviks and the Right Socialist-Revolutionarj^-Menshevik bloc and urging the Bolsheviks to reach an agreement with the latter. Lenin called them "fellow travellers of the proletarian revolution" and foresaw that they would betray the revolution at the critical moment. Influenced by the revolutionary temper of the peasants and soldiers, the "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries announced that they supported the October Revolution. It was then that the Bolsheviks invited them to enter the government.

But the "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries opposed the formation of a Sovietgovemment; they wanted "a homogeneous socialist govern ment," by which they meant a Cabinet consisting of representatives of different parties, ranging from the People's Socialists to the Bolshe viks. The Second Congress of Soviets, however, rejected this proposal and set up the first Soviet government entirely of Bolsheviks.

The congress closed at 5 a.m. on October 27, amidst the enthusias tic cries of the delegates andPetrograd workers: "Long live the revolu tion!", "Long live Socialism!"

Suppression of the Kerensky and Krasnov Anti-Soviet Revolt

The victory of the socialist revolution in Peti'ograd evoked the desper ate resistance of the deposed classes. The Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland and the Revolution, which was headed by Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries and backed by the Entente imperialists, became the centre of the counter-revolution. The workers and soldiers called this committee "The Committee for the Salvation of the Counter Revolution."

The first armed revolt of the counter-revolution was organized by Kerensky and the Cossack General Krasnov. After fleeing from Petrograd, Kerensky withdrew several Cossack units from the front and sent them against Petrograd under the command of General Krasnov to crush the proletarian revolution. On October 28 (November 10), Kras nov occupied Tsarskoye Selo (now the town of Pushkin) near Petrograd.

The workers of the capital rose to defend the revolution. They marched to the firing line, dug trenches, erected fortifications and manu factured arms. Work in the factories went on day and night. The Putilov Plant received orders to fix armour plats on two railway fiat cars, and Lenin, who was personally directing the organization of the defence of Petrograd, went to the plant to see how this order was being carried out. He found the workers busily engaged on the job. He spoke to the work ers, encouraging them to further efforts, and told them what the situation was at the front. Within twenty-four hours the order was executed. Lenin ordered destroyers to move up the Neva to cover the flanks of the Red forces, and as many as ten thousand men ready for action were concentrated on the Pulkovo Hills.

Taking advantage of the fact that the Red forces had gone ofi to the front, the counter-revolutionaries in Petrograd organized a mutiny of cadets in the city. On tlie night of October 28 (November 10), a Red Guard patrol detained two suspicious men. One of them tried stealthily to get rid of some document or other, but one of the Red Guards saw it and picked it up. It turned out to be the plan for the mutiny. Thanks to the united and vigorous efforts of the workers and soldiers the mutiny was crushed by 4 p. m. next day. On October 31 (November 13), the revolutionary workers and soldiers routed a force of Cossacks near Pulkovo. This defeat caused rapid disintegration among the Cossack units, and in spite of all the orders issued by Krasnov, the Cossacks re fused to take to arms, A delegation of Soviet sailors went to the Cos sacks in Gatchina and promised that they would be allowed to return to their homes if they stopped fighting the Soviets and delivered up Kerensky. The Cossacks agreed to this, but Kerensky managed to escape from Gatchina disguised as a Bed Cross nurse. Ki-asnov was arrested but released later on giving his word of honour not to fight against the Soviets.

He failed to keep his word, however. He fled to the Don, which subsequently became a hotbed of counter-revolution.

The Insurrection in Moscow

On receiving news of the insurrec tion in Petrograd the Moscow Committee of the Bolshevik Party, on October 25 (November 7), took measures for an insurrection in Moscow.

On the night of October 25, the Bolshevik Military Centre called upon the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Moscow Soviet to garrison the Kremlin with troops who were loyal to the revolution; but instead of doing this the Revolutionary Military Committee leaders entered into negotiations with the counter-revolutionary headquar ters. In the evening of October 26, the Moscow Committee of the Bolshevik Party held a special meeting'^"and demanded the cessation of these negotiations. Meanwhile, the counter-revolution aries launched an offensive. On October cadets occupied all the bridges across the Moscow River. At 7 p. m. that day Colonel Ryab tsev, the commander of the counter-revolutionary forces, presented an ultimatum to the Revolutionary Military Committee, demanding that it should dissolve.

The cadets captured the Kremlin by a ruse, surrounded the revolu tionary soldiers there and shot them down with machine guns. This out rage roused the indignation of the workers and soldiers of Moscow. The Moscow Committee of the Bolshevik Party called upon the workers to take to arms in order to crush the counter-revolution and to seize power forthwith. The Moscow proletariat and soldiers unanimously responded to this appeal. The workers sent Red Guard units to the assist ance of the Moscow Soviet. The offensive converged from the various districts of the city to the centre, where the Moscow Soviet headquarters were situated. The initiative in the fighting passed to the districts.

An exceptionally active role in the October fighting in Moscow was played by the workers of the Simonov District (now the Lenin District) where the AMO (now Stalin) Automobile Plant, the Dynamo Plant and other big plants were situated. The workers captured the arsenal and armed themselves, and detachments of Red Guards fought their way from the district towards the Moscow Soviet and took a most active part in the assault upon the cadets. The workers and soldiers fought solidly in the other districts as well. In the Lefortovo and Bas manny Districts they captured pieces of artillery and for two days bombarded the Alexeyevsky Military School and finally compelled the cadets to surrender. In the centre of the city the Red Guards and soldiers attacked the General Post Office, the Central Telegraph Office and the Central Telephone Exchange. In the Khamovniki District the Red Guards dislodged the cadets from the army food warehouse and captured the Krymsky Bridge and the Bryansk (now Kiev) Railway Station. The workers of the Krasnaya Presnya District cleared the cadets out of the whole district up to the Kovinsky Boulevard.

Red Guard units came bo the assistance of the Moscow workers from the adjacent towns. Detachments of poor peasants armed with shot guns and axes arrived from the villages in the Moscow Region and were organized and armed by the workers of the railway repair shops. Red Guards from Petrograd, sailors from Kronstadt, weavers from Ivanovo and workers from Tula on motor trucks and armed with machine guns, hastened to the assistance of Moscow.

On October 31 (November 13), the Red Guards captured the Gen eral Post Office, the Central Telegraph Office and the railway stations, and two days later began to bombard the Kremlin.

At 9 p. m. on November 2 (15), after six days' fighting, the counter-revolutionaries were defeated and forced to surrender. All power passed to the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Moscow Soviet.

The October Revolution at the Front

The Second Congress of So viets issued an appeal to the soldiers at the front to support the insurrec tion of the Petrograd workers, and stated that the Soviet government would exert all efforts to terminate the war. The decrees on peace and on the land were immediately circulated to all the soldiers' organizations, but the Army Committees, led by Men sheviks andSocialist-Revolutionaries , tried to conceal from the soldiers the decisions which had been adopted by the Second Congress of Soviets. The soldiers, however, sent deputa tions to the Petrograd Soviet to learn the truth about the events that had taken place in the capital. When these delegates returned and in formed their comrades that Soviet rule had been established in Petrograd, the masses of soldiers heartily welcomed it. The proletarian revo lution triumphed first on the Northern and Western Fronts, which were closest to Petrograd. Here the Bolsheviks had conducted extensive activity; nearly all the Regimental Committees were headed by Bolsheviks and, as a consequence, the soldiers •declared unanimously for Soviet power. The other fronts* — ^the Southwestern, Rumanian and Caucasian — being very remote from the centre of the revolution, did not at once learn of the victory of the proletarian revolution in Petrograd; but as the truth about the events came through and the soldiers learned of the Soviet decrees they too joined the revolution.

Although defeated in Petrograd and in Moscow, the counter revolution still made efforts to organize and pass to the offensive. The representatives of the anti-Soviet parties which had been defeated by the revolution, and the military missions of the Entente countries which refused to recognize the Soviet government, flocked to the 'General Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief in Mogilev, which now became the centre of a new counter-revolutionary plot. General Headquarters kept from the soldiers the decree on peace and began to form units for a drive against Petrograd. The Soviet government ordered General Dukhonin, Chief of the General Staff, who after the flight of Kerensky, had proclaimed himself Supreme Commanderin-Chief, immediately to open negotiations for an armistice with the German Command, but Dukhonin refused to obey this order, whereupon Lenin dismissed Dukhonin and sent revolutionary detachments to Mogilev which captured General Headquarters and liquidated this hotbed of coimter-revolution .

The Organization of the Soviet State

Failure of Attempts to Liquidate the Proletarian Dictatorship

After the armed insurrection the proletariat became the ruling class in Russia.

The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie continued in new and more intense forms. As Lenin wrote: "The dictatorship of the proletariat is a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more, 'powerful enemy, the bomgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by its over throw " (V. I. Lenin, Selected Worl^s^ Two-Vol. ed., VoL II, Moscow,

1947, p. 573.) The proletarian dictatorship set out to crush the resistance of the vanquished exploiters and to build communist society.

Emphasizing the significance of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the struggle against the vanquished bourgeoisie, Comrade Stalin said: "The dictatorship of the proletariat is not a mere change of government, but a new state, with new organs of power, both central and local. ..." (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism ^ Moscow, 1946, p. 42.)

The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries launched a struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat and demanded the establish ment of a "homogeneous socialist government" in place of Soviet rule.

The All-Russian Executive Committee of the Railwaymen^s Union, (known as Vikzhel) which was controlled by Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, threatened a general railwaymen's strike if negotiations were not opened on the issue of power. Meanwhile Krasnov and Kerensky were at the gates of the capital. Kamenev, who was. then the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, opened negotiations with the Railwaymen's Executive as to the establishment of a coalition government. He commit ted an act of unparalleled tr achery by conceding the demand of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks that Lenin, the leader of the proletariat, should he removed from the post of Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and that either Avksentyev or Chernov, both Socialist-Revolutionaries and creatures of the counter-revolution, be appointed in his place.

After the Kerensky and Elrasnov revolt was crushed, Lenin de manded that negotiations with the Railwaymen's Executive should cease forthwith. In answer to this Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov and the few supporters the^r had, resigned from the Central Committee of the Party. Lenin demanded that these deserters and blacklegs of the revolution should be removed from all Soviet and Party work. In an angry letter he addressed to Zinoviev and Kamenev he wrote: ". . . You are causing indecision in the ranks of the fighters in an in surrection which is still in progress. . , (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works,

VoL XXII, Moscow, 1937, Russ, ed., p. 57.)

The Central Committee of the Party addressed a letter 'To All Party Members and to All the Toiling Classes of Russia" in which it emphasized that only a Bolshevik government could now be regarded as the Soviet government.

At that time Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov was elected as Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee,

A steadfast Leninist and a man of extraordinary strong will and outstanding organizing talent, Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov played a tremendous part in building up the Party and Soviet power after the victory of the October Revolution. His iron will, seething energy, enormous capacity for work, phenomenal memory, astonishing knowledge of men and his ability to find and place the neces sary workers made him a priceless leader and organizer of Soviet power.

The Breakup of the Old State Machine

The fundamental antithesis between bourgeois revolutions (including the French bour geois revolution of 1789) and the Great October Socialist Revolution lay in that "the French (and every other) bourgeois revolution, while liberating the people from the chains of feudalism and absolutism, put new chains upon them, the chains of capitalism and bourgeois de mocracy, whereas the socialist revolution in Russia smashed all chains whatsoever and liberated the people from oil forms of exploitation. ..." (J. Stalin, S. Kirov and A, Zhdanov, Comment on a Synopsis for a Textbook on Modern History.)

After overthrowing the rule of the capitalists and landlords and becoming itself the ruling class, the proleto^riat had to organize in a new way the state power it needed to be able to crush the resistance of the exploiters and lead the peasants in building the new socialist society.

This process of creating the new proletarian authority was a compli cated and difficult one, for it entaihd the breaking up of the old bourgeois machinery of state and the creation of a new tj^e of state authority. As Lenin wrote: ". . . All the revolutions which have occurred up to now have helped to perfect the state machine, whereas it must be smashed, broken.

"This conclusion is the chief and fundamental thesis in the Marxian doctrine of the state" (V. I. Lenin, Selected WorTcs, Two-VoL ed., Vol. II, Moscow, 1947, p. 169).

The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first attempt in history at the breakup of the bourgeois state machine by a proletar ian revolution. The revolutions of 1905 and of February 1917, which set up Soviets, not only continued the cause of the Paris Commune but took further gi gantic strides in that direction. As Comrade Stalin wrote: "The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot arise as the result of the peaceful development of bour geois society and of bourgeois democracy; it can arise only as the result of the smashing of the bourgeois state machine, the bourgeois army, the bourgeois bureaucratic machine, the bourgeois police" (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1945, p. 44).

By the decree of December 16 (29), 1917, plenary power in the army was transferred to the Soldiers' Soviets and Committees. The Com missars of the Provisional Government were removed and the election of officers, right up to front commanders, was introduced. All the old ranks, titles and decorations were abolished. This decree thus completed the democratization of the army and signified the complete breakup of the old army. The organization of the new army was sanc tioned by the decree of January 15 (28), 1918, about the formation of the Workers' and Peasants' Red .^my.

The Soviet government liquidated the old machinery of vio lence and oppression by the decree of November 22 (December 5), 1917, which abolished the old judiciary and established the new, people's courts.

The police force had been shattered by the workers in the very first days of the February revolution. In its place the Provisional Government had formed a militia, but not on the principle of recruiting it from among the ranks of the working people. After the victory of the proletarian revolution aWorkers' Militia was organized to maintain revolutionary order, and was placed under the control of the local Soviets.

A series of decrees was issued abolishing the old division of the population into estates. Thus, on November 10 (23), 1917, a decree was passed abolishing the different estates and civil ranks. The designations current till then (noble, merchant, burgher, peasant, etc.,) were abolished and the designation of Citizen of the Russian Republic was introduced to cover all the inhabitants of Soviet Russia.

Decrees were also issued abolishing the privileges of the church. Thus, the decree of January 21 (February 3), 1918, separated the church from the state and the school from the church. The state ceased to maintain the clergy and missionaries, relieved schoolchildren from the obligation of learning the scriptures, and proclaimed religion and the church to be the private affair of citizens.

The Soviet state emancipated women and purged family relation ships of feudal survivals. The decrees issued on December 19 and 20, 1917, old style, introduced civil marriages, placed children under the protection of the proletarian state and granted women equal rights with men in all respects.

On December 21 (January 3), spelling reform was introduced, thus making it easier for the vast population which had been kept in ignorance for generations to learn to read and write. On January 25 (February 7), 1918, a decree was issued abolishing the old style calendar and introducing the calendar in use in all Europian countries.

First Steps Towards Socialism

The October victory ushered in the first stage of socialist construction. The Great October Socialist Revolution, as Lenin said, completed, in passing, the task of the bour geois-democratic revolution and at the same time took ths first steps towards Socialism,

The first decrees of the Soviet State introducing socialist meas ures were also aimed at doing away completely with the survivals of feudalism, serfdom and the caste system. In this respect the Soviet State did more in a few weeks than the Cadets, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries had done during the eight months they were in power.

On October SO (November 12), 1917, a decree was issued intro ducing the 8-hour working day.

To combat the sabotage of the capitalists, workers' control of industry was introduced, the Regulations on Workers' Control being passed by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on November 14 (27), 1917, Workers' control meant that the workers prevented the deliberate closing of factories, the removal of finished goods and stocks of raw materials and fael from the premises, and the stopping of produetion, and kept watch over the machinery. The decree introducing workers' control was one of the first steps towards Socialism, for it gave the workers an opportunity to learn to manage industry and to administer the state. Tens of thousands of workers passed through this school.

From workers' control the Soviet State gradually passed on to workers' management of industry". The case of the first Soviet factory, formerly Lickin's Textile Mill, may serve as an example of how this transition was made. The workers at this mill, discover ing that the owner was deliberately sabotaging production, raised the demand that they be allowed to take over the management. On November 17, 1917, Lenin signed a decree nationalizing the mill. The higher officials and technical staflF of the mill boycotted the work ers ' management and refused to work without the capitalists, but the factory committee came to the aid of the workers' management and production at this first nationalized Soviet plant was organized.

On December 5 (18), 1917, a decree was issued setting up the Supreme Council of National Economy, This was a militant organ of the Dictatorshij) of the Proletariat established for the purpose of directing industry. Lenin wrote that "the Supreme Council of Nation al Economy must not be converted into a parliament, but must be just as militant an organ for combating the capitalists and landlords in the sphere of economics, as is the Council of People's Commissars in the field of politics" (V. I, Lenin, Collected Worlca, VoL XXII, Moscow, 1937, Euss. ed., p. 108).

The railways and the merchant fleet were taken over by the proletarian state.

Foreign trade was declared a monopoly of the Soviet State* The loans contracted by the tsarist regime and the Provisional Government were annulled, thus liquidating forever Russia's economic dependence upon West-European capital which was gradually transforming our country into a colony of British and French imperialism.

On December 14 (27), the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a decree nationalizing all private banks and merging them with the State Bank. This measure shattered one of the most im portant props of the economic sway of the bourgeoisie and strengthened the material basis of the young proletarian state.

The decree on land passed by the Second Congress of Soviets abolished the economic basis of the domination of the landlords and cleared the way for the struggle to reorganize petty-bourgeois peasant farming on collective lines.

Such are the most important decrees that were issued in the first months of the Soviet regime. These decrees laid the foundation of the new Soviet socialist system of stato and marked the beginning of the reorganization of the country's economy on socialist lines.

Building the Soviet Machinery of State

The establishment of Soviet power met with the strong opposition of the bourgeois intel ligentsia who had formerly been in the service of the overthrown landlord and capitalist classes. In order to undermine the young pro letarian state, government officials and the higher categories of ad ministrative employees engaged in sabotage. Politically this sabotage was directed by the Cadets, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolu tionaries who on the very day that power passedinto the hands of the Soviets, called upon government officials to refuse to obey the new authorities. The officials of all fourteen Ministries declared a general strike, being financed by the bourgeoisie to' the extent of over 2,000,000 rubles. The banks refused to finance those enterprises which had been placed under workers* control, and bank clerks carried away the keys of the vaults. The Pood Administration announced that it would no longer be responsible for supplying the capital with food. The bread ration was reduced to 150 grams per day. The Ministry of State Relief stopped paying pensions to orphans, disabled persons and the aged. The Technical Engineers* Union expelled those of its members who obeyed the Soviet decree on workers* control and co-operated with the Bolsheviks. The Post and Telegraph Emxjloyees* Union ordered all local post and telegraph offices to hold up all orders issued by the Soviet government.

Notwithstanding this sabotage, the Soviet government and the Bolshevik Party built up a network of Soviet institutions. Commu nication was established between the central organs of the Soviet State and the local Soviets, but during the first period work was carried on under very difficult conditions.

Here is how N. K. Krupskaya has described the conditions of this period: 'Work in the Smolny went on not only during the day, but all through the night. In the beginning all the work was done in the Smolny — ^Paity meetings, sessions of the Council of People's Commissars and the work of the People's Commissariats. Telegrams and orders were sent out from there. People streamed to the Smolny from everywhere. And what kind of staff did the Council of People's Commisars have? In the beginning, four utterly inexperienced people, working without respite, doing everything that was re quired. . . . Lenin often had to do the most routine work, making phone calls, etc."

On November 15 (28) the Council of People's Commissars ordered that the work of all the People's Commissariats be conducted in the premises of the corresponding Ministries and that the Com missars should gather in the Smolny only in the evenings. The reason for this decision was that m the process of combating sabotage a new Soviet machinery of state was beginning to be built up. A tremendous part in organizing the Soviet machinery of state was played by the trade unions, which sent members to work in the People's Commissariats, financed the Commis sariats which were not receiving money from the banks, and so forth.

The very lowest ranks, the most oppressed sections, of the people yield 3d the new forces that proceeded to build up the Soviet State.

The Merging of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies with the Soviets of Peasants' Deputies

The operation of the Decree on Land gave rise to a fierce class struggle in the rural districts. The newly organized People's Commissariat of Agriculture issued regulations governing the work of the Kural Area Land Committees which had begun to put the land decree into force. The Socialist-Revo lutionaries tried to hinder the holding of new elections for these Land Committees and also the establishment of Soviets of Peasants' Deputies. They concealed from the peasants the decrees on land and peace adopted by the Congress of Soviets, and also decrees of the Soviet governm?nt. The peasants learned of these only from letters sent home by soldiers and from workers and soldiers who arrived in the villages. Many villages sent deputations to Lenin. Lenin, in plain and simple terms, explained to ^e peasants the tasks of the new workers' and peasants' government and urged them to take advantage of the new Soviet laws and to strengthen the alliance with the working class in order to become masters of their own lives.

Lenin said: "What we need is an alliance between the poorest peas ants and the workers — ^when we get that Socialism will triumph all over the world" (V. I. Lenin, Collected Worhs, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1937, Russ, ed., p. 51).

In November 1917, the All-Russian Congress of Peasants' Soviets was held in Petrograd. At this congress Lenin demanded of the "Lefb" Socialist-Revolutionaries that they drop their policy of compromise with the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries. Reckoning with the wishes of the masses of the peasantry, the Bolsheviks invited the "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaires to join the government. These latter, yielding to the pressure of the peasant masses, accepted the Bolshevik terms and appointed their representatives to the Council of People's Commissars.

To tighten the alliance between the workers and the peasants it was decided to unite the Executive Committees of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies and of the Soviets of Peasants' Deputies in one All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies.

At a joint session of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Petrograd Soviet and the Congress of Soviets of Peasants ' Deputies, a resolution was unan imously adopted to unite the Soviets of Workers' Deputies with the Soviets of Peasants' Deputies.

"The Declaration of Rights of the Nations of Russia." The main principles of the Soviet na tional policy were proclaimed in the Declaration of Rights of the Nations of Russia that was signed by Lenin and Stalin and pub lished on November 2 (15), 1917.

The plain, clear and powerful words in which the Declaration was couched found an echo not only among the nations inhabiting Russia but also among the colonial and dependent peo ples abroad. The Declaration pro claimed the emancipation by the Great October Socialist Revolution of all the nations inhabiting Russia and laid down the following principles of the national policy of the Soviet State: 1) Equality and sovereignty of the nations of Russia; 2) the right of the nations of Russia to free self-determination, including the right to secede and form independent states; 3) abolition of all and sundry national and national-religious privileges and restrictions; 4) the free development of the national minorities and ethnographical groups inhabiting the territory of Rus sia. This policy of the Soviet State satisfied the age-long strivings of the oppressed nationalities and thereby strengthened their alliance with the Russian proletariat who had established themselves in power.

The Establishment of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission

On December 7 (20), 1917, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage was set up to protect the proletarian dictatorship and safeguard all the gains of the revolution. This Commission soon became, as Comrade Stalin called it, "the ever-wakeful guardian of the revolution, the drawn sword of the proletariat."

At the head of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission the Party placed that most faithful comrade-in-arms of Lenin and Stalin, firm Bolshevik and staimch fighter in the revolution, Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. F. E. Dzerzhinsky was bom in 1877, and was one of the veterans of the Polish and Russian working-class movements. His whole life was a record of revolutionary daring; it was a lif^ of the tireless activity of a professional revolutionary interspersed with impris onment, exile and escapes. "Only the grave can put a stop to the struggle I am waging, "he wrote. "Here in prison things are bad, sometimes fright ful and yet, if I had to start all over again, I would do what I have been doing up to now." The February revolution liberated Dzerzhinsky from the penal servitude prison where he had spent nine years. The October Revolution entrusted him with the task of safeguarding the power of the Soviets. His sterling honesty, courage and Bolshevil?: power of penetration won for him the love of and tremendous author ity among the broad masses who called him "Iron Felix." Comrade Stalin said of h'm: "A terror to the bourgeoisie — ^that is what Felix Dzerzhinsky was."

The Soviet intelligence 'department which was directed by F. E. Dzerzhinsky, was built up with the aid of staunch, devot ed and vigilant advanced workers and with the constant backing of the working people, who helped the Extraordinary Commission to discover plots and wi^^e out the enemies of the revolution.

The Triumphal March of Soviet Power

The Expansion and Consolidation of Soviet Power

The power of the Soviets quickly spread throughout the country. In most of the industrial districts where the Bolsheviks had won over the Soviets before the October insurrection, power passed to the Soviets peace fully. There Revolutionary Military Committees were set up and Red Guards occupied the post and telegraph offices and other public buildings. Backed by the trade unions, the Revolutionary Military Committees organized administrative machinery and made prepara tions for the summoning of Congresses of Soviets to set up plenipo tentiary organs of Soviet power. This was the case in numerous dis tricts in the Urals, the Donetz Basin, in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, in Shuya and other towns.

In a number of towns, however, the establishment of Soviet power was delayed because coalition Revolutionary Military Commit tees had been set up, and the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolution aries did all they could to prevent the transfer of power to the Soviets.

Lenin described the period from October 25 to February 18 <up to the ofEensive launched by the German imperialists) as the period of the triumphal march of Soviet power. The Soviets triumphed quickly because the masses, while the Provisional Government was still in power, had lost faith in the Kerensky regime owing to its policy of compromise with the bourgeoisie. The decisions of the Second Congress of Soviets, the decrees of the Soviet government, the manifestoes and appeals issued b\' the Bolshevik Party and Lenin's speeches and newspaper articles were therefore welcomed by the masses with tremendous enthusiasm.

Speaking at a meeting of the Moscow Soviet on March 12, 1918, Lenin said:

"Soviet power has not only been established in the big towns and factory districts, it has penetrated to all the remote comers of the country" (V. I. Lenin, Collected WorJcs, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1937, Euss. ed., p. 381).

In the villages around industrial districts, Soviet power was organized by factory workers; in the nonindustrial districts it was organized by the poorer peasants and Bolshevik-minded soldiers returned from the front. The latter brought Bolshevik newspapers with them, held village meetings at which they explaiaed the tasks facing the Soviets in power, and under their direction new elections to the Soviets were held.

At the end of December 1917, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs issued an order abolishing all the former local govern ment bodies and replacing them by Soviets.

The Defeat of Kaledin and Dutov

At the very beg inn ing of the October Eevolution a geographical demarcation of a kind between the revolution and the counter-revolution was to be ob served. As Comrade Stalin wrote: "Inner Russia with her industrial, cultural and political centres — Moscow and Petrograd, with a nation ally homogeneous, mainly Russian, population, has become the base of the revolution. The outlying regions of Russia, on the other hand, mainly the Southern and Eastern regions, with no important industrial and cultural and political centres, with a population extremely diverse nationally and consisting of privileged Cossack colonizers on the one hand, and disfranchised Tatars, Bashkirs, Kirghiz (in the East), Ukrainians, Chechens, Ingushes and other Moslem peoples on the other — has become the base of the counter-revo lution" (Lenin and Stalin, Selected Works ^ Vol. II, Euss. ed., p. 276),

This demarcation was distinctly visible in the counter-revolu tionary operations of General Dutov in Orenburg and of Kaledin on the Don.

The Cossacks had long played the part of colonizers in the Oren burg territory. The conditions of the Russian settlers, "strangers" as they were called, and particularly of the native inhabitants — Kirghiz, Bashkirs, Tatars and Kazakhs — were extremely hard. The Provisional Government permitted the Cossacks in Orenburg to set up a Cossack Eegional Eepresentative Assembly, which still further helped to transform the Cossacks into an exclusive, privileged mili tary caste. After capturing Orenburg, Chelj^abinsk and Troitsk, General Dutov planned to establish contact with the counter-revolutionary forces in Siberia and the Urals ^ and with those in the Don and the Kuban via the Volga Kegion. This was a plan for the military encir clement and economic isolation of Soviet Russia so as to cut her off from the rich grain and other produce regions.

The workers of Orenburg sent a deputation to Lenin and Stalin to ask for assistance in the fight against Dutov. Accordingly^ detachments of sailors were sent from Petrograd, and workers' Red Guard units were sent from the Volga Region and the South Urals. An active part in defeating Dutov was played by the native in- habitants, particularly the Kazakhs and the Kirghiz. The rich feudal elements among these nationalities, who were organized in the nation alist party known as Allash, actively supported Dutov.

In the beginning of December 1917, a congress was held in Orenburg of representatives of the bourgeois and feudal elements oi Kazakhstan. At this congress the Allash party set up a counter revolutionary Kazakh government known as the Allash Orda, which co-operated with General Dutov in his struggle against the Soviets. At the end of December 1917, Dutov 's forces were routed by the Red Guard, and in January 1918, Orenburg became a Soviet city.

Similar defeats awaited the Cossack counter-revolution in the Don and Kuban Regions . The Don Region had become a refuge for the counter-revolution since the Kornilov mutiny and particu larly so after the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution. It was here that Kornilov, Denikin and the other generals had fled.

On learning that Soviet power had been established in Petro grad, the Ataman of the Don Cossacks, Kaledin, proclaimed the independence of the Don Region and prepared for war against the Soviets. Counter-revolutionary officer units were formed, which went to make up the Whiteguard Volunteer Army that was commanded by Generals Kornilov and Denikin. In December 1917, Kaledin cap tured Rostov and prepared for a march into the Donetz coal basin.

Kaledin received considerable assistance from the Ukrainian Central Rada, which sent him arms, ammunition and money, and while allowing detachments of army cadets and Cossacks to pass through its territory, refused to allow Red Guard units fi'om the North to go through to flght Kaledin.

To help the workers of the Donetz Basin in their struggle against Kaledin, Red Guard detachments were sent from Soviet Russia. Cossacks home from the front and the poorer Cossack farmers who demanded land and peace also rose against Kaledin. At the end of December, a congress of Cossacks who had served at the front, representing forty-six regiments, was held at Kamenskaya, at which a Don Eevolutionary Military Committee was set up, headed by tho Cossack Podtyolkov. This Revolutionary Military Committee recognized the Soviet government and called upon working Cos sacks to fight Kaledin, Backed by the revolutionary Cossacks, the Red Guards launched an offensive against Novocherkassk and Rostov, The officer and cadet units sent against them by Kaledin were defeated.

Realizing that his position was hopeless, Elaledin committed suicide. At the end of February 1918, the Red forces occupied Rostov and Novocherkassk. Soviet power was established in the Don Region.

The remnants of the White forces commanded by General Kor nilov fled to the Kuban, where they hoped to obtain the assistance of the counter-revolutionary Cossack Kuban Rada; but by this time Soviet power was being established in the Kuban Region.

On March 14, 1918, Kuban Red Guard forces dislodged the forces of the Kuban Rada from Ekaterinodar, The remnants of the Kuban counter-revolutionary forces fled beyond the river Kuban, and power in Ekaterinodar passed over to the Revolutionary Military Com mittee,

When Kornilov learned of the flight of the Rada from Ekate rinodar he went to the assistance of the Kuban counter-revolutionaries. On the way his bandit troops robbed and murdered the peasant '"strangers" andthe Cossack poor; his line of march was strewn with corpses. Kornilov united all the counter-revolutionary detachments under his own command and on April 11 launched an offensive against Ekaterinodar. The town was defended by Red Guards and the entire working population. The assault, which lasted three days, was repulsed. The Whiteguards were defeated. Kornilov was killed. The remnants of the Whiteguards, under the command of Denikin, fled. Soviet power became firmly established in the Kuban Region.

The Fight to Establish Soviet Power in North Caucasus

After the victory of the October Revolution in Petrograd, the upper strata of the Don and Terek Cossacks concluded an alliance with the Chechens, the rich highlanders of Daghestan, to prevent the establishment of Soviet power in the Cossack and mountain regions of North Caucasus. This alliance between the Cossack upper strata and the feudal highland rulers, however, found no support among the masses. There w^as a long-standing enmity between the North Caucasian highlanders and the Cossack colonizers over the land The "strangers," i, e., the landless Russian peasants who had set tled in North Caucasus and did not belong to the Cossack caste, also waged a struggle against the uj)per strata of the Cossacks.

The situation was exceptionally tense in the Terek Region with its extremely diverse population. Of a total of 1.200,000 inhabitants in the Terek Eegion, the Cossacks niunhered only 150,000, the peasant '"strangers" 300,000, while the rest constituted the small highland peoples. The Cossacks owned on the average eleven hectares of the best land per head, whereas whole villages of highlanders lived on land rented from the Cossacks. Many of the Cossack stanitsas had only recently belonged to the highlanders, whom the tsarist author ities had evicted and had forced into the rocky mountain gorges. Before the revolution, the highlanders were almost regarded as out laws. It was no crime to kill a highlander on Cossack land. The tsarist authorities constantly incited the highland peoples against each other, particularly Christians against Moslems.

The February revolution did scarcely anything to relieve the ten sion in North Caucasus. After the victory of the Great October Social ist Eevolution the local aristocratic army officers incited the highland peoples to fight the Soviets.

An extremely important part in the struggle for Soviet power in this complicated situation was played by S. M. Kirov, who returned to Vladikavkaz after the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. He travelled from village to village explaining to the people the laws which had been passed by the Soviet Congress on coming to power, and organizing the highland poor for the struggle against the eounter-revolution. The working folk among the Cossacks and highlanders were not yet ready for the immediate establishment of Soviet power. There were no Soviets yet among the highland peoples, only so-called National Councils existing.

In February 1918, a People's Soviet for the Terek Region was •set up on the recommendation of S. M, Kirov, and this Soviet con vened in Pyatigorsk a congress of all the nationalities of the region. In spite of the provocative work of the counter-revolutionaries, peace was solemnly proclaimed at this congress, which was guided by S. M. Kirov, between ail the peoples of Terek.

The congress passed a resolution moved by Bolsheviks recog nizing the authority of the Council of People 's Commissars and sent a telegram of greetings to Lenin.

Four days later the Regional People's Congress moved from Pyatigorsk to Vladikavkaz, the centre of the Terek Region and there elected the Terek Council of People's Commissars, headed by the Bolshevik Noy Buachidze.

By the spring of 1918, Soviet power was established in all parts of the Russian "Cossack Vendee" — in the Don, Kuban and Terek Regions.

The Struggle for Soviet Power in Siberia

In the large ■centres of Siberia — Omsk, Tomsk, Novonikolayevsk (now Novo sibirsk) and others — ^power passed into the hands of the Soviets in the early days of November 1917 (old style). The Soviets had to conduct a struggle against the counter-revolutionar 3 " organizations of the "^regionalists, " who demanded the formation of an independent Siberian region, and also of the Socialist-Revolution aries and kulaks. In December 1917, the "regionalists" gathered at an extraordinary All-Siberian Congress at which it was decided to convene a Siberian Constituent Assembly in March 1918, and before that to convene a Siberian Regional Duma.

In the early part of February the Duma delegates began to gather in Tomsk, but here part of them were arrested by the local Soviet by order of the Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Siberia (Tsentrosibir). The delegates who remained at large formed an underground counter-revolutionary Provisional Siberian Govern ment.

In January and February Soviet power was also established in the remoter regions of Siberia — in the majority of districts in the Transbaikal Region, and in the northern districts of the Tobolsk Gubernia.

At the end of February 1918, the Second All-Siberian Congress of Soviets was held at which a new Central Executive Committee of Soviets (Tsentrosibir) was elected, headed by Bolsheviks. Soviet power prevailed over the whole of Siberia.

Dispersion of the Constituent Assembly

The Constituent Assembly became the watchword of the bourgeois counter-revolu tion, which rose up to fight the Great October Socialist Revo lution. In opposition to the slogan of "All power to the Soviets" the bourgeoisie and its agents, the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, issued the slogan of "All power to the Constit uent Assembly!" On November 29 (December 12), 1917, the Soviet government issued a decree ordering the arrest of the members of the Central Committee of the Cadet (Constitutional-Democratic) Party as enemies of the people.

The Soviet authorities did not hinder the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, since the j)6asants had to be given an opportunity of outliving illusions they had about it. The elections to the Constituent Assembly resulted in a majority for the Socialist-Revolutionaries: of the 715 seats they secured 412, while the Bolsheviks won only 183, all the other parties receiving an insignificant number of seats. Actually, however, not only did the Right-wing Socialist-Revolutionary majority in the Constitu ent Assembly not reflect the real relation of forces in the coimtry. It did not even represent the actual relation of forces within the Socialist-Revolutionary Party itself. The elections to the Constituent Assembly took place in November, after Soviet power had been established, whereas the lists of candidates for election to the Assembly had been drawn up before the victory of the revolution. During the period between the nominations and the elections the Socialist-Revolutionary party had split, but the peasants and soldiers who supported the "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries had to vote for the general Socialist-Revolutionary ticket.

On December 13 (26), 1917, Lenin published his "Theses on the Constituent Assembly" in which he pointed out that the masses of the people were demanding that the Constituent Assembly should recog nize the power of the Soviets and the major decrees on peace, land and workers' control.

The Constituent Assembly w^as opened on January 5 (18), 1918, by Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov on behalf of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Sverdlov read the Declaration of Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People, drawn up by Lenin and Stalin. The Declaration called upon the Constituent Assembly to proclaim Russia a Soviet Republic, to abolish the private ownership of land and to endorse ail the Soviet laws. The Constituent Assembly, however, rejected the declaration, whereupon the Bolsheviks declared that the Constit uent Assembly "expresses the yesterday of the revolution," that they had no desire to cover up the crimes of the enemies of the people and were leaving the Assembty. After the Bolsheviks left, followed by the "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries, the x^roceedings soon ter minated. At 4 a. m. a sailor named Zheleznyakov walked up to Cher nov, the Chairman of the Assembly, and said: "The guards are tired. It*s time to close." The Deputies filed out of the hall. On January 6, 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a decree proclaiming the Constituent Assembly dissolved.

The workers and peasants unanimously approved of the disper sion of what they called the "Constitute," for they saw that the Constituent Assembly wanted to hand power back to the capital ists and landlords.

Delegates to a Peasant Congress then in session, when asked to indicate their attitude to the Constituent Assembly gave the following written answers: "I place no hopes in the Constituent Assembly," "The soldiers have no confidence in the Constituent Assembly and expect nothing good from it," "Confidence in the Constituent Assembly has been shaken," and so on.

The Third Congress of Soviets

The Great October Revolu tion in Russia took place at the time when the war on the Western Front had entered an acute stage. This explains why the Soviet state at first gained what Lenin called a sort of temporary independ ence of international relations. Without the backing of the foreign imperialists the forces of the enemies of the proletarian dictatorship XDroved to be impotent. At that time, as Lenin said ". . . the Civil War was one unbroken triumph for Soviet power because its enemies, the exploiters, the landlords and the bourgeoisie, had no political or economic support whatever. ..." (V. 1. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1937, Russ, ed., p. 390.)

The broad results of the triumphal march of Soviet power in the country were summed up by the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets that was held in January'1918. The congress adopted the Decla ration of Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People, drawn up by Lenin in conjunction with Stalin, which stated: "Russia is hereby proclaimed a Republic of Soviets of Workers", Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. All power, centrally and locally, belongs to these Soviets."

The Third Congress confirmed all the decrees issued by the Soviet authorities laying the foundation of the new Soviet Socialist State and confirmed the point that the main task of the Soviet State was to abolish all exploitation of man by man, to build socialist society in Russia and to fight for the victory of Socialism in all countries.

After a report delivered by Comrade Stalin, the congress proclaimed that "the Soviet Russian Republic is established on the basis of the free union of free nations as a federation of Soviet national republics." The formation of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (R.S.F.S.R.) ensured the free and voluntary, and therefore close and durable, alliance of the working people of all the formerly oppressed nations in Russia.

The Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets is of enormous im portance in the history of the Soviet State, for it consolidated its socialist foundations.

Soviet Power Brings Liberation to the Oppressed Nations

Recognition of the Independence of Finland

The bourgeois "National Councils" and regional bourgeois "governments" that were set up before the Great October Socialist Revolution wanted to preserve the bourgeois order and therefore declared war on the Soviet government.

The workers and peasants in the non-Russian regions, having under the leadership and with the assistance of the Russian workers set up Soviets of Workers' and Peasants* Deputies, launched a struggle to establish Soviet power in the non-Russian regions as well.

Among the first to start this struggle for power was the working class of Finland. But the treacherous Right-wing of the Finnish Social Democratic Party surrendered power to the bourgeoisie. The Finnish Sejm sanctioned the formation of the reactionary government headed by Svinhuvud. An extraordinary congress of the Social-Democratic Party was called to settle the issue of power.

On November 14 (27), 1917, J. V. Stalin, then People's Commissar of Nationalities, addressed this congress and after greeting the workers of Finland explained the program of the Soviet State on the national question. The Soviet government guaran teed the independence of Finland. "'Complete freedom^" proclaimed Comrade Stalin, ""for the Finns, as well as for all the other nation alities of Russia, to arrange their lives in their own way. A volun tary and honest alliance of the Finnish people with the Russian people I No tutelage, no supervision from above, over the Finnish people!" (Lenin and Stalin^ 1917, Selected Writings and Speeches, Moscow, 1938, p. 659.) He called upon the workers of Finland to follow the uxample of the Russian workers, and promised them the fraternal assistance of the Soviet Eepublic.

• The congress, however, being controlled by the opportunists, did not decide in favour of the seizure of power by the working class of Finland, With the aid of the Finnish Social-Democrats, the bourgeoisie consolidated its rule. The bourgeois majority in the Finnish Sejm voted in favour of secession from Russia.

In December 1917, the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree recognizing the independence of the Finnish Eepublic, thus demonstrating that the Soviet government really stood for the right of nations to self-determination, including secession as state entities.

The Struggle to Establish Soviet Power in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia

The working people in the Baltic coimtries greeted the October Eevolution with tremendous enthusiasm; the landlords and the bourgeoisie of those countries met it with hatred and fear.

The Lithuanian bourgeoisie wanted to separate Lithuania from Soviet Russia and prevent the establishment of Soviet power there. In December 1917, the Lithuanian National Council (Tary ba), of which the reactionary landlord Smetona was President, pro claimed the independence of the Lithuanian state. Taking advantage of the fact that Lithuania had been occupied by German troops dur ing the war, the National Council appealed to the Kaiser for assistance in combating the Bolshevik revolution, and expressed readiness to enter into a military , economic and customs union with Germany. Thus, the bourgeois Lithuanian Eepublic was formed with Vilna as its capital; but the real masters in Lithuania were the German military author ities who were backed by the Lithuanian landlords and the bourgeoisie .

In the unoccupied part of Latvia, Soviet power was established in October (November) 1917. An important role during the Octo ber days was played by the Lettish Eifleswho took an active part in the proletarian revolution. They occupied the railway junctions in Latvia and prevented troops being sent from the front to help Keren sky. But Soviet rule in Latvia was short-lived. Terrified by the prole tarian revolution, the Latvian bourgeoisie and landlords appealed to the German authorities to send troops into the part of Latvia where Soviet power had been established. The request was fulfilled b^r the German imperialists.

In Estonia the proletarian revolution took place immediately after the victory of the armed insurrection in Petrograd. All power passed into the hands of the All-Estonian Soviet of Workers', Peas ants', Soldiers' and Sailors' Deputies. With the establishment of Soviet power in Estonia the land and factories were nationalized. This victory of the Soviets in Estonia greatly" facilitated the success of the October fighting in Petrograd, for the Soviet authorities in Estonia i3revented the dispatch of troops from the front to assist Kerensky. In the middle of November 1917, the Estonian National Sejm, which had become a centre of the counter-revolution, was dissolved, whereupon, the Estonian bourgeoisie and the Baltic barons prepared for a coup d^Etat. They appealed to the German military authorities, who as early as September 1917 had occupied a number of Estonian islands, to occupy Estonia itself. Thus com- menced the German occupation of the whole of Estonia.

The Struggle to Establish Soviet Power in the Ukraine

As Comrade Stalin has stated, in the border regions the Great October Socialist Revolution encountered a barrier in the shape of the "Na tional Councils" and regional "governments" that had been set up before the October Revolution. "The revolution, which started in the centre," he wrote, "could not long be confined to this narrow territory. Once having triumphed in the centre, it was bound to spread to the border regions. And, indeed, from the very first days of the seizure of power, the revolutionary wave spread from the North all over Russia, sweeping over one border region after another. But here it struck a dam in the form of the 'National Coimcils' and regional 'governments' (Don, Kuban, Siberia) which had come into being before the October Revo lution. The fact is that these 'national governments' would not hear of a socialist revolution. Bourgeois by nature, they had not the slightest intention of destroying the old bourgeois world; on the contrary, they considered it their duty to preserve and consolidate it by every means in their power. Essentially imperialist, they had not the slightest intention of breaking with imperialism; on the contrary, they were never averse to seizing and subjugating bits and morsels of 'foreign' nationalities whenever opportunity offered. No wonder that the ^na tional governments' in the border regions declared war on the socialist government in the centre. And, once they had declared war, they naturally became centres of reaction attracting all that was counter revolutionary in Russia" (J. Stalin, Marxism arid the National arid Colonial Question^ Moscow, 1940, p, 63).

After the October Revolution the Ukrainian Central Rada be came a bulwark of the bourgeois counter-revolution. On learning that power in Russia had passed into the hands of the Soviets it passed a resolution refusing to recognize the Soviet State and declaring that all attempts to establish Soviet power in the Ukraine would he combated. It concluded an agreement with various Russian counter revolutionary organizations and parties and proclaimed its loyalty to the "'Allies," i, e., the Entente.

The masses of the workers and peasants in the Ukraine, however, were roused to enthusiasm by the news of the victory of the insur rection in Petrograd and rose up to fight for the establishment of Soviet power. In Kiev, the workers, led by the Bolshevik Andrei Iva nov, set up a Revolutionary Committee, which organized an insurrec tion against the Provisional Government,

Just when the Kiev workers were on the point of victory, the Central Rada, which claimed to be neutral but was actually helping the troops of the Provisional Government, treacherously attacked the Kiev Soviet and seized power. The Rada concluded an alliance with Kaledin and allowed Cossack units to pass through its territory from the front to the Don. At the same time the Rada refused the right of passage to Soviet troops who were marching against Kaledin.

After exhausting all means of reaching a iDeaceful settlement of the conflict, the Soviet government, on December 4 (17), sent the Rada a categorical demand to stop assisting Kaledin. The Ukrainian workers and the poorer strata of the peasantry began to rise in revolt against the Rada.

On December 11 (24), 1917, an All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets was held which set up a Central Executive Committee; the latter set up the first Soviet government in the Ukraine. Troops from Soviet Russia were sent to the assistance of this government.

On January 16 (29), 1918, in answer to the call of the Bol sheviks the workers in Kiev rose in amied insurrection against the Rada. During the fighting, which lasted several days, exceptional heroism was displayed by the workers employed in the Kiev .^senal, who, though surrounded and even after their ammunition, drink ing water and provisions had run out, refused to surrender, and kept on fighting. The Rada inflicted cruel reprisals upon the ArsenaPs brave defenders. But Soviet troops were already approaching Kiev and, on January 27 (February 9), assisted by the Kiev workers who rose in revolt again, they captured the city. The Rada fled to .JZhitomir. Soviet power was established all over the Ukraine.

The Struggle to Establish Soviet power in Byelorussia

The fight to establish Soviet power in Byelorussia was waged by the revolutionary-minded masses of workers, peasants and soldiers at the front, led by the Bolsheviks. As soon as the first news of the October insurrection in Petrograd was received in Minsk, the Minsk Soviet seized power, liberated from pris on all the soldiers whom the Kerensky government had arrested for "political of fences" and formedj^them into a revolutionary regiment.

The counter-revolution made an attempt to use Cos sacks in order to crush the Minsk Soviet, but an armoured train and a regiment of soldiers arrived from the front and the Cos sacks were beaten off. The Bolsheviks in Polesie, led by L. M. Kaganovich, established control over the movements of troop trains and held up and disarmed the Cossack contin gents.

The Eleventh Congress of the Western Eront, which was held in Minsk in the latter half of November 1917, proclaimed the establish ment of Soviet power in Byelorussia.

The Struggle to Establish Soviet Power in Transcaucasia

The population of Transcaucasia, numbering seven million, was made up of dozens of different nationalities. In the endeavour to keep the masses from taking part in the proletarian socialist rev olution, the enemies of the revolution fomented strife among these nationalities. The Transcaucasian bourgeois nationalists — the Armenian Dashnacks, Azerbaijanian Mussavatists and the Georgian Mensheviks — ^who had got on very well with the Provisional Govern ment, decided to secede from Russia as soon as Soviet power was established.

With this object in view they set up, on November 11 (24), 1917, a Transcaucasian Commissariat, which was a bloc of all the bour geois parties to fight the Soviet State. Claiming to assert the inde pendence of the Transcaucasian peoples, this Commissariat broke with Soviet Russia and concluded an alliance with the coun ter-revolutionaries in the Don and Kuban Regions. The Transcau casian Commissariat formally united Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, but actually each of these countries was ruled by its own National Council. Acute inter-national strife broke out among them. The Transcaucasian counter-revolution was led by the Georgian Mensheviks. The latter captured the Tiflis Arsenal and the premises and funds of the Regional Soviet of the Caucasian Army and began to form national units. They intended to arm these units with the weapons of the demobilized Caucasian Army. In January 1918, an armoured train, supported by armed gangs of Mussavatists, was sent to Shamkhor, where it fired on troop trains carrying soldiers home from the Caucasian Front. As a result of this treacherous onslaught 2,000 Russian soldiers were killed. The Shamkhor mas sacre roused the most profound indignation and protest among the working people in Transcaucasia, but the Transcaucasian Commissariat retaliated to this by sterner measures of repression; it suppressed workers' newspapers, arrested a number of Georgian Bolsheviks and broke up demonstrations.

On February 10, the workers and soldiers in Tifiis organized a huge meeting in the Alexander Park to protest against the counter-revo lutionary activities of the Transcaucasian Commissariat. Armed detachments sent by the Mensheviks surrounded the meeting and shot down the miarmed workers with machine guns. That day the Transcaucasian Sejm which consisted of Menshevik, Dashnack, Mussa vatist, Socialist-Revolutionary and Cadet members of the dispersed Constituent Assembly, was opened in Tifiis. White terror was intensified in Transcaucasia. Punitive expeditions were sent to suppress the peasant movement and thousands of peasants were shot down.

Unable to cope with the growing revolutionary movement the Transcaucasian ^'national governments" appealed to the Western imperialists for assistance in crushing the workers and peasants.

Transcaucasia and the rich oil fields of Baku in particular had long attracted the West-European imperialists. The separation of Transcaucasia fk>m Russia and the rule of the bourgeois nationalists in that region now facilitated the seizure of Transcaucasia by the imperialists.

The Transcaucasian Sejm first opened negotiations with the Entente, but at that time the latter lacked the necessary forces to undertake such an operation. The Sejm then decided to strike a bargain with the German coalition and opened negotiations with Turkey. The Turks, however, backed by the Mussavatists, broke ofi these negotiations, seized Kars and Batum, and commenced a drive into the interior of Transcaucasia. Through the mediation of the Mussavatists, the Dashnacks and Mensheviks came to an arrangement with the German and Turkish imperialists, and on their demand, in April 1918, pro C'laimed the "independence" of Transcaucasia.

But the British imperialists also had designs upon Transcaucasia, In the beginning of 1918, they sent a military expedition there through Persia. The head of this expedition enlisted the services of Russian army officers who had fled to Persia from Soviet Russia and began to make preparations to seize Baku.

The Baku Soviet of Workers' Deputies, in which the Bolsheviks were in the majority, was the only Soviet in Transcaucasia that wel comed the insurrection in Petrograd and refused to recognize the authority of the Transcaucasian Sejm. In a resolution passed in the beginning of March 1918, the Baku Soviet declared: "The City of Baku must be transformed into a base for the struggle to establish Soviet rule in Transcaucasia." This struggle was started &st of all against the bourgeois nationalist parties, the Mussavatists and Dashnacks, who were conducting provocative activities among the Azerbaijanians and among the Armenians in Baku. On March 18, the Mussavatists rose in revolt against Soviet rule, but the Baku workers, led by the veteran Bolshevik Stepan Shaumyan, crushed this counter-revolutionary uprising. Soviet rule was consolidated in Baku and the heroic Baku Commune was formed.

The Struggle to Establish Soviet Power in Central Asia

While the fighting in Petrograd was at its height the Bolsheviks in Tashkent began to prepare to seize power, but on October 28 (November 10), 1917, Cossacks and army cadets surrounded the Tashkent Soviet and arrested the members of the Revolutionary Committee. Sirens sounded the alarm and in response as many as 3,000 armed workers, Russians and Uzbeks, rallied to liberate the prisoners. An insurrection commenced. Cossacks and army cadets occupied the Tashkent fort and dispatched armoured cars against the city. The work ers built barricades ' and barred their way. The fighting lasted for nearly four days. Uzbek and Kirghizian peasants came from the surrounding villages to help the workers.

On October 31 (November 13), 1917, after stubborn fighting, power passed into the hands of the SovietsThe members of the Revo lutionary Committee were liberated from prison and the Soviet govern ment of Turkestan was set up in Tashkent.

To combat Soviet rule in Central Asia, the bourgeois nation alists and Russian Whiteguard colonizers, assisted by the British, set up in Kokand, in November 1917, a government of their own called the "Kokand Autonomy," which started civil war in Central Asia. In February 1918, the Kokand "government" was liquidated by the Turkestan Red Guard, which consisted not only of urban workers — railwaymen and cotton warehousemen — ^but also of Uzbek, Kirghiz, Kazakh and Turkmen handicraftsmen and peasants.

The People's Commissariat of Nationalities

In the very first days after the victory of the October Revolution a People's Commissariat of Nationalities (Narkomnats) was formed to direct the struggle of the oppressed nationalities for their liberation and to give practical effect to the national policy of the Soviet State. The Narkomnats was headed by Comrade Stalin. It was faced with the enormous task of directing the political, economic and cultural growth of the non-Russian nationalities, which, with a total pojDulation numbering 65,000,000, differed very widely in language, habits of life and in their level of cultural and political development.

In the beginning of 1918, Comrade Stalin, in the name of the Narkomnats, addressed a message to the Soviets of Kazan, Ufa, Orenburg and Ekaterinburg and to the Council of People's Com missars of the Turkestan Eegion, in which he explained the funda mental aims of the Soviet State on the national question and outlined a complete program of action for rallying the masses around the Soviets. He proposed that the border regions should be given autonomy and that steps be taken forthwith to set up local schools and courts, local organs of power and local political and educational bodies, all to function in the native languages. The Soviets were to strengthen the alliance between the workers and peasants of the different nationalities and lead them to Socialism.

The People's Commissariat of Nationalities did considerable u'ork in developing the national culture of the formerly oppressed nationalities, trained personnel to conduct work among them, published books and newspapers in their respective languages and set up schools and other educational institutions.

The Narkomnats was particularly energetic in protecting the interests of the national minorities who had been utterly down trodden imder the old regime, such as the Yakuts, Nentsi, the peoples of the Volga Eegion, etc. On the suggestion of the Narkomnats the Council of People's Commissars, in the summer of 1918, issued a decree calling for the "uprooting of the anti-Semite movement." Lenin wrote the following on the draft of the decree: "Pogrom mongers and those conducting pogrom propaganda are to be outlawed."

The Great October Socialist Eevolution razed to the ground that prison of the peoples — tsarist Russia, laid a firm foundation for the alliance of the Russian workers and peasants with the working, people of all the non-Russian nationalities, awakened the most backward peoples of Russia to political life and opened up to them the road to Socialism.

The policy of the Soviet State on the national question was of enormous international importance and exercised excep tional infiuence upon the peoples of the Orient.

The Soviet government annulled all the imequal treaties which the tsar had concluded with Turkey and Persia and began to with draw the troops from the regions which Russian tsarism had occupied, such as Turkish Armenia, and others.

The struggle which the Soviet government waged for the inde pendence of small nations gained for it the confidence of the formerly most backward and downtrodden nations.

The World-Historic Importance of the Great October Socialist Revolution

Reasons for the Victory of the October Revolution

The Great October Socialist Revolution was brought about by thfe working class and the poorest strata of the peasantry. The revolution was socialist in character. After overthrowing the exploiting classes, the proletariat set up the proletarian dictatorship in the shape of the Soviet State. The Soviet State set out to build complete socialist society in our country.

The great proletarian revolution smashed the chains of imperialism and overthrew the rule of the bourgeoisie with relative ease.

"There were several reasons for this comparatively easy victor^' of the socialist revolution in Russia. The following chief reasons should be noted:

"1) The October Revolution was confronted by an enemy so comparatively weak, so badly organized and so politically inexpe rienced as the Russian bourgeoisie. Economically still weak, and completely dependent on government contracts, the Russian bourgeoi sie lacked sufficient political self-reliance and initiative to find a way out of the situation. It had neither the experience of the Erenoh bour geoisie, for example, in political combination and political chicanery on a broad scale, nor the schooling of the Britisli bourgeoisie in broadly conceived crafby compromise. It had but recently sought to reach an understanding with the tsar; yet now that the tsar had been over thrown by the February revolution, and the bourgeoisie itself had come to power, it was unable to think of anything better than to continue the policy of the detested tsar in all its essentials. Like the tsar, it stood for Var to a victorious finish,' although the war was beyond the country's strength and had reduced the people and the army to a state of utter exhaustion. Like the tsar, it stood for the preservation in the main of big landed property, although the peasantry was perishing from lack of land and the weight of the landlords' yoke. As to its labour policy, the Russian bourgeoisie outstripped even the tsar in its hatred of the working class, for it not only strove to preserve and strengthen the yoke of the factory owners, but to render it intolerable by wholesale lockouts.

"It is not surprising that the people saw no essential difference between the policy of the tsar and the policy of the bourgeoisie, and that they transferred their hatred of the tsar to the Provisional Govern ment of the bourgeoisie.

"As long as the compromising Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshe vik parties possessed a certain amount of influence among the people, the bourgeoisie could use them as a screen and preserve its power. But after the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had exposed themselves as agents of the imperialist bourgeoisie, thus forfeiting their influence among the people, the bourgeoisie and its Provisional Government were left without a support.

"2) The October Revolution was headed by so revolutionarj" a class as the working class of Russia, a class which had been steeled in battle, which had in a short space passed through two revolutions, and which by the eve of the third revolution had won recognition as the leader of the people in the struggle for peace, land, liberty and Socialism. K the revolution had not had a leader like the working class of Russia, a leader that had earned the confidence of the people, there would have been no alliance between the workers and peasants, and without such an alliance the victory of the October Revolution would have been impossible.

"3) The working class of Russia had so effective anally in the revolution as the poor peasantry, which comprised the overwhelming majority of the peasant population. The experience of eight months of revolution — ^whioh may unliesitatingly be compared to the expe rience of several decades of 'normaP development — had not been in vain as far as the mass of the labouring peasants were concerned . During this period they had had the opportunity to test all the parties of Russia in practice and convince themselves that neither the Con stitutional-Democrats nor the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Menshe viks would seriously quarrel with the landlords or sacrifice themselves for the interests of the peasants; that there was only one party in Rus sia — ^the Bolshevik Party — ^which was in no way connected with the landlords and which was prepared to crush the latter in order to satisfy the needs of the peasants. This served as a solid basis for the alliance of the proletariat and the poor peasantry. The existence of this alliance between the working class and the poor peasantry determined the conduct of the middle peasants, who had long been vacillating and only on the eve of the October uprising wholeheartedly swung over towards the revolution and joined forces with the poor peasants.

"It goes without saying that without this alliance the October Revolution could not have been victorious.

"4) The working class was headed by a party so tried and tested in political battles as the Bolshevik Party. Only a party like the Bol shevik Party, courageous enough to lead the people in decisive attack, and cautious enough to steer clear of all the submerged rocks in its path to the goal, could so skilfully merge into one common revolu tionary torrent such diverse revolutionary movements as the general democratic movement for peace, the peasant democratic movement for the seizure of the landed estates^ the movement of the oppressed nationalities for national liberation and national equality, and the socialist movement of the proletariat for the overthrow of the bourgeoi sie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

"Undoubtedly, the merging of these diverse revolutionary streams into one common powerful revolutionary torrent decided the fate of capitalism in Russia.

"5) The October Revolution began at a time when the imperialist war was still at its height, when the principal bourgeois states were split into two hostile camps, and when, absorbed in mutual war and undermining each other's strength, they were unable to intervene effectively in 'Russian affairs' and actively to oppose the October Revolution.

"This undoubtedly did much to facilitate the victory of the October Socialist Revolution" (History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [Bolsheviks], Short Course, Moscow, 1945, pp. 212-214).

The Significance of the October Revolution

The Great October Socialist Revolution is of enormous significance in the history of man kind. It marked a radical turn from the old capitalist world to the new socialist world. It split the world into two opposite systems — the system of dying capitalism and the system of victorious and flourishing Socialism.

For first time in history, the Great October Socialist Revolu-* tion razed to the ground the old state machinery of the exploiting classes and built in its place a new type of state~the Soviets, as the state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

By depriving the bourgeoisie and the landlords of the means of production and converting the factories, the land, the railways and the banks into public property, the October Revolution put an end to the exploitation of the masses of the people, rid millions of workers of the horrors of unemployment, and millions of peasants from bond age to the landlords and gradual extinction.

. The victory achieved in the establishment of Soviet power gave the people, for the first time in history, not only freedom, but also the possibility of assuring their material well-being, the opportu nity to lead a happy, prosperous and cultured life.

The Great October Socialist Revolution brought freedom, for the first time in world history, to the oppressed nations and converted them into free and equal builders of Socialism. Thus it indicated to the enslaved colonial peoples the way to fight for their emancipation.

Before th3 October Revolution our country was in danger of becoming the prey of the predatory imperialists and of being reduced to the position of a dependent colonial country. The victory of the so cialist revolution saved Russia from the danger of losing her inde pendence as a state.

The emancipated workers and peasants and liberated nationalities inhabiting Russia became the arbiters of their own destiny. The So viets rendered it possible for the widest masses of the people to take an active part in affairs of state. Proletarian democracy, which safeguards the vital interests of the majority of the people, w'as firmly established.

The Great October Socialist Revolution is a colossal triumph for the theory of Marxism-Leninism, and proved that when revolution ary theory takes hold of the masses it becomes a mighty factor in the development of society.

Comrade Stalin wrote: . The victory oi the October Revolution

signifies a radical change in the history of mankind, a radical change in the historical destiny of world capitalism, a radical change in the liberation movement of the world proletariat, a radical change in the methods of struggle and the forms of organization, in the life and traditions, in the culture and ideology of the exploited masses through out the world" (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism^ Moscow, 1947, p. 19S).

The Brest-Litovsk Peace. The Struggle for a Respite

The Brest-Litovsk Peace

The Struggle to Extricate Russia from the Imperialist War

One of the most important tasks that confronted the young Soviet State was to extricate the country from the imperialist war and to Gontlude peace.

The Decree on Peace of October 26 (November 8), 1917, called on all the governments and peoples to terminate the war and conclude a just and democratic peace.

The governments of the Entente countries rejected the Soviet government's proposal. They wanted at all costs to keep the Russian troops on the Eastern Front until the United States, which had entered the war against Germany, had transported her troops to Europe.

Kaiser Germany agreed to enter into peace negotiations in the hope of easing her military and food situation. On November 20 (December 3), 1917, peace negotiations were opened in Brest-Litovsk. At the conference, the Soviet delegation read out the Decree on Peace and proposed the conclusion of peace without annexations and indemnities. The German delegation accepted this proposal, stipulating, however, that peace without annexations and indemnities would only be possible if the Entente countries agreed to it. The Entente countries rejected the Soviet proposals. But when the Soviet delegation asked the Germans how far they would retire. General Hoffmann answered cynically: "Not a single millimetre." The Soviet delegation suspended negotiations for a week and returned to Petro grad. Lenin proposed that the negotiations be resumed in a neutral country, but the German imperialists rejected this proposal and presented predatory peace terms which included the surrender to Germany of the Moon Soimd Islands, the Gulf of Eiga and the city of Eiga, and also Poland, Lithuania and the parts of Latvia and Byelorussia which the Germans had captured during the war. The Soviet delegation protested against these terms, broke off negotiations and returned to Petrograd again.

The Soviet government was faced with* the alternative of conclud ing peace with Kaiser Germany on the latter's predatory terms or of resuming the war. But the newly established Soviet Republic was not in a condition to fight. A process of spontaneous demobilization was taking place at the front. The soldiers were making for home. The old army was breaking up, but no new army had yet been formed. Utterly worn out by the war, the masses of the working people were longing for peace and were unable to wage another war. On January S (21), 1918, at a joint meeting of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party and the Bolshevik delegates at the Third Congress of Soviets, Lenin read out his theses concerning the immediate conclusion of a separate peace with Germany. In his theses he showed that the Soviet Republic was not in a condition to continue the war. It would be sheer recklessness, he said, to make the fate of socialist Russia dependent on the possibility of an early revolution taking place in Germany at a date wiien nobody could foretell. The conclusion of peace, said Lenin, would not weaken but strength en the Soviet Republic, for it would give the Soviet government a respite which it could utilize to strengthen the defences of the country and consolidate the power of the Soviets.

The Struggle Against the Trotsky-Bukharin Instigators of War

In its, struggle for peace the Bolshevik Party had to overcome the fu rious resistance of the numerous enemies of Soviet power.

The Russian and foreign bourgeoisie and their servitors, the Men sheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, wanted to drag the unarmed Soviet Republic into . a war' with Germany in order to overthrow the rule of the Soviets. This aim was also , pursued by the enemies of So cialism and traitors to their country, the Trotskyites and Bukharin ites, who were, supported by the double-dealers Kamenev and Zinoviev. Concealing *his' -treach^ous designs, Trotsky, who was the head of the Soviet delegation^ inBrest-Litovsk, conducted the negotiations in such, a way as to lead to a rupture. A delegation &om the Ukrainian Rada also arrived in Brest-Litovsk claiming to represent an independ ent government, although, by that time the Rada had been driven out by the insurgent masses of the Ukraine. Trotsky recognized the competence of the "independent" Rada, and the German imperial ists concluded a treaty with it, behind the backs of the Soviet delega tion, on terms that meant the enslavement of the Ukraine. Having secured the support of the betrayers of the Ukrainian people the German Kaiser's government sharply changed its tone towards the Soviet delegation and presented an ultimatum demanding the accept ance of its predatory terms.

In defiance of Lenin's instructions to conclude peace without delay, Trotsky refused to sign the peace terms proposed by Germany, but at the same time declared that the Soviet Republic would not wage war and would demobilize her army. The German impe rialists could not wish for anything better. The Land of Soviets was in mortal danger, but Bukharin and Trotsky continued with their provocative assertion that "the Germans will not dare to attack. "

Lenin categorically insisted that the acceptance of the peace terms be telegraphed to Germany and in this he was supported by Stalin and Sverdlov. On February 18, while the Central Committee of the Bol shevik Party was in session, a communication was received to the eflFect that at noon that day the Germans had launched an offensive along the whole front. The Central Committee adopted Lenin's proposal to conclude peace with Germany forthwith, but the German imperial ists were in no hurry to conclude peace as they wanted to seize as much Russian territory and war supplies as possible. They hurled against the Land of Soviets thirty divisions of infantry, cavalry and armoured cars. Some of the German divisions marched through Latvia and Estonia to Narva and threatened Petrograd, while others occupied Dvinsk and marched on Pskov in order to reach Petrograd from the southwest. By arrangement with the Ukrainian Rada, Austrian and German troops began at the same time to occupy the Ukraine.

On February 21, 1918, Lenin proclaimed the socialist fatherland in danger. The Council of People's Commissars of the R.S.F.S.R. issued an appeal to the entire working population to rally to the defence of the socialist fatherland against the invasion of the German aggressors, whose aim was to enslave the workers and peasants and restore the capitalist system. Red Army detachments were formed in all parts of the Soviet land.

At Pskov and Narva the German army encountered the heroic resistance of the first units of the young Red Army.

While oi^anizing the defence of the country amidst extremely difficult conditions, Lenin and Stalin called upon the working class of Petrograd to be vigilant and to wage a ruthless struggle against enemies who were trying to organize a revolt in Petrograd and to capture the capital. The German army's offensive was halted. February 23, the day on which the Red Army repulsed the troops of German imperialism has since then been celebrated in the U.S.S.R. as Red Army Day.

On March 3, 1918, the Soviet delegation signed the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the terms of which were even more harsh than those which Germany had proposed at the beginning of the negotiations. By this treaty Soviet Russia withdrew from Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and part of Byelorussia. It had to conclude peace with the Ukrainian Central Rada, demobilize the army and navy and pay Ger many an enormous indemnity. At this time Turkey seized Kars and Batum.

The act of provocation committed by Trotsky and Bukharin jeopardized the very existence of the Soviet Republic. As Lenin wrote, the Trotsky ites and Bukharinites "actually lielfed the Ger man imperialists and hindered the growth and development of the revolution in Germany" (V. I. Lenin, Selected, Worhs^ Two-Vol. ed., Vol, II, Moscow, 1947, p. 287). The German imperialists gained control of a vast territory covering almost a million square kilome tres, equal in area to that of Germany and France put together. Over forty million Ukrainians, Letts, Estonians, Byelorussians and Lithuanians found themselves under the heel of German im perialism.

Ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty

Another fierce struggle flared up over the question of ratifying the peace treaty. The Trotsky and Bukharin gang of warmongers entered into a conspiracy with the Right and "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries and organized a coun ter-revolutionary plot with the object of preventing the ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Peace, of overthrowing the Soviet government and of arresting and killing Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov. This mon strous plot was uncovered only twenty years later.

The Seventh Congress of the Party (March 6-8, 1918) denoimced the subversive and disruptive activities of the Communists"

and ratified the peace treaty that had been signed in Brest-Litovsk.

On March 14, the Extraordinary Fourth Congress of Soviets was convened to ratify the peace treaty. At this congress the Men^eviks and the Right and "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries formed a united front against Lenin. They were supported by the Trotsky ites and Bukharinites. How ver, the enemies of Soviet rule sustained another defeat. The Congress of Soviets approved the policy of gaining a req)ite, ratified the peace treaty and called upon the working people to mobilize all forces to defend their socialist fatherland and strengthen its defences.

In view of tiie military tlu'eat resulting from the invasion of the Baltic countries and Finland begun by the Geimaii imiDerial ists, the congress resolved to transfer the seat of government from Petrograd to IMoscow, which thus became the capital.

The Struggle of the Soviet People against the German Occupation Forces in 1918

The Fight Against the German Invaders in the Ukraine

According to the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty Germany was to cease hostilities against Soviet Russia; but the German imperialists, having concluded a separate peace treaty with the Central Rada, sent as many as 300,000 Austrian and German soldiers to the Ukraine and the Don Region. The German invaders needed the Ukraine for its rich re sources of raw materials and food. They counted , on crossing the Ukraine so as to reach the Donetz coal fields, and on crossing the Don and Kuban to reach Transcaucasia and the oil fields of Baku. German imperialism particularly needed to seize the Ukraine as a base from which to war against the Soviet regimej to dismember the Land of Soviets.

In an article he wrote on March 14, 1918, entitled "The Ukrainian Knot," Comrade Stalin wrote of the mortal danger that threatened Soviet Ukraine and called on the Ukrainian people to wage a pa triotic war for liberation against the German invaders. "The imperial ists of Austria and Germany he wrote, "are carrying on their bayo nets a new shameful yoke which is not one whit better than the old Tatar yoke — such is the significance of the invasion from the West. Evidently this is felt by the Ukrainian are feverishly

preparing to offer resistance. The formation of a peasant army, the mobilization of the Workers' Red Guard, a number of successful clashe.^ with the "civilized" violators after the first flashes of panic, the recapture of Bakhmaeh, Konotop and Nejin, and the approach to Kiev, the evergrowing enthusiasm of the masses who are rushing in thousands into the battle against the enslavers — such is the response of the people of the Ukraine to the invasion of the violators.

"Against the foreign yoke that is coming from the West, Soviet Ukraine is rising to wage a patriotic war of liberation — such is the significance of the events that are developing in the Uloraine" (J. Stalin, Articles and S'peeches on tlie Ukraine^ Kiev, 1936, Russ, ed., pp. 40-41).

On February 22, 1918, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of the Xlkrame issued an appeal to the people to fight the Ger man invaders. The aiDpealread: "Organize partisan units, blow up bridges, railways and roads; if yon are forced to retreat, carry off or de stroy grain stocks and everjrthing that may be useful to the hungry rob ber hordes. . . Let the violators know that they will meet with determined resistance everywhere along their path. Let them know that only over our dead bodies will they enter the capital of the Ukraine."

In Kiev and other cities Defence Committees and Emergency Defence Staffs were formed. The weak Ked Guard units doggedly resist ed the powerful armoured forces of the German army and held them at bay near Kiev for three whole days, but it was an imequal battle, and on March 1 Kiev fell to the Germans. The German army marched on to Kharkov and the Donetz Basin in one direction, and to the industrial centres of South Ukraine in another.

Along their entire line of advance — ^fipom the frontiers furthest west to the northern frontiers' of the Ukraine, on the borders of tlie Voronezh and Kursk Gubernias, and in the East, on the borders of the Don Begion — ^the Austrian and (Jerman troops encountered the determined armed resistance of the Ukrainian workers and peasants who were backed by the fraternal Bussian people.

The foreign invaders were fought by detachments of the Bed Guards consisting of workers from all the industrial centres of the Ukraine. Gradually, the numerous Bed Guard detachments were formed into five Ukrainian armies. The Central Executive Committees of the Ukraine, the Donetz-Krivoi Bog Soviet Eepublic, which had been formed in the Donetz Basin, the Don and Crimea Soviet Republics resolved to combine their forces to wage a joint struggle against the German imperialists. Red Guard detachments from Moscow, Petrograd and other big Russian towns were sent to assist the Ukraine.

The resistance to the German invaders in the Ukraine was organ ized by K. E. Voroshilov, who at that time was one of the leaders of the Ukrainian Bolsheviks. With the assistance of the veteran Bolshe vik Artyom (Sergeyev), Voroshilov united a number of partisan detach ments and formed the Fifth Ukrainian Army. When the Germans had seized the Ukraine he determined to fight his way through to Tsa ritsyn to unite with the Red Army. For six weeks the Fifth Ukrain ian Army fought its way forward through the Cossack Don Region. When the column reached the Cossack stanitsa of Chirskaya it was found that the Whiteguards had blown up the bridge across the Don. Voroshilov ordered the bridge to be repaired. To do this it was neces sary to fill the river bed at one point with sand, stones and earth, and build huge trestle supports of railway sleepers. When the comrade who proposed the plan was asked how much earth would be required to fill the river bed he said, pointing to a tall hill situated about two kilometres from the bank: "See that hill over there? It'll have to be dragged to the Don." They set to, and, undsr fire from the Cossacks, without carts or special implements to help them, carried the earth to the river in baskets. Somewhat later assistance arrived in the shape of the carts of peasants who were retreating with the partisans. The bridge was built and the army proceeded on its way to Tsaritsyn.

In the Ukraine the Central Rada, headed by Petliura, was rein' stated in power, but shortly after, in April 1918, the Rada government was overthrown on the demand of the German authorities, and Pavel Skoropadsky, a big landlord and tsarist General, was proclaimed Hetman, or ruler, of the Ukraine.

The Germans established a colonial regime of plunder in the ter ritory they occupied. The German military authorities possessed unlim ited power in the Ukraine. Field courts-martial were set up ev erywhere which ordered the shooting of non-combatants on the slightest suspicion of sympathy with the Soviets* The Ger mans carried through the wholesale extermination of the popula tion. Thousands upon thousands of workers and iDeasants were shot, hanged or sent to concentration camps. All the prisons were crammed. The inspector of the Petrakov Elementary School reported to the Ekaterinoslav Zemstvo administration the following: "Instruction in the school of which I am in charge has ceased because a punitive expedition hanged and shot several persons right outside the doors and windows of the school, leaving iie bodies lying here for three days."

In many towns and villages the Gterman military authorities put up the following warning: "For every German soldier who is killed or wounded the first ten Russian soldiers or inhabitants that are caught will be shot forthwith."

Trainloads of plundered property were sent from the Ukraine and the Don Region to Germany. The German invaders established a sanguinary regime of requisition and plunder. The peasants were robbed of their land, grain stocks, cattle, food stocks, farm implements and domestic furniture and utensils.

The German invaders wrecked the entire industry of the Ukraine. They closed down factories and mills and transported the machinery to Germany. Unemployment was rampant in all the towns in the occupied territory. Famine and epidemics raged over this once bounteous land. Those who were employed were forced to work twelve to fourteen hours a day. The workers were driven from the apartments they had received under Soviet rule and compelled to live in cold and filthy barracks. Tens of thousands were forcibly driven to Germany to work in the coal mines or on the farms of the big landlords.

With the German troops came the Ukrainian, Polish and Russian landlords. The Hetman reintroduced forced labour for the peasants, compelling them to harvest the crops on the landlords* land. Puni tive expeditions consisting of the sons of kulaks flogged and shot peas ants on the reports of reactionary clergymen and kulaks. Heavy contri butions were imposed on villages and towns. During the rule of the. Hetman nearly 250,000 tons of grain and over 50,000 tons of sugar were transported to Germany, and during the whole period of German occupation 37,000 carloads o£ provisions and goods of various kinds were taken out of the Ukraine. Tkere were hundreds of thousands of unemployed in the Ukraine. Owing to starvation and epidemics the death rate increased enormously.

Tne Party led by Lenin and Stalin organized a people's war against the German invaders. Underground Bolshev.k organizations were formed all over the Ukraine and insurgent Military Staff Head quarters and Revolutionary Committees were organized. Tne whole of the Ukrainian people — ^the miners of the Donetz Basin, the workers of Kharkov, Nikolayev and Odessa, and the peasants of the Kiev, Poltava and Chernigov Gubernias — rallied to defend their native Soviet land. Within a short space of time, in nearly all parts of the Ukraine, innumerable partisan detachments were formed, made up of factory workers, miners and village folk. The partisans made sudden raids upon enemy garrisons and captured arms. The Germans sent punitive detachments armed with artillery and machine guns against the partisans but the latter were not to be caught. Dislodged from one locality they appeared in another, and everywhere they received the assistance of the working people.

One of the famous heroes in this patriotic war against the German yoke in the Ukraine was Nikolai Shchors, the son of a Ukrainian rail way worker. Tne partisans ied by Shchors exterminated small German units engaged in plundering the peasants, and hindered in every way the movements of German troops. Tne Germans sent a large force against Shchors, but he retreated to the borders of Soviet Russia where he formed a regiment named after the Cossack Bogun, a comrade-in-arnosof Bogdan Chmielnicki who fought for the liberation of the Ukraine in the seventeenth century. The Bogun Regiment commanded by Shchors covered itself with undying glory.

Insurrections broke out in different parts of the Ukraine. A pop ular movement flared up. In the towns strikes broke out. In July, a general railwaymen's strike was declared and the railways were brought to a standstill. The invaders crushed the strike with the utmost cruelty and sent many of its leaders to concentration camps in Germany. In spite of this, however, the workers' and peasants' movement against the German invaders continued to grow.

The Fight Against the Germans in the Crimea

In April 1918, the Ge^'inan imperialists invaded the Crimea with the object of en trenching themselves on the Black Sea coast. The well-armed German troops seized the Crimea, after meeting the feeble resistance offered by the newly formed Red Guard. The most stubborn and courageous resistance to the invaders was put up by the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet. To avoid falling into the hands of the German imperialists, who had occupied Sevastopol, the Soviet Black Sea Fleet retired to Novorossiisk — ^the centre of the Kuban-Black Sea Soviet Republic. Claiming that it was so stipulated in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the German imperialists called for the surrender of the Black Sea Fleet. Lenin realized that the Kuban-Black Sea government would be unable to save the fleet, so he sent the Black Sea sailors the following secret order: "Sink the fleet. Don't surrender it to the enemies of the revolution." The revolutionary sailors obeyed Lenin's order. The torpedo boats sank, with the last signal flying at their mast heads: "I perish but do not surrender." The battleship Svobodnaya Rossiya was sunk by three torpedoes fired at her by the revolutionary torpedo boat Kerch, In the morning of June 9, the Kerch herself sank after sending out her last radio message: "To all! To all! To all! I perish after sinking part of the Black Sea Fleet, which preferred death to shameful surrender." After sinking part of the fleet the Black Sea sailors went to the front, joining the ranks of the Red Army.

The Fight Against the German Occupation Forces in Byelorussia

The Austrian and German occupation forces reinstituted the rule of the landlords and the bourgeoisie in Byelorussia as well. On February 21, 1918, the Germans occupied Minsk. The Byelorussian Rada pro claimed the "independence" of Byelorussia, but at the same time it called upon the Byelorussian people to obey the German authorities in all things. The Rada also sent the German Kaiser Wilhelm II a telegram expressing their gratitude to him for liberating the country from the Bolsheviks. Shortly afterwards, however, the Germans ap^ IDointed a "government" that suited their purposes better, name 13 ", that of the counter-revolutionary landlord Skirmunt. The monar chist system was restored in all the towns and villages of the countr 3 ^ and Byelorussia was proclaimed a German province. All power passed into the hands of the German militarists. All the towns were ruled byGerman commandants. The workers, peasants and working intelli gentsia of Byelorussia were subjected to cruel oppression.

To fight the German invaders the Bolsheviks in Byelorussia or ganized a partisan movement.

In April 1918, a Congress of Soviets of the Western Region was convened in the Soviet part of Byelorussia. This congress elected an Executive Committee which took the lead of the mass revolutionary" movement for the liberation of the workers and peasants of Byelo russia.

The whole of Byelorussia was covered hy a dense network of par tisan detachments. On March 15, 1918, one of these detachments suddenly attacked a Bavarian cavalry regiment that was stationed at Tsibuly-ovo and completely wiped it out. In the beginning of Sep tember another large partisan detachment occupied the township of Gorval, in the Rechitsa Uyezd, Minsk Gubernia, and wiped out the German garrison. In the Rudobelsk Volost alone there were as many as 400 armed avengers of the people. In the villages of Polesie there were nearly 500 partisans who were armed with machine guns and artillery.

Lenin and Stalin closely watched and directed the struggle of the people against the German invaders. In the spring of 1918, Nikolai Shchors, the organizer of the Ukrainian partisans, arrived in Moscow. He had been invited by Lenin to talk over matters. The partisans received Lenin's advice on liow to fight the German invaders in the Ukraine. In Jime 1918, Lenin issued directives to extend the partisan movement and indicated the methods which should he -employed in fighting the invaders. 'Hamper the advance of the enemy in every way you can," he wrote. "Lay ambushes. Act with fire arms and cold steel. Protect your rear. And for that purpose com pletely exterminate all spies, provocateurs, and counter-revolutionar\' traitors who render direct or indirect assistance to the enemy."

The Germans imagined that their march into the Land of Soviets, into the Ukraine and Byelorussia would be a mere walkover. Actually, however, the peoples of the Land of Soviets rose up to wage a general patriotic war which ended in the utter defeat of the German imperialists. Living in an atmosphere of universal con tempt and constantly subjected to the blows of the partisans and the Red Army, the occupational forces deteriorated and lost their fight ing efiSciency.

The Fight Against the Occupation Forces in the Baltic Provinces

During the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk the Germans rejected the demand of the Soviet delegation that the Baltic peoples should be granted the right of self-determination, and on their part demanded that Russia should renounce the territory of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed the Baltic Provinces were occupied by German troops.

The Lithuanian Taryba, or National Council, sent an address to the German Kaiser expressing their loyalty and begging him to con clude a "perpetual alliance" with the Lithuanian state. In March 1918, Wilhelm IE officially recognized the "independence" of Lithu ania. Actually, however, Lithuania became completely subjected to the German authorities. Continuing to betray the national interests *of the Lithuanian people, the Taryba, in July 1918, proclaimed Lithu ania a monarchy, and it was only due to the universal discontent of the Lithuanian people that this proclamation was not put into force. A Lithuanian government headed by Voldemaras, leader of the reac tionary "Tautin" party (the Lithuanian bourgeoislandlord nationalist party), was set up.

Forced labour for the benefit of the Germans was introduced. The Lithuanian peasants were obliged to work three days a week repairing roads and felling trees. In addition they were compelled to pay a land tax and numerous other taxes, including a heavy poll tax. There were innumerable taxes, which the occupationists collected by force.

• The German authorities also tried to establish monarchist rule in Latvia. Hindenburg, the German Commander-in-Chief, issued an order that large tracts of land in the country should be set aside for German colonists and as a result the Latvian peasants were robbed of 50 per cent of their land for the benefit of German landlords and kulaks.

Soviet power w'as established in Estonia in October 1917, but it lasted only three and a half months.

In February 1918, the bourgeois republic was re-established in Estonia. The Germans tried to incorporate Estonia in the German state and proclaimed Grerman the official language. All state posts were occupied by German nominees.

The Part Played by the Germans in Suppressing the Revolution in Finland

In January 1918, a workers' revolution commenced in Fin land. A revolutionary government — ^the Council of People's Represent atives — concluded a treaty of friendship with Soviet Russia. But there was no Communist Party in Finland at that time. The Council of People's Representatives, which was controlled by the Finnish Social Democrats, allowed the bourgeoisie to retain their electoral rights and their capital.

Svinhuvud, the head of the overthrown bourgeois government, fled to Vasa, in the north of Finland, where he received from Sweden and Germany arms and money for a counter-revolutionary campaign against the revolutionary part of Finland. A counter-revolutionary "Black" brigade came from Sweden and a punitive corps came from Germany to assist the Whiteguatd Finns.

The Finnish Red Guard numbered 70,000 men, but they were poorly armed, and notwithstanding their courage and heroism, suf fered defeat from the Whiteguard Finns and the Germans.

The revolutionary proletarian government moved to Vyborg. On April 27, 1918, the Germans and Whiteguard Finns occupied Helsing fors, the capital of Finland. The interventionists had counted on capturing the Soviet Baltic Fleet which was anchored off Helsingfors, as the sea was then frozen and it seemed impossible for the fleet to get * away. But, on orders from the Soviet government, the Dreadnoughts Garigut, Poltava, Petro'pavlovsh and Sevastopol and several cruisers, assisted by the icebreakers Termak and Volynets, undertook the passage to Kronstadt, a heroic journey of several hundred kilometres through solid stretches of ice. Later, the remaining 160 vessels were brought away. The Soviet Baltic Fleet was saved by the heroism and class consciousness of the Soviet sailors.

The position of the Finnish revolution became hopeless. On May 12, 1918, the Whiteguard Finns occupied Vyborg, and then commenced a reign of terror against the workers and Red Gruards. About 17,000 revolutionary workers were shot and over 70,000 men and women were herded in concentration camps.

Seizure of Bessarabia by Rumania

Taking advantage of the difficul ties the Soviet Republic was encountering, boyar-ruled Rumania, with the approval and assistance of the Entente imperialists,* seized Bessarabia, which is inhabited by Moldavians, Ukrainians and Jews. As early as November 1917, a Sfatul Tsarii, or Regional Council, w^as set up in Bessarabia which shortly afterwards proclaimed the forma tion of the Moldavian People's Republic and the decision to join the R.S.F.S,R. But on January 26, 1918, Rumanian troops captured Kishinev. Red Guard detachments fought the Rumanian invaders, but owing to the occupation of the Ukraine by German troops the Soviet units were obliged to retreat from Bessarabia. The leadership of the Sfatul Tsarii fell into the hands of the agents of Rumania who secured the adoption of a decision incorporating Bessarabia in Rumania. In December 1918, in opposition to the will of the masses of the working people of Bessarabia, the Rumanian parliament ratified the incorpora tion of Bessarabia in the Kingdom of Rumania.

The Beginning of Socialist Construction

Lenin's Plan for the Initial Steps in Socialist Construction

While the working people of the Ukraine, the Crimea, Byelorussia, Lithua nia, Latvia and Estonia were fighting for their independence against the German troops in occupation of their territory, the Soviet govern ment in Russia was mustering forces for the inevitable struggle against the German imperialists and for the liberation of the Soviet territo ries they had seized. At the same time the government of the R.S.F.S.R. strove to utilize the respite won by the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace for the transition to socialist constinction. The Bolshevik Party utilized the respite to organize and strengthen the Soviet State and to build up a workers' and peasants' Red Army.

At a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee* held on April 29, 1918, Lenin delivered a report on the immedi ate tasks of the Soviet government in which he urged that it was neoes sary to take advantage of the respite to start building the foundation of socialist economy, and submitted a plan of how this beginning should be made. The All-Russia\i Central Executive Committee ratified this plan.

By the spring of 1918, the proletariat was already in command of the key positions in the national economy, namely, the land, the big industrial plants, the railways and ban^, the mercantile fl.eet and foreign trade. No .less than 500 enterprises had been nationalized. In Lenin's opinion the main task of the proletarian dictatorship at that time was to keep account of what was being produced and to ensure state control 6ver the distribution of the finished x>roduct.

At that time agriculture in the Soviet Republic was conducted in 20,000,000 small, scattered, individual peasant farms. The petty proprietors in town and country recognized neither labour nor state discipline, refused to ^submit to either accounting or control and grew rich by profiteering and huckstering. As Lenin said: "The profiteer, the trade marauder, the disrupter of monopoly — ^these are our principal ^intemar enemies, the enemies of the economic enactments of the Soviet government" (V. I. Lenin, Selected Worlcs^ Vol. VII, Moscow, 1936, p. 362).

Lenin set the proletariat the task of creating a new Soviet labour discipline, of increasing the productivity of labour and of organiz ing socialist emulation. Lenin proposed that the services be enlisted of bourgeois specialists who should be made to serve the interests of the socialist state. At the meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee that was held on April 29, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries opposed this program of Lenin's and were supported by the Bukharinites, who, under cover of "Left" phrases, defended the kulaks, shirkers and profiteers.

After breaking down the resistance of the enemies of the proletarian dictatorship, the working class, in the summer of 1918, completed the expropriation of the big bourgeoisie. On June 28 of that year the Coun cil of People's Commissars issued a decree for the nationalization of the whole of large-scale industry. The whole of the nationalized industry was placed under the control of the Supreme Council of Na tional Economy.

The Development of the Socialist Revolution in the Rural Districts

In the spring of 1918, the counter-revolutionary kulaks rebelled against the socialist measures of the Soviet government. They refused to deliver grain at the prices fixed by the government and were the main cause of the starvation ]Drevalent in the countr}'^. The workers of Moscow and Petrograd were getting only fifty grams of adulterated bread every other day. The demobilization of the army overloaded the railways, and this still further hindered the delivery of food to the towns. The food administration, which was controlled by of6.cials and profiteers who were hostile to the Soviet regime, sabotaged the procurement of ^ain. The Socialist-Revolution aries and Mensheviks took advantage of these food difficulties to con duct propaganda among the workers and peasants in favour of abolish ing the state grain monopoly and of introducing free trade in grain.

On May 24, 1918, Lenin published an open letter to the Petrograd workers, entitled "The Famine," in which he called upon them, as the vanguard of the Russian proletariat, to organize a mass "crusade" against the grain profiteers, kulaks, parasites, disorganizers and bribetakers. "The famine is not due to the fact that there is no bread in Russia, " he wrote, "'but to the fact that the bourgeoisie and the rich gener^ ally are putting up a last decisive fight against the rule of the toilers, against the state of the workers, Against the Soviet government, on this most important and acute of questions, the question of bread" (V. I. Lenin, Selected Wwlce, Two-Vol. ed., Vol. 11, Moscow, 1947, p, 345).

Lenin explained to the workers that the fight for bread was a fight for Socialism and that it was necessary for them to go into the rural districts, organize the rural poor and take the grain from the kulaks in order that the workers and the army could be fed.

The Soviet government issued a series of decrees dealing with the struggle against the rural bourgeoisie who were hoarding or profit eering in grain. The decree issued in May 1918, for the formation of special workers' food detachments facilitated the task of the People's Commissariat of Pood in procuring grain for the state. The Petro grad proletariat chose from its ranks about fifteen thousand of its most advanced members to be sent into the rural districts. Other industrial towns also sent food detachments, made up of their best workers. The food detachments relied on the rural poor in their operations in the rural districts.

On June 11, 1918, a decree was issued, on Lenin's recommendation, regarding the organization of committees of the village poor. The committees were given the responsibility of assisting the People's Commissariat of Pood in requisitioning superfluous grain stocks and of redistributing the confiscated land, farm implements and cattle. As a result of these measures of the Soviet State, the village poor and the middle peasants secured additionally over 50,000,000 hec tares of land held by the kulaks. The formation of these committees of the village poor marked a further stage in the development of the socialist revolution in the rural districts.

The Committees of the Poor Peasants organized the poorest strata of the peasantry and converted them into active builders of the Soviet system in the rural districts. They were also the medium for form ing the Red Army. They explained to the working pea antry the measures adopted by the Soviet State and won the middle peasants over to its side. At first the middle peasants were suspicious of the Committees of the Poor Peasants, but whc-n they became convinced that the Soviet State was helping the middle peasants, that the kulaks had been vanquished, they came over to the side of the Soviet State. This swing-over of the middle peasants enabled the Bolshevik Party, as early as the autumn of 1918, to raise the question of abol ishing these Committees of the Poor Peasants and of establishing a firm alliance between the working class and the bulk of the middle peasants. All this ensured the further consolidation of the proletarian state.

Military Intervention. The Civil War

The Beginning of Military Intervention

The Respite Ends

The Part Played by International Imperialism in Organizing the Civil War

In the summer of 1918, the work begun on the build ing of Socialism was halted by civil war. The civil war was fomented and directed by international imperialism, in alliance with the Kussian landlords and the bourgeoisie, and with the active support of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks and the Bukharinite and Trotsky ite traitors.

The chief reason that prompted the foreign imperialists to inter vene in Russia was their fear that the revolution would spread to Europe and their desire to prevent the building of a socialist state in Russia. They could not reconcile themselves to the loss of their big investments in Russia's large undertakings, and so insisted on inter vention.

In December 1917, the Erench and British imperialists reached an agreement to divide Russia into "spheres of influence"; the Ukraine, the Crimea and the Donetz Basin were to constitute France *s "sphere," and North Russia, the Caucasus, Transcaucasia and Central Asia were to be Great Britain's "sphere." Since the Entente imperialists were w'ithout frontiers contiguous with those of Soviet Russia and did not possess adequate military reserves, they were unable to com mence intervention openly. To deceive the masses of the working people, they had to make it appear that the Russian people them selves were asking for the despatch of Entente troops to fight the Germans and the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolution aries, Trotsky ites and Bukharinites acted as the accomplices and agents of the foreign imperialists and Russian landlords and capi talists in organizing the intervention.

Having joined in a conspiracy with the British imperialists, Trots ky and Buj^arin exerted all efforts to hasten the resumption of hostilities with Germany and thereby put an end to the hardwon respite. Trotsky sent his followers who were at the head of the Murmansk So viet the treacherous instruction to permit a landing of British troops in Murmansk on the pretext that they were coming to fight the Ger man imperialists. Lenin and Stalin categorically ordered the Chairman of the Murmansk Soviet to stop this shameful collaboration with the interventionists, and when the Murmansk traitors failed to obey this order they were proclaimed enemies of the people. Trotsky also facili tated the intervention of the Japanese imperialists in the Far East. At the end of March 1918, Trotsky, in conversation with the British rep resentative in Moscow, told him that he had no objection to the landing of Japanese troops in Kussia for the purpose, allegedly, of protecting the Siberian Railway. Several days later, on April 5, 1918, Japanese troops landed in Vladivostok. The Entente imperi alists, however, were engaged in the world war, fighting decisive battles on the Western Front and therefore could not organize their intervention on a wide scale. Nor could Germany participate in this intervention of the Anglo-French-Japanese-American bloc because she was at war with this bloc. Nevertheless, Kaiser Wilhelm's govern ment remained the bitterest enemy of Soviet Russia, and notwith standing the peace treaty it had signed with Russia, supported her enemies and did all in its power to isolate, weaken and ruin the Land of Soviets. Under cover of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty it began openly to seize the Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Baltic countries.

Conspiracies and Revolts Against the Soviet Regime

When the counter-revolutionary Army General Headquarters were liquidated, the representatives of the foreign powers aimounced that they were leaving the Soviet Republic. They were, however, in no hurry to quit Russia, hut established themselves in Vologda.

The Entente imperialists supported the bourgeois and landlord counter-revolution and supplied money and arms to all the under ground organizations in Russia which were conspiring to overthrow the Soviet regime.

The counter-revolutionaries plotted to use as their armed force the Czechoslovak Corps which had been formed during the war of Czech and Slovak prisoners of war. The Soviet government had given this Corps permission to leave for France via Vladivostok provided it surrendered its arms and journeyed in small contingents.

On the way to Vladivostok large numbers of Russian officers and cadets joined the Corps, which numbered 60,000 men. The Czecho slovak contingents were strung out along the whole length of the railway from Penza to Vladivostok.

On May 25, 1918, the Czechoslovaks, supported by imderground counter-revolutionary organizations, rose in revolt with the object of seizing Siberia, the Urals and the Volga Region. On June 8, 1918 they, with the assistance of Socialist-Revolutionaries, captured Samara and there set up a Whiteguard-Socialist-Revolutionary author ity known as the Committee of the Constituent Assembly (Comutch). A Whiteguard "government" headed by Socialist-Revolutionaries was also set up in Western Siberia.

The rule of the Socialist-Revolutionaries was exactly like that of the tsar. They annulled all the decrees of the Soviet State and returned the land and the crops taken from it to the landlords and the kulaks. Pre-revolution conditions were restored in the factories and strikes were prohibited. All supporters of Soviet rule were per secuted. The Committee of the Constituent Assembly sent from Samara to the East a "deatJi train" containing 2,700 arrested Communists, work ers and peasants, of whom 2,000 were shot or tortured to death. On the Volga and the Kama there were similar "death barges" on which hundreds of completely naked prisoners were starved, beaten and shot. Punitive expeditions roamed the country-side and pressed the peasants into the White army. The peasants were robbed of their land and cattle.

Meanwhile, Entente agents, jointly with Russian Whiteguards, were organizing revolts in twenty-three cities around Moscow, but they succeeded in carrying out a big revolt only in Yaroslavl. On July 6-8, 1918, the Whiteguards captured this town and subjected the workers to incredible torture; but on July 21, the Red Army liberated the town.

The Czechoslovak revolt was accompanied by a wave of kulak revolts, which everywhere were headed by Right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries .

It was in this atmosphere of tense struggle that the Fifth All-Rus sian Congress of Soviets opened on July 4, 1918. The "Left" Socialist Revolutionaries who were present at the congress demanded the annul ment of the decrees on the Committees of the Poor Peasants and on the food detachments. The congress rejected these counter-revolutionary de mands, whereupon the "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries wi^drew from the congress and began to organize a revolt against the Soviet regime. In secret complicity with the Bukharinites and Trotskyites they set themselves the object of provoking war with Germany, and to this end, on July 6, assassinated the German ambassador, Mirbach.. The German government answered this act with the demand that the Soviet government should permit German troops to enter Moscow ostensibly for the purpose of protecting the German embassy. The Soviet government emphatically rejected this demand. Lenin declared that the entire Soviet people, young and old, would rise up to defend the Soviet capital if the German imperialists dared to send their troops against her.

During those days, so full of peril for the Republic, the "Left" So cialist-Revolutionaries, with the knowledge and approval of Trotsky and Bukharin, raised a counter-revolutionary revolt in Moscow. The Congress of Soviets suspended its proceedings and declared that all the dele gates were mobilized for the fight against the counter-revolution. Under Lenin's personal direction, the Soviet State vigorously crushed this reckless "Left" Socialist-Revolutionary adventure. The "Left" Socialist-Revolutionary party had conclusively become a counter revolutionary bourgeois kulak party.

While these events were taking place, the "Left" Socialist-Revo lutionary adventurer, ex-Colonel Muravyov, who was in command of the troops that were fighting the Czechoslovaks, tried to raise a revolt in Simbirsk, but thanks to the revolutionary vigilance of Com rade Kuibyshev, the adventurer's plot was speedily crushed.

The Czechoslovak revolt and the counter-revolutionary revolts of the kulaks and Socialist-Revolutionaries stimulated the activities of the monarchist counter-revolutionaries who placed their hopes on the last tsar, who, with his family, was at that time under arrest int Ekaterinburg. In view of this, the Ural Regional Soviet resolved, in the interests of the revolution, to do away with the ex-tsar and his family, and in July 1918, they were shot.

The First Soviet Constitution

On July 10, 1918, after the "Left" Socialist-Revolutionary plot in Moscow had been foiled, the Con gress of Soviets adopted a Soviet Constitution (the Eundamental Law of the R .S .F .S .R .) . This Constitution had been drafted by a commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee headed by Y. M. Sverdlov, with the assistance of Lenin and Stalin. The Constitution was based on the Declaration of Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People and on the "General Principles of the Constitution of the R.S.F.S.R." which had been drawn up by Comrade Stalin.

In the Constitution were recorded the &st gains of the Great Octo ber Socialist Revolution, The Constitution set the aim of "guarantee ing the dictatorship of the proletariat with the object of suppressing the bourgeoisie, abolishing the exploitation of man by man, and of building Socialism." It declared that it was the duty of all citizens of the Soviet Republic to engage in useful labour and proclaimed the slogan: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat." It further declared that it was the duty of all citizens of the republic to defend the socialist fatherland, but it granted the right to defend the revolu tion with arms only to working people — ^the non-working elements of the population were only permitted to undertake service in the rear.

The Constitution deprived the exploiters and their defenders of political rights in the Soviet State. All those who exploited hired la bour and lived on unearned incomes, and also monks and the clergy, as well as former gendarmes and policemen, were deprived of elec toral rights. The Constitution, proclaimed the All-Russian Congress of Soviets as the supreme organ of state power in the R,S,P.S.R. The congress was to consist of representatives of City Soviets at the rate of one Deputy for every 25,000 voters, and of representatives of Gubernia Congresses of Soviets at the rate of one Deputy for every 125,000 inhabitants. The inequality in the representation of workers and peasants was a temporary measure necessitated by the fact that the individual peasant still lacked sufficient political consciousness, was poorly organized and needed the leadership of the proletariat. In the intervals between congresses the supreme authority was the All Russian Central Executive Conunittee^ elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

To administer and direct the country's economic and political life, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee set up a Soviet government known as the Comic jl of People's Commissars.

The Constitution of the R.S.P.S.R. that was adopted at the Fifth Congress of Soviets was the first genuinely democratic Constitution in the world, one that enabled the masses of the working people to take part in the administration of the state.

The Defence of Tsaritsyn

In A Ring of Fire

At the end of 1918, the Soviet Republic was enclosed in a ring of fire.

The whole of the Middle Volga P».egion, the Urals and Siberia right up to the Far East, were occupied by the Czechoslovaks.

In the Far East the Japanese imperialists were in control, and assist ed by the mercenary gangs of Semyonov and Kalmykov were prepar ing to seize the Maritime and Amur Regions.

In the North, which was occupied by British troops, a petty-bour geois government consisting of ex-members of the Constituent Assem bly was formed, but later this government was replaced by the open military-bourgeois dictatorship of General Miller.

In North Caucasus, the Whiteguard Volmiteer Army commanded by General Denilcin launched an offensive. In the Don Region, the Cossack Ataman Krasnov, who had fled to the Don after the Kerensky venture was crushed, established his rule with the aid of the German imperialists, who perfidiously violated the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty they had concluded with Russia.

The Uliraine, Byelorussia and the Baltic countries were under the heel of the German imperialists, Transcaucasia was in the hands of the Turkish and German imperialists, and the Transcaspian Region was in the hands of the British imperialists.

Soviet Russia^ being surrounded by battle fronts, was cut off from her main food, raw material and foe! regions. Lenin emphasized that now that the power of the landlords and capitalists had been overthrown, the workers and peasants would have to defend their native Soviet land against the imperialists and the counter-revolution. "Since November 7 (October 25), 1917," he said, "we have become defencists. . . . From that day on we stand for the defence of our Fatherland" (V. I. Lenin, Selected Worlcs^ 7ol. XXII 5 Russ, ed., p, 291).

To defend Soviet Russia the formation of the workers ' and peasants ' Red Army was vigorously iiroceeded with.

At first the new army was an army of volunteers; only the most class-conscious and organized elements of the working classes were allowed to enlist.

During the first two months after the victory of the October Revo lution 100,000 men voluntarily enlisted in the Red Army. In addition, the best organized revolutionary units of the old army and the local partisan detachments were incorporated in the Red Army. The staunchest and most class-conscious section of the Red Army was that made up of the proletarian Red Guards. An extremely important part in building the Red Army w'as plaj-ed by the Military Commissars, who trained the new recruits politically and welded them together.

In May 1918, a decree was passed introducing compulsory mili tary service for workers and peasants. In the autumn, Lenin called for the formation of an army 3,000,000 strong. On November 30, 1918, the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defence was set up. This Council, which was headed by Lenin, was in charge of providing replenishments for the Red Army and of supptying the front with arms and pro visions.

The First Siege of Tsaritsyn

Cut oft from the grain regions, the Ukraine, the Volga Region and Siberia, the Soviet Republic experienced severe starvation. The key to the grain regions of the Lower Volga and North Caucasus, which kept Soviet Russia supplied with bread, was Tsaritsyn. That city became the pivot of the struggle that was to decide the fate of the revolution. The counter-revolutionaries aimed to capture Tsaritsjui in order to link up the Czechoslovaks on the Eastern Front with Krasnov's forces on the Southern Front, and thus close the counter-revolutionary ring around Moscow. This would have out off the Soviet Republic from vital sources of grain and oil, and would have isolated Baku and the Lower Volga from the central area of the country.

On Lenin's recommendation Comrade Stalin was sent to Tsaritsyn to organize food supplies. He arrived in Tsaritsyn on June 6 and found that the situation there was very bad. The Tsaritsyn Soviet was not operating the state grain monopoly, and the city and the adjacent villages teemed with profiteers, bagmen and bourgeois who had fled from Moscow and Petrograd. Saboteurs and spies were ensconsed iu Soviet and military establishments. There was no strong revolutionary authority in the town. In a conversation Lenin had with Com rade Stalin over the direct wire at that time, he said: "As regards food I must say that nothing at all is being issued either in Petrograd or Moscow today. The situation is very bad. Inform me whether you can take urgent measures, because we have no other source of supplies .except you." Comrade Stalin took determined measures against the speculators. Grain was secured, but with gz'eat difficulty, after overcoming the resistance of the kulaks, who had hidden away their grain stocks.

Comrade Stalin realized that not only the question of food supplies, but also that of the defence of the Soviet Eepublic was being settled at Tsaritsyn. He therefore took charge of the defence of the town.

On August 18, 1918, Tsaritsyn was surrounded on three sides by the forces of Krasnov. To aid the White Cossacks who were approach ing, the counter-revolutionaries were preparing a revolt in the rear — in Astrakhan and in Tsaritsyn itself. In Tsaritsyn the revolt was organized by Socialist-Revolutionaries and by tsarist army officers who were hiding underground. At the head of the conspiracy was General Nosovich, sent there by Trotsky on military duties. The conspirators were supported by the foreign Consuls in Tsaritsyn. Comrade Stalin discovered this criminal plot in time and the Whiteguards and spies were arrested. In Astrakhan army officers who had been enlisted in the Red Army raised a mutiny and succeeded in capturing the fortress, arresting Communists, dispersing the Soviet and capturing the bank and the railway station. This Whiteguard mutiny was, however, suppressed the very next day.

At that time the Whiteguards laxmched an attack on Tsaritsyn. Although their forces considerably outnmnbered the defenders of the city, they encountered very strong resistance. The defence of Tsaritsyn was directed by Comrade Stalin in person with the assistance of his close colleague, Comrade Voroshilov. They united the separate par tisan detachments which arrived in Tsaritsyn from the IJlcraine and the Don Region into regular units, and on Comrade Stalin's instruc tions all the available weapons, artillery in particular, were utilized for the defence. Armoured trains, united in a single combat group, often broke into the rear of the Whites. As Comrade Voroshilov has written: "Comrade Stalin directed the whole defence. His dynamic spirit, his energy and will, accomplished what had seemed impossible before his arrival. In a very short time divisions, brigades, regi ments, staffs and supply departments sprang into being. The entire rear was thoroughly purged of counter-revolutionary and hostile ele ments. . . , Those were days of the utmost tension. Then was the time to see Comrade Stalin. As ever, calm, engrossed in his thoughts he went without sleep literally for days on end, his intense activi ties divided between the the atres of operations and army headquarters" (K. E. Voroshi lov, Stalin and the Bed Army, i938j Russ, ed., p. 18).

Meanwhile, work went on night and day in the facto ries and plants, where guns and machine guns were manu factured and armoured trains repaired. The entire popu lation of the town was mobi lized to dig trenches.

As a result of this heroic defence, by the end of August the White Cossacks were flung back from Tsaritsyn.

The Attempt to Assassinate Lenin

While the attacks of the Whiteguards were be ing repulsed at Tsaritsyn, the Soci alist-Revolutionaries , in criminal conspiracy with the Trotsky ites and Bukharinites, prepared to strike a mortal blow at the revolution by robbing it of its leader and organizer, V. I. Lenin.

In the evening of August 30, 1918, Lenin addressed a meetmg at the Michelson Plant (now the Vladimir Ilyich Plant) at which he called upon the workers to rally for the fight against the Czecho slovaks. After the meeting, with workers crowding aroimd him, he walked out mto the factory yard to his car. Hiding behind the car, Fanny Kaplan, a Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist, lay in wait for him with a revolver. She fired three shots at Lenin and then tried to escape amidst the confusion, but the workers detained the would-be assassin.

The news of this attempt on the life of the beloved leader of the working people flashed throughout the countr 3 ^ like lightning. Their hearts burning with indignation against the enemies of the people, the vast masses of the workers and peasants anxiously watched the bulletins that were issued about Lenin's condition. Thanks to his strong constitution Lenin recovered from his serious wounds, but his health was greatly undermined.

The unparalleled outrage committed by the Socialist-Revolution aries roused among the masses of the people a feeling of the bitterest hatred towards the enemies of the revolution. On September 2, the Land of Soviets was proclaimed a military camp. Following a report by Y. M. Sverdlov on the attempted assassination of Lenin^ the Soviet government took the decision to proclaim a mass Red terror in retaliation to the White terror of the bourgeoisie and its servitors, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Members ofWhiteguard organizations and participants in revolts became liable to the penalty of death by shooting.

At this time the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission dis covered a series of plots against the Soviet regime. In the beginning of September 1918, one of the biggest of these Whiteguard plots, direct ed by Lockhart, the head of the British Diplomatic Mission, in conjunc tion with the French Consul Grenard, was liquidated. They tried to bribe the Red Army men who were guarding the Kremlin, so as to get into the premises of the Council of People's Commissars and arrest the Soviet government. The plotters blew up bridges, disorganized the food supply in the capital and disrupted the Soviet administrative machinery . They wonned their way into the Red Army, stole military plans and conveyed them to the enemies of the Soviet regime. But all the enemies' plans went a-wTy. The Red Army men whom they tried to bribe reported the matter to the Extraordinary Commission and helped the latter to capture the ringleaders of the conspiracy while they were at a secret meeting. The spies and plotters headed by Lockhart were arrested.

The Rout of the Czechoslovaks

The attempts of the enemies of the revolution to check the ofiensive which the Red Army had launched on the Eastern (Czechoslovak) Front failed. On August 1, before he was wounded, Lenin had sent a message to the com manding personnel of the Eastern Front in which he wrote; "*Now the entire fate of the revolution is staked on one card: speedj^ victory over the Czechoslovaks on the Kazan-Ural-Samara Front. Ever 3 rbhmg depends upon that." The main forces of the Czechs and Whites were concentrated at Kazan, from where they launched an offensive against Sviyazhsk, the capture of which would have opened the road to Moscow. Lenin ordered the most reliable units to be sent to Sviyazhsk. Soon an army of 10,000 men was formed there. Lenin also ordered several torpedo boats from the Baltic Fleet to be sent to Sviyazhsk via the Volga, and in August the Prythi, JRetivy and Prochny arrived, after travelling through the Mariinsky waterway. The torpedo boats broke into the Whiteguard lines and set fire to their steamers and barges. The arrival of the Baltic torpedo boats strengthened the Red Volga Flotilla which was commanded by the sailor Markin.

In the beginning of September the Red Army, supported by the Volga Flotilla, launched an attack upon Kazan. Several warships imder the command of Markin sailed right up to Kazan and landed a force of Red troops. On September 10, the city was captured and cleared of Whiteguards.

Lenin, who was now convalescent, sent the men of the Red Army a telegram congratulating them on their brilliant victory.

Two days later the Iron Division, which had been formed by V. V. Kuibyshev, captured Lenin's native city Simbirsk. The Red Army men sent Lenin the following telegram: "Dear Ilyich: The capture of your native Simbirsk is a reply to one of your wounds; the reply to the second will be the capture of Samara."

Lenin sent an answering message, addressed to Kuibyshev, in which he congratulated the men on their victory and thanked them on be half of all the working people.

On learning of the villainous attempt to assassinate Lenin, the defenders of Tsaritsyn struck blows at the enemy with renewed energy. On September 7, Comrade Stalin sent Lenin a telegram informing him that the enemy had been routed and hurled across the Don, that the position of Tsaritsyn was now secure, and that the offensive was continuing.

In the middle of September, Comrade Stalin was called to Moscow where he related to Lenin, who was now on the way to recovery, the story of the heroic defence of Tsaritsyn. Lenin and Stalin sent Comrade VorosliiloY the following message of greetings for the heroes of Tsaritsyn: "Hold aloft the Red banners, cany them forward fearlessly, ruthlessly root out the counter-revolutionary landlords, generals and kulaks and show the whole world that Socialist Russia is in vincible."

The victorious Red Army continued the offensive through the whole of the Volga Region, The First Army marched on Syzran, while the Fourth Army, of which V. V. Kuibyshev was Political Commissar, marched on Samara. On October 7, 1918, Samara was liberated by the Red Army and the Volga Region was cleared of Czechs and Whiteguards.

Second Defeat of the Enemy at Tsaritsyn

After the Czecho slovaks were defeated, the Southern Front began to acquire deci sive importance.

In September 1918, on Lenin's recommendation, a Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front was set up, J. V. Stalin was appointed chairman of the Council, and K. B. Voroshilov Commander of the Front. On September 22, 1918, Comrade Stalin returned to Tsaritsjm from Moscow, He foresaw that another inter national conspiracy against Soviet Russia was being hatched in the South and expected the Entente to order the Whiteguards to make another attempt to capture Tsaritsyn, this time from the southwest. Krasnov realized that German intervention was coming to an end and therefore appealed for assistance to his new masters, the British and French imperialists.

By October 1918, he had mustered against Tsaritsyn twelve cavalry and eight infantry divisions, well supplied and armed b}^ the foreign imperialists. Tsaritsyn was completely surrounded and its position was extremely grave. Notwithstanding all the requests that were sent to him, Trotsky failed to send either reinforcements or ammunition. On Comrade Stalin's orders the production of shells was organized at the Ordnance Works in Tsaritsyn. As was the case during the first siege of the city, the entire population was mobilized for the front. Among those mobilized were the engineers of the survey party that was working on the Volga-Don Canal project. In reply to a request of the Tsaritsyn Soviet for the release of these engi neers so that the survey should not be interrupted^ Comrades Stalin and Voroshilov wrote: "We shall dig the canal after we have drowned the Cadets in the Volga and the Don."

The poorly-armed, ill-shod and badly-clothed Red Army defended Tsaritsyn with exceptional heroism. Stalin and Voroshilov remained in the frontline positions directing the attacks in person.

On October 16, the Whiteguards launched determined attacks in the endeavour to break through to Tsaritsyn, but encountered the indomitable resistance of its defenders. That day many of the defenders met the death of heroes, including the twenty-three-year old hero commander Nikolai Rudnyev. During the battle of Tsaritsyn splendid Red Army commanders came to the forefront, such as Par khomenko, Budyonny, Timoshenko and others.

In October 1918, on the recommendation of Comrades Stalin and Voroshilov, the first Bed mounted unit was formed under the command of Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny. The son of a poor peasant in the Don Region, Budyonny as a youth experienced all the hardships of an agricultural labourer and later of a trooper in the tsar's cavalry. At the beginning of the Civil War he organized a mounted partisan unit in the Don Region and, like many partisan commanders, fought his way to Tsarits 3 m to join the Red Army there. Here the separate mounted detachments were tmited in a cavalry regiment and later in the First Cavalry Division. Under the command of S. M. Budyonny, this Red Cavalry Division struck crushing blows at Krasnovas forces.

In October 1918, the second plan to capture Tsaritsyn was frustrat ed just as the first had been. On October 24, Comrade Stalin, who had been called back to Moscow after the White Cossacks were defeat ed, sent greetings to the defenders of Tsaritsyn in the name of the Soviet government.

Denikin Captures North Caucasus

While Krasnov, backed by the German imperialists, was surrounding Tsaritsyn, Denikin's Volun teer Army marched to his assistance from the South.

Denikin's aim w'as to cover Krasnov's Southern Front and defeat the Red Army in North Caucasus. The main Soviet forces, which had been mustered by Sergo Orjonikidze, were concentrated near Bataisk, under the command of a former officer of the old army named Sorokin, who turned out to be a traitor. Part of the troops were posted on the Taman Peninsula and part near Tikhoretskaya.

On the proposal of Sergo Orjonikidze, the Soviet Republics of North Caucasus — ^the Kuban, Black Sea, Stavropol and Terek Re publics — decided to combine their forces for the struggle against the counter-revolution .

In the summer of 1918, the First Congress of Soviets of North Caucasus proclaimed the formation of a united North Caucasian Soviet Republic. Before, however, this republic had time to consolidate itself, Denikin launched an offensive with the object of cutting off Soviet North Caucasus from the Volga and of preventing the Cauca sian Red Army from striking at Krasnov's forces from the South.

In June 1918, Denikin succeeded in cutting off North Caucasus from Tsaritsyn and marched against Tikhoretskaya, where a Red Army 30,000 strong was concentrated. Denikin had a force of 20,000 men, nearly all army officers, Cadets and upper-class Cossacks. This so-called Volunteer Army was well armed with artillery and ar moured cars, which it had received through Krasnov from the Germans. In the middle of July Denikiirs forces captured Tikhoretskaya.

Denikin's successes encouraged the entire counter-revolution in North Caucasus.

Whiteguard revolts broke out in the Cossack stanitsas and in the towns. In August, as the result of Sorokin's treachery, Deni kin's forces caj)tured Ekaterinodar and pushed the Soviet main forces across the river Kuban. By capturing Ekaterinodar, the White guards out off the Bed Army that was stationed on the Taman Pen insula. The Taman Bed Army decided to fight its way along the coast to Novorossiisk and then through Tuapse to Armavir to join the main forces of the Caucasian Bed Army. The column marched along the shore of the Black Sea and over the rocky heights of the Caucasian Mountains with no food and no water, under a blazing sun. With it retreated tens of thousands of refugees carrying their belongings. Women and chil dren travelled on munition carts, sitting on cases filled with shells. There was continuous fighting all along the way. Clothing and foot wear were worn to shreds. The only sustenance available was some corn and nuts. Near Tuapse the way — the only one available for the Soviet Taman forces — was barred by enemy forces. Bold spirits were chosen and these, sticking their bayonets and rifles in the fissures of the rock to serve as steps, climbed the steej) rooky mountainside and attacked the enemy from the rear. The Whites retreated. The column went in pursuit and forced its way into Tuapse.

At the end of September 1918, after a march of 600 kilometres with fighting all the way, the column captured Armavir and eflFected a junction with the Bed Army. This heroic march of the Taman forces is described in Serafimovich's novel The. Iron Flood,

The units of the Caucasian Bed Army were reorganized to form the Eleventh and Twelfth Armies of the Southern Eront. Their posi tion was one of great difficulty. They were cutofi from Tsarits3m, and Denikin's forces were advancing against them on three sides. In their rear were the steppes and the Astrakhan sandy wastes. There was no food, and typhus was rampant among them. The womided received no medical assistance. The situation was made worse by the treacherj'^ of Sorokin, who in October rose in revolt and shot the leaders of the Bolshevik organization and of the Soviet government of North Caucasus. This greatly facilitated Denikin's task in capturing the whole of the Kuban.

At the same time Denikiix's agents raised a revolt in the Terek Region. This revolt was organized by the Menshevik Bichorakhov, whose gangs surrounded Vladikavkaz, the centre of the Terek People's Republic. Sergo Orjonikidze hastened to the assistance of Vladikavkaz from Tsaritsyn. He broke through the enemy's lines, entered the city, organized its defence and with the aid of Caucasian highlanders liberated the city. After this Bicherakbov's forces besieged Grozny.

The workers of the Grozny oil fields, assisted by the highland poor led by that brave leader of the highlanders, Aslanbek Sheripov, staunchly defended the city and held out for three months until it was liberated by troops sent by Sergo Orjonikidze. To dis lodge the Bicheraldiov gangs who had fortified themselves in the Cossack stanitsa of Grosnenskaya, right close to the city, it was de cided to burn down the stanitsa. The Red Army men bombarded the stanitsa with incendiary shells and bottles of kerosene and drove off the Whiteguards. The Terek remained a Soviet area; the rest of North Caucasus was occupied by Denikin's forces

The Entente Armies Attack Soviet Russia

The Defeat of Germany and the Annulment of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty

The latter half of July 1918 marked a turning point in the World War in favour of the Entente. The strength of German imperialism was giving out. In October 1918, Austria sued for j)eace. In the same month Turkey capitulated. Germany's defeat at the front stimulated revolutionary unrest at home, and on November 9 . 1918, this unrest culminated in a revolution. Kaiser Wilhelm II fled abroad and a bourgeois republic was established in Germany. Two days later, on November 11, 1918, an armistice was concluded o the Western Front. The World War ended in the defeat of Germany.

The defeat of Germany by the united forces of the Allies facili tated the struggle which the Soviet people were waging against the German imperialists. The German invaders began to be driven out at all points from Russia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Baltic countries. On November 13, 1918, the Soviet government solemnly announced the annulment of the predatory Brest-Litovsk Treaty. This act marked a victory for Lenin's farseeing tactics on the question of peace. Harsh and degrading as the terms of the Brest Litovsk Treaty had been, they had nevertheless given the Soviet people a respite, during which the Soviet State consolidated its position, armed its forces and beat off all the attacks of the internal counter-revolution. The change in the international situation enabled the Soviet government to denounce the predatory peace treaty which had been forced upon it.

The Intervention of the Entente Countries

The defeat of Germany complicated the international situation. Describing this situation in the report he delivered at the Sixth All-Russian Congress of Soviets on November 8, 1918, Lenin said: . . While we have never been so near to an international revolution, never, on the other hand, has our position been so dangerous as it is now. The imperialists were engrossed with each other. But now the Anglo-FrancoAmerican group has swept away the other. They are making it their cardinal aim to stifle world Bolshevism, to destroy its chief seat, the Russian Soviet Republic" (VJ, Lenin, Collected Works^ Vol. XXIII, New York, 1945, P..284).

Indeed, the Entente imperialists were alarmed at the spread of the revolutionary movement in Western Europe and therefore decided to take advantage of Germany's defeat to wage a struggle against Soviet Russia, which they regarded as the hotbed of revolution. The Entente plan was to hurl their forces against Soviet Russia in conjunction with the counter-revolutionary forces which had begun to fight the Soviet regime immediately after the victory of the October Revolution. This general offensive was to start simul taneously in three directions. The British troops, supported by Deni kin's forces were to occupy the Eastern regions of Russia, primarily the Transcaspian Region and Baku. The French troops were to land in South Russia and to occupy the Ukraine with the assistance of the Ukrainian nationalists. The united forces of Great Britain and America were to launch an offensive in the North and move along the Northern Dvina to establish a junction with the Czechoslovak and Kolchak forces.

British Intervention in the Transcaspian Region and Baku

This plan began to be put in operation as early as the summer of 1918, when the Soviet Republic was enclosed in a hostile ring and was holding at bay the Czechoslovaks, the German imperialists and the Russian Whiteguards.

The commander, of the British forces in Persia struck a bargain with the bourgeois nationalists in Turkmenia and with the Russian Whiteguards, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in Central Asia, and with their aid, in July 1918, the Soviet regime was over thrown in Ashkhabad, Merv, Krasnovodsk and other Transcaspian cities. Nine Ashkhabad Commissars were taken prisoner and ^ot. A Whiteguard government headed by Socialist-Revolutionaries was set up in Ashkhabad, The Transcaspian Region was occupied by British troops. The Turkmen bourgeois nationalists and the Russian Whiteguards treacherously signed an agreement with the British interventionists which converted Turkmenia into a British colony.

After entrenching themselves in the Transcaspian Region, the British imperialists made preparations to seize Baku . At that time the situat ion of the Baku Commune was one of great difficulty. It was being attacked by Turkish troops and by'armed bands organized by the local national ists, the Mussavatists. On the pretext of combating Turkish atroci ties, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks of Baku entered into secret negotiations with British agents and then demanded that the Baku Soviet should call in the assistance of British troops. Comrade Stalin sent the Baku Bolsheviks categorical instructions not to permit foreign troops to enter Baku under any circumstances. The Baku Council of People's Com missars, headed by Stepan Sha umyan, took energetic measures for the defence of the Baku Com mune.

There had been close co-oper ation between Soviet Russia and the Baku Commune; oil from Baku was sent to Soviet Russia Astrakhan, and So viet Russia sent Baku grain from its stocks in North Caucasus.

But with the seizure of North Caucasus by Denikin's forces, the food situation in Baku became considerably worse.

The enemy had cut off the Baku Commune not only from its grain supplies but even from its sources of drinl^iing water. The Men sheviks and Socialist-Revolution aries took advantage of this grave situation to intensify their de featist propaganda and on July 25, 1918, after a stormy session, they succeeded in getting the Baku Soviet to pass a resolution to invite British troops into the city. Several days later a counter-revo lutionary government seized power in the city and called in the British troops. The twenty-six members ofthe Baku Council of People's Com missars tried to escape to Soviet Astrakhan, but the ships on which they travelled were fired at by the British and compelled to return to Baku. The People's Commissars were arrested and flimg into prison.

The British remained in Baku only for a month. In September Turkish troops and detachments of Mussavatists surrounded the city. Just before the British left, the arrested Baku Commissars succeeded in escaping from prison and made another attempt to reach Astra khan, but on the orders of the ship's captain the ship carrying the Baku Bolsheviks suddenly changed course and beaded for Krasnovodsk, where the Commissars were arrested by the Trans caspian government. On September 20, 1918, they were taken to a point 207 kilometres from Efrasnovodsk and brutally put to death.

The fall of the Baku Commune and the death of the twenty-six Baku Commissars had disastrous consequences for all the Transcaucasian Republics, for after this they long remained dependencies of the foreign imperialists.

The Liberation of the Ukraine from the Foreign Interventionists

Shortly after the annulment of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty the Cen tral Committee of the Bolshevik Party commissioned Comrade Stalin, who had just retmmed from Tsaritsyn, to organize the struggle to liberate the Ukraine from the German invaders. In November 1918, Soviet rule was restored in the liberated part of the country and the Ukrainian Soviet government calied upon the Ukrain ian workers and peasants to over throw Hetman Skoropadsky , the pup pet of the Germans, The ke^mote of Jeanne Labonrbe the struggle against the German in

vaders was "All power to the Soviets. " The Ukrainian Bolsheviks intensified their work of disintegrating the German army. The German sol diers began to demand that they be sent home at once, and to sur render their artillery and ammunition to the Bed Army. Deprived of the support of the German troops, Hetman Skoropadsky lost all power. He fled from Kiev disguised as a German officer. Power in Kiev was seized by new enemies of the Ukrainian people — ^the bour geois nationalists headed by Petliura. The Petliura government, known as the Directory, sought the support of the new interventionists. At this time the Entente commenced intervention. At the end of November 1918, two French and two Greek divisions were landed in the Ukraine. In all 50,000 Entente troops were landed in the South of Russia, together with large quantities of machine guns, artillery and shells intended for the White "governments which were fighting against Soviet Russia.

The Petliura government signed a treaty with France by which it pledged itself to form an army of 30,000 men to fight the Bol sheviks and to place the entire economy of the Ukraine under France's control.

The indignant workers and toiling peasants rose in revolt against the betrayers of the Ukrainian people. The fraternal Red Army came from Soviet Russia to assist the revolutionary insurgents. On February 5, 1919, the Tarashchansky Regiment, comma.nded by Bo zhenko, a carpenter employed in the Kiev Arsenal, and the Bogun Regiment commanded b}" Nikolai Shchors liberated Kiev. Soviet rule was restored over the greater part of the Ukraine. Only in the South, in Odessa, Nikolayev and Kherson, and in the Crimea, did Entente troops, supported by Denikin's forces remain. Entente warships were still anchored in the ports.

The Bolshevik underground organ izations in Odessa, Nikolayev, Kher son and Sevastopol conducted vigor ous propaganda activities among the French soldiers and sailors, and in Odessa the underground Bolshevik organization formed a "foreign com mittee" in which an active part was taken by Jeanne Labourbe, a French woman Communist, who was ardently devoted to the revolution. Subse quently, Jeanne Labourbe was betrayed by an agent provocateur and was bru tally put to death by the French im perialists.

Energetic work among the French forces was also conducted by the French revolutionary sailor Andre Marty, who organized a mutiny in the French fleet. The mutiny was sup pressed and Marty was arrested. He was in danger of being executed^ but the protests and revolutionary demonstrations of the French workers secured his release.

Lacking sufficient forces, the interventionists withdrew from Kherson and Nikolayev in March 1919, and concentrated in Odessa; but on April 6, 1919, the Red Army entered Odessa. On April 7, the Red Army, wading across the icy shallows of Sivash, occupied the Crimea.

The main reason for the speedy defeat of the British and French occupational forces in the South was the disintegration that rapidly spread through their ranks. Realizing that they had been deceived, the French soldiers refused to fight against Soviet Russia and said to their officers: "We haven't come here to fight."

In April 1919, the French government was obliged to withdraw its forces from all the Black Sea ports. On the eve of the departure of the French from Odessa the workers in that city rose in armed revolt and power passed to the Soviet of Workers' Deputies. Soviet rule was restored in the whole of the Ukraine and the Crimea.

The Failure of the Entente Offensive in the North

In Mur mansk and Archangel, about 50,000 Entente troops were landed. The region was controlled by the British who appointed their puppet. General Miller, as Military Dictator. The interventionists shamelessly plundered the region, cut down forests and carried off furs. Everybody who was suspected of sympathizing with the Soviet regime was sent to penal servitude on remote uninhabited islands. Preparations were made to strike from the North at Moscow.

The British interventionist troops moved along the Northern Dvina to Kotlas, from where a railway ran to Vyatka. The Entente intended in the region of Kotlas-Perm to effect a junction between the forces of the northern counter-revolution and the Czech and Kolchak forces. The Whiteguard units, which were formed with the aid of British instructors and were well supplied with British armoured trains, aircraft, artillery and machine guns, outnumbered the Red Army which was operating on the Northern and Eastern Fronts by three to one. Five divisions under the command of the Czech General Gaida surrounded the Third Red Army in the region of Perm (now the city of Molotov) and inflicted grave defeat upon it. In December Gaidars forces occupied Perm and marched onto Vyatka (now the city of Kirov). From Vyatka there was a straight road to Moscow.

Comrades Stalin and Dzerzhinsky were sent to the Eastern Front to save the situation. Their instructions were to ascertain the causes of the disaster and to propose measures for its elimination. Comrade Stalin found the Eastern Front in a state of utter disorganization. The tsarist generals whom Trotsky had appointed violated the Soviet government 's instructions to recruit the Red Army only from among the working classes of the population. The army teemed with sons of kulaks and the bourgeoisie and downright spies who were demoralizing the Red forces. There was no cbmmunication between the front and the rear, and numerous spies and saboteurs were at work at staff headquarters and in the administrative services. General Headquarters had no definite plan of campaign and issued contradictory orders, which only served to demoralize the army. Comrade Stalin drove enemies out of headquarters, established order in the army administrations, organized the formation of regiments in conformity with the Soviet government's instructions and took measures to clean up the rear. Above all, Comrade Stalin issued an order to hold Vyatka at all costs so as to prevent the Entente forces in the North from linking up with Kolchak's forces and the Czechoslovaks who were advancing from the East, As a result of all these measures Vyatka was held and the Entente troops failed to join forces with the Czechoslovaks.

Enormous assistance was rendered the Red Army in tlie North by, ski-runners of the Komi people, who proved to be splendid scouts and dispatch carriers. Dressed in white coveralls and moving very swiftly, they out-witted the enemy.

An active part in the struggle against the invaders in both the North and South was played by women and juveniles, who obtained information about the enemy's operations and intentions, supplied the partisans with food and arms and distributed Bolshevik leaflets.

Disintegration set in among the Entente forces in the North just as it did in the South. This was facilitated considerably by the Bolshe vik propaganda that was carried on among them by means of leaflets which were posted up on trees and scattered wherever the foreign troops were stationed. The result of this propaganda was that the Entente soldiers refused to fight against the Bolsheviks and demanded that they be sent home. The Entente's attempt to destroy the Soviet regune with the aid of their own forces failed. As Lenin wrote: "The victory we gained , . . was the greatest victory we have gained over the Entente. We have deprived it of its soldiers" (V. I. Lenin, Selected Worhs, Vol. VIII, Moscow, 1936, p. 54).

The Liberation of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia from the German Invaders

The defeat of Germany gave an impetus to the strug gle of all the Baltic peoples against the German invaders. The expulsion of the Germans was accompanied by mass revolts against the local bourgeoisie who had betrayed the people and had entered into a deal with the invaders.

In Lithuania, after the expulsion of the Germans, the workers set up Soviets which organized revolts against the bourgeois government of Voldemaras. The preparations for these revolts were directed by the Communist Party of Lithuania and Byelorussia that was formed at that time. The Voldemaras government fled from Vilna, and in December 1918 the Vilna Soviet proclaimed the formation of the Lithuanian Soviet Republic. On December 23, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee recognized the independence of the Lithuanian Soviet Republic and issued a decree to incorporate the Kovno and Vilna Gubernias in Soviet Lithuania,

In November 1918, the advancing Red Army compelled the German troops to retire from Latvia too. The various bourgeois parties in Latvia feared that the proletarian revolution would be victorious in that country and in the endeavour to prevent this they set up in Riga a National Council, which, on November 18, 1918, proclaimed the for mation of a Latvian bourgeois republic. A provisional bourgeois govern ment was set up headed by Uhnanis, the leader of the Farmers' Union. This government concluded an agreement with the German Social-Democratic government, by which the latter undertook to send "volunteers" to Latvia. Roused to indignation by this act, the masses of the people of Latvia rose in revolt and captured Riga. The bourgeois government fled to Libau. In January 1919, a Congress of Latvian Soviets was held which proclaimed the formation of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Latvian Soviet state authorities formed a Red Army, abolished the private ownership of land, confiscated state, landlord and church lands and expelled the landlords from the country.

In the spring of 1919, the Latvian bourgeois government which had establi^ed itself in Libau sent an army of 80,000 men against Riga and captured the citj^. At that time Soviet Russia was surrounded by enemies and was unable to render the Latvian Soviet Republic military assistance, and so a bourgeois republic was established in Latvia.

In Estonia, after the German troops left, the bourgeoisie appealed for assistance to Great Britain, and the latter sent a squadron of war ships to assist the Estonian counter-revolution. The working people of Estonia rose in revolt and with the assistance of the advancing Red Army expelled the invaders. On November 30, 1918, Soviet rule was restored in the shape of the Estonian Working People's Commune. The Estonian bourgeoisie again appealed to Great Britain and also to their nei hbour^ White Finland, for assistance. The well-armed forces of the White Estonians, White Finns and the British forces compelled the Red Army to withdraw from Estonia and the Soviet regime was again abolished.

The Liberation of Byelorussia and the Formation of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic

By December 1918, the Byelo russian workers and peasants, assisted by the Red Army, had cleared their country of German troops. The part of Byelorussia which the Germans had occupied during the imperialist war was also liber ated. The working people of Byelorussia appealed to Lenin and Stalin to help them form a Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. In December 1918, the First Congress of the Commtmist Party of Byelo russia was held and resolved to proclaim an independent Socialist Byelorussian Republic consisting of the Minsk, Grodno, Mogilev, Vitebsk and Smolensk Gubernias. The congress declared: "The work ing people of Byelorussia wish to know no other power except the power of the Soviets, which is the power of the workers, agricultural labourers and peasants. The power of the landlord Byelorussian Rada is hateful to them."

On February 2, 1919, the First All-Byelorussian Congress of Soviets was held in Minsk, which made the arrangements for the formation of the Byelorussian Soviet Republic. All the land of the landlords, monasteries and churches was proclaimed public property, the rail ways and factories were nationalized, and the Soviet laws were pro claimed in force. Y. M. Sverdlov, Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, who was present at the congress, announced the decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to recog nize the independence of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and promised that it would be rendered fraternal assistance. In his speech he said: "The Russian proletariat will never forget that you were the first to meet the blows and the onslaught of Ger man imperialism and check its advance into the interior of our country."

The congress proclaimed the formation of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, ordered the opening of negotiations with the R.S.F.S.R. with the object of establishing federal ties, and appealed to all the independent Soviet Republics to follow the example of the B.S.S.R.

The Fight Against the Polish Invaders in Lithuania and Byelorussia

From the very first days of their existence the j^oung Soviet Republics of Lithuania and Byelorussia were attacked by gentry ridden Poland, which had become the faithful agent of the Entente. Poland was indebted for her independence to the October Socialist Rev olution, but the Polish capitalists and landlords were filled with mortal hatred of Soviet Russia, for the revolution had deprived them of vast estates and capital invested in the Ukraine, Byelorussia and Lithuania. Hence, notwithstanding the repeated peace offers of the Soviet government, gentry-ridden Poland broke off diplomatic relations with Russia and with the assistance of the Entente moved her troops to the frontiers of Soviet Lithuania and Soviet Byelorussia.

The Congresses of Soviets of Lithuania and Byelorussia decided to miite their forces against the White Poles and at a joint meeting of the Central Executive Committees of the Lithuanian and Byelorussian Republics a government for the united Lithuanian-Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was formed.

The government of the R.S.F.S.R. rendered the young Soviet Republics all the assistance it could. Y. M. Sverdlov sent them men with experience in Soviet and Party work, and Lenin and Stalin helped them to form a Red Army for the purpose of combating the White Poles.

In the spring of 1919, the White Poles laimched an offensive and in April they captured Vilna, the capital of Lithuania.

The government of the R.S.F.S.R. sent units of the Red Army to Byelorussia to assist the fraternal Soviet Republics of Lithuania and Byelorussia. In June 1919, Sergo Orjonikidze, then a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Sixteenth Army, was sent to the Western Front, where he organized the resistance to the White Poles. The Red Army entrenched itself on the river Berezina.

In the parts of Lithuania and Byelorussia they captured, the Polish invaders restored private property and returned the factories to the capitalists and the land to the landlords. Scores of villages were burned to the ground and the peasants were robbed of their grain and cattle.

Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party the workers and peasants of Byelorussia organized partisan detachments which operated in the rear of the "White Poles and also in the frontline areas. In con junction with the Red Army, these detachments waged a determined struggle against the Polish aggressors for the freedom and independence of their country.

Defeat of the Three Entente Campaigns

The Defeat of Kolchak

The Entente's Plans in the Spring of 1919

After defeating Germany and her allies, the Entente concentrated all its attention on the struggle against the Soviet Republic. By the spring of 1919, the prep arations for an oifensive by Kolchak's forces on the Eastern Rront were completed. An army of nearly 300,000 men marched across the Urals with the object of reaching Moscow, its rear "covered" by British, French, American, Japanese and Czechoslovak detachments. Inter ventionist forces totalling over 100,000 men helped Kolchak in his campaign against the Soviets. The Whiteguard detachments under the command of Yudenich, jointly with White Estonian and White Finnish forces, and with the active assistance of a British naval force, were to march against Petrograd. Denikin, together with the Don and Kuban Cossack armies under his command, was to move up from the South. General Miller was making preparations for an oifensive from the North, In the Ukraine, Whiteguard and Entente agents were preparing counter-revolutionary revolts of the bandit Hetman Gri goryev. In Central Asia an attack was to be launched by the British invaders, supported by the Basmaohi. Such were the far-reaching plans for the Entente's first campaign. As Stalin said: "This was a combined campaign, for it provided for a simultaneous attack by Kolchak, Denikin, Poland, Yudenich and the joint Anglo-Russian detachments in Turkestan and in Archangel, the pivot of the campaign being in Kolchak's region" (J. Stalin, Speeches and Articles on the XJhraine, Kiev, 1936, Russ, ed., p. 90).

The Organization of Resistance to the Entente. On March 18, 1919, the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshe viks) was opened. This congress showed that the Central Committee led by Lenin was indeed a "militant organ of a militant party in the period of the Civil War,"

The main item on the agenda of this congress was the question of the attitude to be adopted towards the middle peasants. As a result of the victory of the October Revolution there were more middle peas ants in the rural districts than before the revolution. They consti tuted the majority of the peasant population, but in the early part of 1918 still wavered between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Taking advantage of these waverings the Whiteguards succeeded in temporarily overthrowing Soviet rule in the Volga and other regions. Bitter experience, however, soon taught the middle peasants that the victory of the Whites meant the restoration of the rule of the landlords. In and following the autumn of 1918, the middle peasants swung over to the Soviet regime. This explains why Lenin at that time advanced the watchword: 'TSlnow how to reach agreement with the middle peasant, while not for a moment renouncing the struggle against the kulak, and relying solidly and solely on the poor peasant. . . (V. I. Lenin, Collected Worhs^ Vol. XXIII, Moscow,

1934, Russ, ed., p. 294.)

After hearing Lenin's report the congress passed a resolution de manding that a strict distinctionbe drawn between the middle peasants and the kulaks and that close attention should be paid to the needs of the middle peasants. The congress adopted the policy of establish ing a firm alliance with the middle peasants, and of relying upon the poor peasants, while preserving the leading role of the proletariat in this alliance.

Some of the army delegates at this congress formed what was called the ^'military opposition," which was headed by the defeated group of former ^'^Left Communists." This opposition tried to drag the Party back to partisan methods of warfare, opposed the employment of military experts in the Red Army, etc. The congress devoted a great deal of attention to the task of building up*the Red Army. Lenin and Stalin strongly attacked this "military opposition." Comrade Stalin said: "Either we create a real worker and peasant — ^primarily a peasant — strictly-disciplined army, and defend the Republic, or we perish."

The congress also strongly censured Trotsky for staffing the central establishments of the Eed Army with elements clearly hostile to So* viet rule and for cramping in every way the activities of the Commu nists, and particularly of the Political Commissars, in the army. The congress passed a resolution calling for the strengthening of the Eed Arihy, and issued a special appeal to the workers and peasants, warn ing them of the impending war danger and of the campaign being prepared by the Entente.

On March 18, 1919, on the day the Eighth Congress of the Party was opened, proletarian Moscow saw to his last resting place Y. M. Sverd lov, the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, "the first man in the fiirst Soviet Socialist Republic," "the first of the organizers of the broad masses of the proletariat," as Lenin said of him. In his intense efforts to build up the Soviet State, Y. M. Sverdlov knew no rest. During one of his tours of the country he caught cold, fell seriously ill and died. The death of Sverdlov was a severe loss to the Party and to the Soviet State.

On March 30, 1919, on Leninas recommendation, M. I. Kalinin was elected Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Originally a Tver peasant, and later a highly skilled metal worker employed in St: Petersburg, Mildiail Ivanovich Kalinin was an outstanding example of one who combined in his revolutionary activities the revolutionary struggle of the Russian worker and of the Russian peasant, Lenin said the following:

"It is very difficult to find a real substitute for Comrade Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov. If we can find a comrade who combines expe rience of life and knowledge of the life of the middle peasant we shall solve this problem, and I think that the nomination you have read in the newspapers today satisfi.es all these conditions. The nomination is that of Comrade Kalinin" (V. I. Lenin, Collected Worlcs^ Vol. XXIV, Moscow, 1937, Russ, ed., pp. 188-189).

Kolchak's Regime in Siberia

In the spring of 1919, the bulk of the armed forces of the foreign interventionists were compelled to leave the Land of Soviets, but they left the Russian "Whiteguards their artillery, tanks and aircraft. The imperialists of the Entente had not abandoned intervention, they had merely entrusted tjhis task to their puppets, the Russian ^^iteguards. First among these was Admiral Kolchak, whom the British, French and American impe rialists lavishly supplied with arms, army clothing, provisions and money. The people at that time noted Kolchak's complete dependence upon his foreign masters even in ditties such as the following: Kolchak established a military monarchist dictatorship and restored the tsarist regime in Siberia. The Siberian peasants, who had never known landlordism, were reduced almost to the condition of serfs. Their grain and cattle were requisitioned, levies were imposed upon them, and they were compelled to pay not only arrears in taxes, but also taxes several years ahead. For the slightest display of resistance they were subjected to public flogging. Kolchak was exceptionally cruel in his treatment of the workers and Bolsheviks and had them shot without mercy.

Proclaiming the slogan "Russia, united and indivisible," Kolchak cruelly suppressed movements for national lib3ration. He refused to recognize the national autonomy of a single people inhabiting the territory he occupied. He even refused to recognize the Bashkir counter-revolutionary government headed by Validov, in spite of the fact that the latter served him faithfully. The discontented masses of the Bashkir people compelled Validov to appeal for assistance to the Soviet government.

To stimulate the formation of a united front of the working people against Kolchak and to expose the counter-revolutionary manoeuvres of the Bashkir nationalists, Lenin and Stalin sent a telegram to the Eevolutionary Committee in Ufa confirming the autonomy of Bash kiria and granting an amnesty to the Bashkir government head.d by Validov. In March 1919, a decree of the Soviet government was issued, signed by Lenin and Stalin, concerning the formation of the Autonomous Soviet Bashkir Republic. The working people of Bashkiria enrolled in the Red Army to fight Kolchak , but the bourgeois nationalists continued to play their double game, merely waiting for the opportunity to overthrow the Soviet regime in Baslikiria.

Kolchak's Offensive and Defeat

In the beginning of 1919, Kolchak launched an offensive along -Sie whole of the Eastern Front. In the northern direction (Perm-Vyatka) , Kolchak's Siberian Army continued operations against the Third Red Army, but thanks to the resolute operations of Comrades Stalin and Dzerzhinsky the Siberian Army's advance was checked at Glazov. In March and the early part of April, 1919, Kolchak's Western Army captured Ufa, Bugulma and Buguruslan and threatened Simbirsk and Samara. Kolchak's middle group of troops which coimeotsd the Siberian and Western Armies, threatened Kazan. Finally , south of Ufa, and further towards Turkestan , the White Cossack armies of Duto v and Tolstoy threatened Orenburg and Uralsk. Kolchak's offensive assumed threatening proportions and creat ed the danger that the Eastern and Southern counter-revolutionary forces would lijik up. Kolchak planned to effect a junction with Denikin in the region of Saratov in order to form a single front for an ad vance against Moscow. At that time Denikin had captured a part of the Donetz Basin. Yudenich launched an offensive against Petrograd.

The country was in grave peril; swift and determined measures had to be taken to defeat Kolchak.

On April 12, the "Theses of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in connection with the situation on the Eastern Front," drafted by Lenin, were published in Pravda. In this document Lenin emphasized: "All our energies must be bent to the extreme to smash Kolchak" (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Two-VoL ed., VoL II, Moscow, 1947, p. 467). The Party issued the slogan: "Everything for the Eastern Front!"

In response to the appeal of the Party and of Lenin, Moscow and Petrograd sent one-fifth of their Communists and one-tenth of their trade union members to the front. The Young Communist League sent several thousand of the best of the youth to the Eastern Front. Volunteers were enlisted in every town. In the rear women took the places of the men who went off to the front.

The task of organizing the defeat of Kolchak was entrusted to M. V. Frunze, who was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Group of the Eastern Front, and to V. V. Kuibyshev, who was appointed a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front. During the Civil War, the veteran Bolshevik Mildiail Vassilyevich Frunze developed into a splendid proletarian military leader. As early as the autumn of 1918, he was sent as Commander of the Fourth Army to strengthen the Eastern Front. Backed by the textile workers who came to his assistance, Frunze quickly restored revolu tionary order in the army and launched a successful offensive, first against the White Cossacks and then against Kolchak. In the fighting against Dutov, the White Cossacks and Kolchak, V. V. Kui byshev was always with Frunze in the frontline positions wher ever the fighting was hottest. Frunze and Kuibyshev trained a num ber of splendid proletarian army commanders and political workers. One of such commanders and heroes was V. I. Chapayev, around whose name legends have been woven,

Vassili Ivanovich Chapayev was born in Chuvashia. As a boy he helped his father and grandfather who travelled from village to village on the Volga doing carpentry jobs. As a youth he suffered the severe barrackdiscipline of the tsarist army and spent the best years of his life at the front during the imperialist war. The hardships he endured roused in his heart a burning hatred for the oppressors and exploiters. After the February revolution he returned to the Volga, joined the Bolshevik Party, and from the very first days of the October Revolution plunged into the struggle to establish and consoli date the power of the Soviets.

At the end of April 1919, the Southern Group of the Red Army, which Frunze had formed with the assistance of his close colleagues Kuibyshev and Chapayev, launched a general offensive. In the beginning of May, the 25th Division, commanded by Cha payev, fought successful battles at Buzuluk and Buguruslan. On May 13, the Red Army cap tured Bugulma and the White armies retreated towards Ufa. At this crucial moment Trotsky treacherously proposed that the Red Army's offensive against Ufa should be halted and that part of the troops should be transferred from the Eastern Eront to the Southern Front, Had this proposal been carried out, the Urals, with its indus trial plants, would have re mained under Kolchak's con trol, and this would have ena bled him to recover from his defeat. Frunze strongly opposed Trotsky's order and was sup ported by Lenin, who demand ed that the Urals should be liberated before the winter set in.

Under Frunze's leadership the Red Army forced the river Belaya and battled for Ufa.

Chapayev's division repulsed the counter-attacks of Kolchak's picked corps commanded by Kappel, and after fierce fighting the Red troops captured Ufa. Kolchak's army rapidly retreated eastwd. The Red Army pursued the retreating Kolchak forces and reached the foothills of the Urals. On July 13, it captured Zlatoust, thus opening the road into Siberia, and on July 14, Ekaterinburg (now Sverdlovsk). ,

Meanwhile, fierce guerilla warfare was waged m Kolchak s rear by partisan detachments composed of workers and peasants from the Urals and Siberia. At the same time, the Red Army com menced offensive operations against Kolchak's allies, the White

Chapayev's 25th Division was transferred to the Ural hront, and there fought its way forwards to the relief of Uralsk, which h.ad been heroically holding its besiegers at bay for the past two months. Chapayev liberated Uralsk and drove the White Cossacks towards the Caspian Sea. On September 5, 1919, his headquarters in the stanitsa of Lbishohenskaya was surrounded by White Cossacks who had broken through from the rear. Finding himself surrounded by the enemy, Chapayev fought his way to the river Ural into which he plunged, but he was wounded while in the water, and was drowned. The image of Chapayev is engraved in the hearts of the So viet people forever.

The Eed Army had dealt Kolchak a shattering blow, but he still retained some of his forces and tried to put up resistance. In August, Lenin published "A Letter to the Workers and Peasants in Connection with the Victory over Kolchak," in which he warned that "the enemy is still far from being destroyed. He has not even been definitely broken. Every effort must be made to drive Kolchak and the Japanese and the other alien marauders out of Siberia. . . (V. I. Lenin,

Selected Works, Two-Vol. ed., Vol. II, Moscow, 1947, p. 518.)

At this jimcture Denikin in the South, and Yudenich in the West, went into action in support of Kolchak.

The Fight for Astrakhan

After capturing North Caucasus, Denikin made a drive for the Volga in order to join forces with Kolchak. At that time a stronghold of the revolution which pro tected the mouth of the Volga against the Whiteguards and prevent ed Kolchak and Denikin from effoctiiig a junction was Astrakhan* The defence of the city was organized by S. M. Kirov, who had arrived there in January 1919. The situation in Astrakhan was one of great difficulty. The armed forces available were few. After a heroic march through the waterless Astrakhan steppe, the remnants of the Eleventh Army arrived, but nearly the whole force was sick with typhus. Typhus and scurvy were rampant in the city itself. The inhabitants were starving. The counter-revolutionaries openly conducted anti-Soviet propaganda. There were few industrial workers in the city. The city was beset on all sides by the enemy, Kolchak's troops and White Cossacks moving from the East and Denikin's forces from the West. Warships of the British interventionists were almost at the mouth of the Volga.

Kirov set up a Revolutionary Military Committee and established revolutionary order. The Revolutionary Military Committee issued the warning: "Bandits and marauders will be shot on the spot.'^ The saboteurs were told: "He who does not wish to work shall not eat. Available provisions will be issued only to those who work for Soviet Russia." '

Help came to Astrakhan in the shape of the Volga Flotilla which the Bolsheviks of Nizhni Novgorod, under the direction of LM. Kaganovich, had in the spring of 1918, formed out of river steamers and cutters covered with armour plate and mounted with guns. To reinforce the Volga Flotilla Lenin sent several light torpedo boats from Kronstadt via the canals of the Mariinsky system. Under Kirov's personal direction, the combined flotilla, numbering about forty vessels, crossed the dangerous shallows to the Caspian Sea where the British were in control. By a sudden raid Kirov captured the radio station by which Denikin maintained communication with Kolchak, and from Denikin's reports he learned that one of Denikin's generals had been sent to Kolchak with the plans of future operations. This general was captured together with the plans.

Bierce fighting raged around Astrakhan. Kirov mobilized all forces to resist the enemy. At a conference of Party members that was held on August 3, 1919, he said: "As long as there is a single Communist left in the Astrakhan Region the mouth of the Volga will always remain Soviet'^ At this juncture Trotsky sent an order from General Head quarters to evacuate Astrakhan for the purpose of "straightening out the front." Kirov appealed directly to Lenin and urged that Ast rakhan must be held at all costs. Lenin sent the following reply: "Defend Astrakhan to the last." Kirov carried out Lenin's order.

The Defeat of Yudenich near Petrograd

To assist Kolchak the imperialists, in the spring of 1919, organized an offensive against Petrograd under the command of General Yudenich, who was sup ported by White Finns, White Estonians and a British naval squadron. The Red Army's forces near Petrograd had been weakened by the transfer of its best units to other fronts. A British spy was organizing a large-scale military plot in Petrograd. In his service were former army officers serving as military experts in the Red Army, and they seized the Kronstadt forts of Krasnaya Gorka and Seraya Loshad. Spies and conspirators were busy at Red Army Headquar ters in Petrograd. The foreign diplomatic missions had stocks of machine guns, grenades and bombs to be used in the counter-revolu tionary revolt that was to take place in Petrograd. Zinoviev and his supporters were spreading panic and consternation. Yudenich 's forces were approaching Petrograd.

The Party sent to the Petrograd Front that tried organizer of victory, Comrade Stalin. He conducted a drive against 8|i:s, and ordered the Red Baltic Fleet to capture the mutinous forts from the sea. In spite of the assurances given to Comrade Stalin by military experts that this operation was doomed to failure, the gallant sailors of the cruiser Oleg and the battleships Petro'pavlovsh and Andrei Pervo zvanny braved the guns on the forts, drove close in and subjected them to a heavy bombardment. On June 16, Stalin's order was carried out, Krasnaya Gorka was cleared of mutineers. This fort was renamed Krasnoflotski (Red Fleet) in honour of the gallant Red Navy men who captured it. Seraya Loshad also surrendered and was subsequently renamed Peredovoi (Advanced).

Tbe British, squadron came to Yudenich's assistance. It attempted to attack Kronstadt, but it met with heroic resistance.

The Red forces began to push back the Whites all along the line. Stalin reported to Lenin that the offensive was proceeding successfully and that the Whites were in flight. In August 1919, Yudenich's army was defeated and its remnants retreated to Estonia.

The Defeat of Denikin

Denikin Launches an Offensive

The defeat of Kolchak did not discourage the leaders of the Entente. They prepared a "cam paign of fourteen countries" against Soviet Russia, to be;^in in the autumn of 1919. Apart from the Entente countries, Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Transcaucasian bourgeois govern ments and the Whiteguard forces in Russia and in the Ukraine were to be included in the campaign. But the governments of the border' (limitrophe) bourgeois states did not trust the tsarist generals who dreamed of restoring "Russia, united and indivisible." Tne contra dictions within the camp of the bourgeoisie, and above all the resistance offered by the Red Army, resulted in the campaign falling through. The Entente concentrated all its attention on assisting General Denikin, their last hope in the struggle against Soviet Russia. Thus was prepared the Entente's second campaign.

As Comrade Stalin wrote: "The Entente's second campaign was launched in the autumn of 1919. This was also a combined campaign, for it involved a simultaneous attack by Denikin, Poland and Yudenioh (Kolchak had been struck out of account). This time the pivot of the campaign is the South, in Denikin's region" (J. Stalin, Articles and Speeches on the Ukraine ^ Kiev, 1936, Russ, ed., p. 91).

On July 3, Denikin ordered an offensive on Moscow. His forces advanced in three columns: one, under the command of Wrangel moved along the line of the Volga; the centre was formed by the army of the Don, and the lefb flank was formed of Denikin's picked troops, the so-called Volunteer Army. To hasten the capture of Moscow, Denikin sent into action a cavalry force under the command of Mamon tov. It operated in the rear of the Red armies of the Southern Front, and raided the towns of Tambov, Kozlov and Eiets. On October 6, the Whites captured Voronezh. On October 13, Denikin captured Orel and marched on Tula. At this juncture Yudenioh launched another offensive against Petrograd.

The landlords and capitalists felt certain that the fall of Moscow was only a matter of days. The capitalists of the Donetz Region offered a prize of a million rubles to the first Denikin regiment to enter Moscow. One of Denikin's armoured trains bore a destination plate with the inscription: "To Moscow."

In the regions occupied by Denikin's forces the workers and peasants were subjected to a reign of bloody terror. The Donetz coal fields ran with proletarian blood. The people called the Volunteer Army the "Robber Army." As Kolchak had done in Siberia, Denikin in the areas he occupied returned the land to the landlords, restored the rule of the landlords and capitalists and re-established the monarchical regime. In the Ukraine the Ukrainian language was banned. The highland villages in North Caucasus were wiped off the face of the ea»rth'. Daghestan was proclaimed a part of "Russia, united and indi visible." In all the occupied regions the Volunteer Army was able to maintain itself only by means of ruthless terrorism.

Victory Over Denikin

On July 9, 1919, Lenin issued an ap peal to the workers and peasants entitled "Everything for the Eight Against Denikin" in which he wrote: "The Soviet Republic . . . must become a single military camp, not in word but in deed. All the work of all institutions must be adapted to the war and placed on a military footing!"

Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet govern ment, the Land of Soviets exerted all efforts to defeat Denikin.

During the summer and autmnn of that year the Party conducted "Party weeks" during which 200,000 new members joined its ranks, and these were forthwith sent to the front and to the sectors where the constructive work of the Soviets had to face the greatest ob stacles. The Young Communist League displayed supreme devo tion to the revolution. Often there were notices on the doors of the Y, C. L, premises stating: "The Committee is closed down. Everybody has gone to the front."

The Central Committee of the Party entrusted the task of organ! z ing the defeat of Denikin to Comrade Stalin. After studying the situa tion on the Southern Front, Comrade Stalin rejected Trotsky's treach erous plan to conduct the offensive against Denikin by way of Tsar itsyn-Novorossiisk. In a letter to Lenin, Comrade Stalin wrote;

"It is therefore necessary right away, without loss of time, to alter the old plan, which experience has already discredited, and replace it by a plan according to which the main attack will be launched on Rostov — ^by way of Kharkov and the Donetz Basin:

"Firstly, here we shall be in surroundings which are not hostile, but on the contrary sympathetic to us, a circumstance which will facilitate our advance.

"Secondly, we shall secure an extremely important railway system {that of the Donat z Basin and the main artery feeding Denikin's army — the Voronezh-Rostov line. . . .) "Thirdly, by this advance we will cut Denikin's army in two. One part, the Volunteer Army, we shall leave for Makhno to de vour, while the other, the Cossack army, we shall threaten with an attack in the rear.

"Fourthly, we shall be in a position to set the Cossacks quarrelling with Denikin, who, if our advance is successful, will try to move the Cossack units to the West, to which the majority of the Cossacks will not agree. , . .

"Fifthly, we shall secure coal, while Denikin will be left with out coal" (K. E. Voroshilov, Stalin and the Bed Army, Moscow, 1942, p. 23).

Lenin approved of Stalin's plan and conceded his demand that Trotsky should not be allowed to have any say in the affairs of the Southern Front.

To carry out Stalin's plan a special group of ' shock troops was formed and placed under the command of Stalin's colleague, Sergo Orjonikidze. An extremely important place in the plan was assigned to the operations of Budyonny's cavalry.

Operating in conformity with Stalin's plan, the Red troops, on October 20, 1919, liberated Orel from the Whites. On October 24, Budyonny's Cavalry Corps, which had only just defeated Denikin's cavalry under the command of Mamontov, liberated Voronezh by a lieroio surprise attack whose audacity and precipitation stunned the Whites, In this operation the Red cavalry were supported by a detachment of Voronezh workers and railwaymen under the command of L. M. Kaganovich. Budyonny inflicted another defeat on the White cavalry at Kastomaya. During these battles the Soviet cavalry grew and became firmly welded. In November, on Comrade Stalin's recommendation, the First Cavalry Army was formed. S. M. Budyon ny was appointed commander ol this army, and K. E. Voroshilov a member of its Revolutionary Military Council.

The Cavalry Army never sustained defeat. Nearly all its command ers came from the ranks of the workers and peasants and had led the partisan struggle against the Whiteguards. The First Cavalry Army produced many valiant heroes, such as Morozov, Parkhomenko, Dun dich, and others.

Meanwhile, partisan units were active in Denikin's rear in the Ukraine. This partisan movement was led by the Bolshevik under ground organizations and was assisted by the peasants, who gave the partisans concealment when necessary.

The atrocities that Denikin's hordes committed roused the hatred of the peasants and swept them into the ranks of the fighters for the power of the Soviets. In the village of Golubovka, in the Ekaterino slav Gubernia, for example, the Whites captured a partisan, cut a five-pointed star on his breast and then cut out his heart. The effect of this atrocity was to bring 300 additional peasants from the villages in the neighbourhood of Golubovka into the partisan struggle against the Whites. Numerous cases of a similar kind occurred.

The Young Communist League also played a heroic part in the underground struggle against Denikin. The young Soviet heroes displayed no less courage and fortitude under torture in the dungeons of Denikin's counter-intelligence department than was displayed by the adult workers and peasants. There was the case, for example, of the nine members of the Young Communist League of Odessa, one of whom, Dora Luharskaya, wrote as follows in the letter she sent to her comrades just before her death: 'Dear Comrades, I shall die as honestly as I have lived during my short life. Only now do I really feel like a conscious revolutionary and Party worker. How I behaved under arrest, and when I was sentenced, my comrades will tell you. They say I be haved like a briok. All of us, the condemned, are behaving well, we are cheerful. . . . Soon, very soon, the whole of the Ukraine will breathe freely and real constructive work will commence, I am only sorry that I shall not be able to take part in it."

The revolt of the workers and peasants against the Whites spread far and wide in all the districts occupied by Denikin's forces.

' After sustaining defeat at Orel, Kastomaya and Voronezh, Deni kinas army rapidly retreated southwards to the Black Sea ports. In the beginning of January 1920, the First Cavalry Army, tireless in pursuit of the Whites, occupied Eostov-on-Don, and on March 27, 1920, Novorossiisk, the WThites' last stronghold on the Black Sea coast, fell. The second campaign of the Entente, who had organized Denikin's offensive, was defeated as thoroughly as the first had been. In his "Letter to the Workers and Peasants of the Ukraine in Conneo* tion with the Victories over Denikin," Lenin wrote: "Denikin must be vanquished and destroyed, and such incursions as his not allowed to recur. That is to the fundamental interest of both the Great-Bus sian and the Ukrainian workers and peasants. The fight will be a long and hard one, for the capitalists of the whole world are helping Deni kin and will help Denikins of every kind" (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works ^ Two-Vol. ed., Vol 11, Moscow, 1947, p. 551).

The organizer of the Red Army's victory over Denikin was J. V. Stalin.

In November 1919 the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in recognition of Comrade Stalin's tremendous services on the different jhonts during the Civil War, conferred upon him the country's highest award — the Order of the Red Banner.

The Rout of Yudenich

At the time when Denikin was at the height of success Yudenich launched another attack upon Petro grad. The Whiteguards were supplied with tanks by the British, and the entire West-European press confidently prophesied the early capture of Petrograd. Lenin sent the workers of Petiograd an order not to surrender the capital. The Communists and Young Communist Leaguers of Petrograd were mobilized to defend the city. Women and old men went to the front. Whole workers' families went out to dig trenches. The factories worked day and night producing materials for the city's defence. The workers themselves unearthed traitors and spies, searched the whole city and confiscated arms from the bourgeoisie. Proletarian Petiogriid was converted into a fortiess. Machine guns wcie posted at the windows of the houses. The daily ration for ^rorkers amounted to half a pound of bread and one salt herring, but the spirit of Red Petrograd was indomitable.

On October 21, the Seventh Red Army launched a counter-offensive with tremendous enthusiasm, and on October 26 captured Krasnoye Selo. On November 14, the Red forces captured Yamburg and took the greater part of Yudenioh's army prisoner. Yudenich's soldiers killed their officers and went over to the Red Army. The peasants harassed the rear of the retreating Whiteguards.

That was how Yudenich's army faded away.

The defeat of Denikin and Yudenich accelerated the utter defeat of Kolchak. In the autumn of 1919, the Red Army quickly checked Kolchak's attempt to advance in the region of Tobolsk. Amidst the severe frosts of Siberia the Red Army drove the exhausted Kolchak army across the Siberian steppes, through the taiga to the East. The Red Army liad powerful allies in the Rod partisans of the Urals and Siberia. The Bolsheviks took the lead in the struggle to establish Soviet power in Siberia. On November 14, 1919, the Red Army captured Omsk, Kolchak's capital, and on January 15, 1920, entered Irkutsk. Kolchak was arrested and shot. Soviet rule was established in Siberia.

Socialist Construction during the Civil War

The Policy of War Communism

During the Civil .War the Soviet Republic was a besieged military camp. The interventionists surrounded her and * operated an economic blockade. The forces of counter-revolution out off the proletarian centres from the regions which supplied food and raw materials. The lack of raw materials, fuel and food caused a drop in production. In 1919 industrial output was only one-fourth of pre-war. Workers who had not gone to the front dispersed to the rural districts. The existence of numerous fronts put a tremendous strain upon the Soviet State. It was neces sary to supply the army with bread, arms, footwear and clothing. To hold out and supply food to the essential categories of workers and the Red Army the Soviet State made a register of all stocks of food, fuel and manufactured goods. In addition to the big enter prises, medium and even small enterprises were nationalized.

On January 24, 1919, the Couneil of People's Commissars issued a decree introducing surplus appropriations, in conformity with which the peasants were obliged to deliver to the state at fixed prices all stocks of food over and above their own requirements. Lenin explained the need for the mf^asure as follows: "If you, the peasant, offer a loan to the state and give your grain, the worker will be able to restore industry. . . . There is no other way out!" (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXIV, Moscow, 1937, Russ, ed,, pp. 409-410.)

Pood was rationed on a strictly class basis. The bourgeoisie re ceived one-fourth of the workers' ration, but children received rations at a higher rate.

The Soviet Stp.,te introduced compulsorj' labour service for all classes. In drawing the bourgeoisie into work the Soviet State applied the principle: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat." Military methods, iron discipline had to be established in all Soviet, economic and trade union organizations; commissars were appointed or political departments set up in place of elected leaders. In tlie war area and aieas libeiaied from the Whites, Revolutionary Com mittees were set up in place of elected Soviets, The whole of this system of measures, measures evoked by the conditions re.«;ultiRg from the country's defence, was designated by the term "War Com munism."

The Civil War made it necessary to put the whole life of the country on a war footing. Only such a policy could guarantee the proletariat a firm rear and an invincible front. Only the strictest discipline, organ ization and centralization enabled the working class and the peasantry to organize victory over an immeasurably more powerful enemy.

Economic and Cultural Development in the Period of the Civil War

During the Civil War and foreign intervention the entire life of the country was subordinated to the interests of the war fronts; but even when conditions were most severe, when hunger, cold, epidemics, counter-revolutionary conspiracies and revolts and the hardships and dangers of war prevailed , the working class of the Land of Soviets continued the work of reorganizing all aspects of social life.

In the very first months after the establishment of Soviet power Lenin devoted considerable attention to the problem of elec trifying the coimtry. On his recommendation preparations were commenced in 1918 for the erection of a powerful hydroelectric plant on the river Volkhov, known as the Volkhovstroy project. In 1919, the erection of an electric power plant at Kashira, near Moscow, was start ed. At the same time work was commenced on the erection of the Shatura power plant, which was to use as fuel the peat available in the district. Thanlcs to the invention of a Russian engineer, the problem of utilizing peat fuel was solved, and in 1920 the temporary Shatura power plant began to produce power. From 1918 to 1920, a fairly large number of small power plants was built. In 1920, the output ca pacity of the electric power plants in Russia was even higher than pre-war, but tlie actual output was lower owing to the fact that most of the plants were idle due to the shortage of fuel.

The seizure of the Donetz coal region by the Whites and the dam age they did to the collieries caused the fuel crisis to become excep tionally acute. Wood became almost the only available form of fuel, but the cutting and transporting of logs was accompanied by enormous difdculties. The Council of Defence and the Council of Peo ple's Commissars drew up a number of measures to solve the fuel crisis. The railways were militarized and the transportation of wood fuel was put on a par with the transportation of war supplies. In KTovember 1919, compulsory labour service was introduced for the preparation, loading and unloading of fuel of all kinds, and the peasants were obliged to supply transport facilities to cart wood logs to the railways and river ports. Thus, assisted by the self-sacrificing labours of the workers and peasants, and thanks to the firm discipline that was introduced, the Soviet Republic gradually emerged from the fuel crisis.

The food situation too was extremely acute for the working people True, the People's Commissariat of Pood collected three times more grain in the 1918-1919 season than in the preceding year, and in the following year it collected nearly 3,000,000 tons of grain; but this was an infinitesimal amount compared with the needs of the civilian population and the army. The state was able to supply the workers with only half the food products they required, the rest had to be purchased on the open market from speculators who charged exorbitant prices.

To combat profiteering, the co-operative societies were given the responsibility of purchasing jfrom the peasants produce not liable to delivery under the surplus appropriations system. The workers were also encouraged by the Soviet government to cultivate vege table plots.

On February 14, 1919, a decree was issued introducing socialist agrarian legislation and measures for the transition to socialist agriculture. The decree contained a number of measures for assisting the socialist sector of agriculture, namely, the state farms and col lective farms. During the two years the proletarian dictatorship had been in existence 900 large state farms and 6,960 agricultural communes and co-operative farms were organized. The collective farms covered an area of over 3,000,000 hectares. The overwhelming majority of the peasants, however, remained small individual farmers.

Epidemics, particularly typhus, were a formidable menace at that time to the Land of Soviets. In a speech at the Seventh Congress of Soviets Lenin said: "We cannot imagine the horrors that have over taken the localities infested by typhus. The population is helpless, en feebled and bereft of material resources. All life, all public activity, is commg to a standstill. We say: 'Comrades, all our attention must be devoted to this problem. Either the lice triumph over Socialism, or Socialism will triumph over the lice!'" (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, VoL VIII, Moscow, 1936, p. 72.)

To combat epidemics, the Soviet government mobilized about a thousand doctors, who worked with self-sacrificing devotion to save the working people. Free medical assistance was introduced for the working people and many rich mansions were converted into hospi tals, dispensaries, creches and consultation centres.

During the Civi. War years masses of workers were given apart ments in bourgeois houses, in most cases rent free. Electric light and other municipal services were also free.

Even during the most difi6.cult periods of the Civil War the Soviet State continued its cultural activity among the workers and peasants. At this time about 10,000,000 children attended school in Soviet Russia, whereas in tsarist Russia, which covered a far larger area, only about 8,000,000 children attended school. The Soviet school teachers remained faithful to the people and vigorously set to work to reorganize the schools and adapt them to the needs and interests of the working people. Not infrequently they worked on empty stomac-is and in freezing schoolrooms, and taught both children and adults in spite of the shortage of paper, books and writing materials.

An enormously important part in the cultural awakening of the people was played by the Party and Soviet newspapers, which reached the most remote corners of the country. In the towns, theatres and work ers ' clubs were opened, which provided free entertainment for masses of people who had never gone to theatres before.

Public dining rooms were opened to relieve workingwomen of the drudgery of the kitchen.

Particular attention was paid by the Soviet government to the struggle against child vagrancy, which became a mass phenomenon. On Lenin's recommendation, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commis sion, under the direction of Felix Dzerzhinsky, organized children's colonies where homeless waifs were trained in industrious habits.

During the period of the Civil War the working class set splendid examples of new forms of Communist labour. Communist subbotniks — the voluntary turn-out of masses of workers to perform work of public importance — ^became a regular sight. The first Commu nist subbotnik was organized on May 10, 1919, by the workers on the Moscow-Kazanskaya Railway. Lenin called it "a great initiative," seeing in these subbotniks the beginning of the new, Communist form of work, and the embryo of the new labour discipline of sooiaL ist society.

The Respite in the Spring of 1920

After Kolchak and Denikin were defeated the Soviet Republic received a brief respite. The Red Army's victory, and the struggle whioli the workers in the capitalist countries had waged against intervention and the blockade, had strength* ened Soviet Russia's international position. In February 1920, peace with Soviet Russia was concluded by Estonia, the first country to do so. "Peace with Estonia," said Lenin, "is an unprecedented victory over world imperialism. ..." (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXV, Moscow, 1937, Russ, ed., p. 23.)

During the Civil War the Soviet government repeatedly invited the Entente powers to conclude peace, but all its offers were rejected.

In the beginning of December 1919, the Seventh All-Russian Con gress of Soviets adopted, on Lenin 's motion, a special resolution reajBdrm ing "its undeviating desire for peace," and inviting the Entente powers to enter into peace negotiations, either collectively or sever ally. This was the eleventh time Soviet Russia had offered to nego tiate peace, but this time too the offer was rejected. It was not until January 1920, after the main forces of the counter-revolution had been defeated, that the Supreme Council of the Entente decided to call off the economic blockade of Soviet Russia. This decision did not mean that the Entente had dropped the idea of further attempts at intervention. The imperialists were simply waiting for an opportunity to incite gentry -ridden Poland against Soviet Russia. Lenin warned the country of this in March 1920 when lu' wrote: "We know that France is instigating Poland and is spending millions there. . . (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXV, Moscow, 1937,

Russ, ed., p. 58.)

The Soviet State took all measures to save the workers and peasants from another war. In January 1920, the Council of People's Commissars invited Poland to enter into peace negotiations, but the Polish gentry did not respond. On February 2, the Soviet govern ment issued an appeal to the Polish people calling upon them to put a stop to the war and to commence a joint struggle against famine and economic chaos, but the Polish gentry kept this appeal from the Polish people. In the beginning of March 1920, the Soviet government made Poland a third offer of peace, but again Poland failed to answer and, with the assistance of the Entente, continued to arm. Thus, the danger of war still existed and it was impossible to demobilize the Red Army. While remaining under arms, many of the units of the Red Army were employed cutting timber for fuel, harvesting the crops and repairing the railways. A number of Red Army units stationed in the Urals, in Siberia and in the Ukraine were transformed into Labour Armies. In February 1920, a Committee for Universal Labour Service was set up. The Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defence was transformed into a Council of Labour and Defence, and .a State Planning Commission (Gosplan) was set up to assist it.

Displaying enormous heroism and perseverance, the Soviet people utilized the brief respite to combat hunger, cold and epidemics. The economic situation in the Soviet Republic was extremely grave. Stocks of raw materials and fuel had run out. Coal output was only a fourth of the pre-war figure; the production of pig iron was only 3 per cent of pre-war, and the output of cotton textiles was only 5 per cent of pre-war. The area under cultivation and the crop yields had shrunk considerably. After the liberation of the grain-growing regions the food situation somewhat improved, but the dislocation of the rail ways rendered the transportation of grain extremely difficult. As many as 60 per cent of the locomotives in the country were out of commis sion.

The Soviet government took measures to strengthen the food admin istration and the work of the latter improved. Several thousand Communists were sent to work on the railways, and skilled workers were recalled from the front and sent into industry.

The Ninth Congress of the Bolshevik Party which was opened on March 29, 1920, discussed questions connected with the utilization of the respite for economic development and decided to begin by restor ing the railways, improving the fuel supply, and restoring the iron and steel industry.

Lenin and Stalin upheld the necessity of strengthening one-man management in industry. In the early period of the Soviet regime col legial management had been the rule, and this had served as a good school for the training of Soviet administrative personnel. But during the Civil War, when there was a particular need for swift decisions on problems as they arose and for individuals to be personally responsible for the fulfilment of these decisions^ collegial manage ment proved to be a hindrance. Hence, the Ninth Congress of the Party resolved to "establish complete and absolute one-man management in workshops and shops, to work towards one-man management of whole factories, and to reduce collegial management at the middle and higher levels of the administrative and industrial apparatus."

At the congress this decision was opposed by a group which included many former "Left Communists," and which called for "democratic centralism." Distorting the Bolshevik principle of democratic central ism, they demanded the election of managements under all circum stances, the loosening of discipline, demanded unrestricted "collegial management," and opposed one-man management in industry and Soviet administration. At a time when the country was mustering every ounce of strength for the struggle, the "democratic centralists" caused disruption in the ranlcs of the Party and weakened the dictatorship of the proletariat, thereby assisting the worst enemies of the Soviet State who were preparing to attack it again. At this time also Trotsky came out with a pernicious proposal to convert the temporary measures to militarize labour which had been called forth by the exigencies of the Civil War and economic chaos, into a permaneDt system of leading the working class and the peasantry. In particular, he proposed that the Labour Armies should be made permanent institutions, for he regarded coercion as the natural method by which the working class should lead the peasantry.

The Party, which during the Civil War had done its utmost to strengthen the military and political alliance between the working ■class and the middle peasants, rejected all these proposals which could only have led to disaster.

The Defeat of the White Poles and Wrangel

War with Gentry-ridden Poland

The respite which the Soviet Republic enjoyed came to an end in the spring of 1920, when the Entente launched another campaign against the country. This time the Entente chose for its tools gentry-ridden Poland and the Whiteguard General Wrangel, who had mustered the remnants of Denikin's army in the Crimea,

Describing this third Entente campaign against Soviet Russia, Comrade Stalin wrote: " . . . The campaign which gentry -ridden Poland has launched against workers' and peasants' Russia is in fact an Entente campaign. . . . The point is, &st, that Poland could not have organized her attack on Russia without the assistance of the En tente; that primarily France, and then Great Britain and America, are giving every support to Poland's offensive with arms, equipment, money and instructors" (J. Stalin, Articles and Speeches on tM Ukraine^ Kiev, 1936, Russ, ed., p. 90).

The Polish imperialists had taken an active part in all the En tente's campaigns against Soviet Russia, and in obedience to the French imperialists, Pilsudski, the head of the Polish state, had an swered the Soviet government's repeated peace offers by proposing terms that were nothing more than the provocation of another war.

In April 1920, the Whiteguard Poles', believing that Soviet Russia was not ready for another war and that the Red Army was warwearv , invaded the Ukraine without declaring war . Their aim was to seize the XJkraine, Byelorussia and Lithuania, and by annexing these Soviet Republics to form a "Great Poland" that was to stretch from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The Polish gentry hoped to gain control of Ukrainian grain and Donetz coal. They received the help of those betrayers of the Ukrainian people, the Petliura-ites, who promised to grant estates to the Polish landlords if their government recognized Petliura as head of the Ukrainian (counter revolutionary) government. The Poles oommenced their offensive by hurling an army of 50,000 men against a force of 15,000 Red Army men, which was then operating in the Ukraine. Thanks to their numerical superiority, Pil sudski's troops were able, on May 6, to capture Kiev, and soon cap tured nearly the whole of the Ukraine on the right bank of the Dnieper. To those districts where Polish landlords had formerly owned estates the interventionists sent punitive detachments which robbed the peas ants not only of their land, but of all their grain stocks and cattle; and if they met with the slightest resistance they burned down vil* lages and shot and flogged the peasants. In the village of Kocheriny (Byelorussia), for example, the miscreants, after setting fire to the peasants' cottages, prevented the inmates, even women and children, from leaving them, and 200 persons were burned to death. In t'ie towns and villages where Jews resided, the White Poles organized pogroms.

Thousands of Ukrainian and Byelorussian workers and peasants rose up to fight the Polish gentry.

The command of the Red Army that was operating against the White Poles on the Southwestern Front was entrusted to Comrade Stalin. The First Cavalry Army, led by Voroshilov and Budyonny, was placed at the disposal of Comrade Stalin. It performed a heroic march of a thousand kilometres in full fighting order from Maikop to Uman, on the way clearing the rear of the Petliura and Makhno bands who were plundering the Ulcrainian villages.

In the beginning of June 1920, the First Cavalry Army pierced the Polish Front in the region of Kazatin, occupied Zhitomir and moved into the rear of the Polish forces. This break-through" was of decisive importance in turning the tide of the war. On Pilsudski's own confession, the First Cavalry Army roused dismay and panic in the ranks of the Polish army, which began rapidly to retreat from the region of Kiev and Berdichev. On Jime 12, Kiev was liberated from the White Poles.

Meanwhile, the Red Army was preparing for an offensive on the Western Front. By the beginning of July nearly 100,000 Soviet troops were concentrated here against 76,000 Poles. On July 4, the Red Army launched its offensive along the whole of the Lithuanian-Byelorussian Front and on July 11 liberated Minsk, which the Poles had occupied since August 1919. The masses of the working people in the Ukraine and Byelorussia welcomed their liberators with enthusiasm and joy.

In this war against the White Poles the Bed Army displayed not only exceptional heroism but also a high level of political under standing. Many of the heroes of the Civil War greatly distinguished themselves. One of these was Grigori Ivanovich Kotovsky, "the bravest among the modest and the most modest among the brave," as Comrade Stalin described him. In the beginning of 1918,Kotov sky organized a partisan detach ment to fight the Rumanian in vaders. Later his detachment was incorporated in the Red Army and remained with it throughout the Civil War. He became a terror to the White Poles, and led the cavalry brigade which he com manded, in the boldest attacks.

About the middle of Au gust 1920, the Red Array com menced a drive on Warsaw and Lvov. Alarmed by the victories ■of the Red Army, the Entente hastened to the aid of the Polish gentry. Thousands of machine guns and arti llery pieces and hun dreds of aeroplanes and motor trucks were sent to Warsaw from France, and the French General Weygand arrived in Warsaw to organize the defence of Poland.

Earlier, Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, had called upon the Soviet government to stop the offensive and conclude an armi stice with Poland, threatening to declare war in the event of a refus al. Curzon 's aim was to secure a respite for the Poles, and conse quently, the Soviet government rejected this note.

The Red Army continued its offensive, but the Soviet government declared that it was willing to open peace negotiations with Poland, but without intermediaries.

On July 22, the Polish government sent a request for the opening of peace negotiations. The Soviet government agreed. Negotiations were opened, but were broken off several days later by Poland. The Red Army resumed its offensive.

At this time the First Cavalry Army laid siege to Lvov. In a telegram to Red Army General Headquarters dated August 21, Comrade Voroshilov urged the necessity of capturing Lvov in order to inflict a crushing defeat upon the Poles. The High Command, however, which was headed by the traitor Trotsky , ordered the siege of Lvov to be raised, ostensibly for the purpose of reinforcing the drive against War saw. This was downright treachery, for Trotsky's orders deprived the Southwestern Front of its major striking force. The capture of Lvov and the further advance of the First Red Cavalry Army to the principal industrial centres of Poland would have been the best assistance that could be rendered the Western Front. By his action Trotsky rendered direct assistance to the Poles and the Entente. As for the Red Army offensive on Warsaw, it proceeded in an absolutely disorganized fashion, through the fault of the traitors Trotsky and Tukhachevsky* The Red Army, after fighting its way forward for almost 600 kilometres, became separated from its reserves. Supplies of ammunition were late in arriving. Reinforcements failed to keep up with the rapidly advanc ing main force. So strenuous was the advance that the Red Army men wore out their footwear and many were obliged to proceed barefooted. Although the badly-organized offensive on Warsaw ended in failure and the Red Army was obliged to retreat, gentry-ridden Poland, exhausted as a result of the war, was unable to fight any longer and offered to conclude peace.

Peace between Soviet Russia and Poland was signed in Riga in March 1921. In conformity with the Riga Peace Treaty the part of Byelorussia which the Poles had occupied at the beginning of the war was restored to Soviet Russia, but Western Byelorussia and Ukrainian Galicia were retained by Poland.

The Defeat of Wrangel

The Polish gentry ' were to have re ceived assistance from Baron Wrangel, who had established himself in the Crimea. As Lenin put it, gentry-ridden Poland and Wrangel were the two hands of international imperialism which wanted to strangle the Land of Soviets. With the assistance of the Entente, Wran gel reorganized the remnants of Denikin's army which had been trans ported to the Crimea in Entente ships from ports in the Ukraine and Caucasia. The remnants of the Russian forces which had fought in France during the imperialist war were also sent to the Crimea to reinforce WrangeFsarmy. That was how Wrangel's army was formed. The Entente also supplied him with arms, ammunition and provisions.

Lenin saw the danger looming in the Crimea, and as early as March 1920 demanded of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic that it prevent the concentration of a White army there. "Pay close attention to the obvious blunder which has hem committed in con nection with the Crimea (failure to dispatch sufficient forces in time); concentrate all efforts on rectifying this blunder. . . he wrote. But the War Department failed to carry out Lenin's instructions.

Lenin's warning was particular^ justified because when the Whiteguard Poles launched their attack the Entente increased its pressure upon Soviet Russia. British naval forces were concentrated off the coasts of the Black and Baltic Seas. On April 4 and 6, 1920, Japan renewed her intervention in the Far East. France and Great Britain were supplying Wrangel with arms and helping him to prepare for an offenaive^ the first objective of which, on the demand of the French bourgeoisie, he was to make the occupy, tion of the Donctz Basin.

On July 7, 1920, Wrangel marched his forces out of the Crimea and occupied Northern Taurida. The Crimean "thorn" grew into a formidable danger, for Wrangel had got into the rear of the Ked Army which was operating on the Polish Front.

Comrade Stalin, who was directing operations on the South western Front, took measures to smash WrangePs forces' which were creeping uji from the Crimea. By the beginning of August 1920, the units of the Red Army in action against Wiangel received additional reinforcements. The Red divisions } assed to the offensive, inflicted several defeats upon the enemy, but failed to exterminate him completely. Nevertheless, as a result of this offensive, the Red Army entrenched itself at Kakhovka, on the left bank of the Dnieper. Thus 'was established the famous Kakhovka bridgehead which threatened the rear of WrangePs army. Wrangel hurled his picked troops, rein forced with tanks, against Kakhovka, but failed to capture it. The Kakhovka bridgehead, the formation of which had been planned by Comrade Stalin, was an extremely important factor in bringing about the utter defeat of the "'Black Baron," as Wrangel w^as called.

In the beginning of August the forces operating against Wrangel were formed into a sei^arate fi:ont. The Party instructed Comrade Stalin to concentrate his efforts entirely upon this front, but illness prevented him from consummating the liquidation of Wrangel. M. V. Frunze was placed in command of the Southern Front. Frunze's plan of operations was to cut off WrangePs army from the Isthmus of Perekop and inflict defeat upon him before he could take cover behind the fortifications of Perekop. Using the Kakhovka bridgehead as his base, he laimched a drive with the object of surrounding WrangePs forces. The First Cavalry Army', which had been transferred to the Southern Front, broke through into the rear of WrangePs army. In the beginning of October, Wrangel made another attempt to capture Kakhovka and hurled fouiteen tanks, ten ar moured cars and infantry armed with 600 heavy machine guns against it. But the tank attack was repulsed. The Red Army men rushed at the tanks and pelting them with hand grenades, (kove them off. The October battles at Kakhovka marked the beginning of WrangePs defeat.

On October 28 the Red Army launched a general offensive on the Southern Front. Sanguinary fighting raged in Northern Taurida.

As a result of the battles fought from October 28 to November 2, WrangePs army was defeated. Nearly 20,000 prisoners were taken. Nevertheless, WrangePs best troops succeeded in retreating to the Crimea and in taking cover behind the Perekop fortifications.

The Isthmus of Perekop is eight kilometres wide, and was intersected by the Turkish Wall, which was twenty metres high. In front of this wall there was a deep ditch stretching from the Black Sea on the one side to the swampy Sivash (or Putrid Sea — an inlet of the Azov Sea) on the other. On the wall were mounted about 200 guns. The whole Isthmus was covered with a dense network of barbed-wire entanglements. Near the village of Yushun, south of the Isthmus-, a second line of strong fortifications had been iDuilt. The Isthmus of Chongar, east of Perekop, was fortified no less strongly than Perekop, and a Whiteguard fleet was stationed there. With the aid of French army engineers Perekop was transformed into a first-class fortress. The only way to attack it was across a completely open and level terrain, or by wading across the Sivash. It proved impossible to make an outflanking movement viath& Tongue of Arabat, as this needed the support of the Red Fleet, which, however, was icebound in Taganrog Bay. Consequently, Frunze, ignor ing the advice of high military experts who regarded this as an absolutely hopeless undertaking, issued the order to storm Perekop. In the biting cold, in threadbare clothes, half starved, and lacking the necessary technical implements, the Red Army men proceeded with the preparations for breaking through the Perekop fortifications.

The Red Army was burning with desire to put an end to Wrangel as speedily as possible. One night the forward units of the 15th and 52nd Divisions, taking advantage of the fact that the wind had driv en back the water of the Sivash, waded knee -deep across the muddy bed of the Rotten Sea to get into the rear of the Perekop fortifica tions, dragging artillery and machine guns through the briny and icy water. When they reached the opposite shore, which was covered with barbed-wire entanglements, the wind changed, drove the water back into the Sivash, and cut off their retreat. The enemy opened a ter rific fire. The heroic Red Army men rushed at the entanglements, threw their greatcoats over them and climbed over the barbed-wire obstacles. On November 8, the Soviet troops entrenched themselves on the shore of Litovsky Peninsula, threatening the rear of Perekop.

At about midday on November 8, the 51st Division launched a frontal attack against Perekop, but the first attempt to capture the Turkish Wall failed. Reinforcements were needed for a second assault, but by this time the water was returning to the Sivash, threatening to cut off the forces that were fighting on the Litovsky Peninsula. Calling in the assistance of the local Revolutionary Committees, Frunze mobi lized the peasants of the surrounding villages to fight the incoming wa ter. The peasants came out en massey brought along straw, dug ditch es, and within a few hours built a dam which held up the incoming water. In this way, fresh reinforcements, ammunition and provisions were sent across the Sivash. At 2 a. m. the 61st Division made another assault on the Turkish Wall, and this time succeeded in capturing it.

After the capture of Perekop the last fortifications in the hands of the Whites were those near the village of Yushun. Frunze ordered the position to be attacked from the front and rear. On the night of November 10, the Yushun positions were captured and the White& retreated in panic. At this juncture a revolt against Wrangel broke out in the Crimea. Crimean partisans came down from the mountains and struck at the retreating White cavalry.

On November 10, Frunze telegraphed to Lenin: "Today our cavalry occupied Kerch. The Southern Front is liquidated."^ The remnants of Wrangers troops boarded Entente ships and sailed for Turkey. The capture of Perekop marked the victory of the Soviets on the last front of the Civil War.

The Civil War in the Border Regions

The Liberation of Kazakhstan and Central Asia

The Military-Political Alliance of the Peoples of Russia

In the struggle against the interventionists and the counter-revolution the alliance was strengthened between the peoples fighting jointly against the common enemy. The heroic struggle of the Russian people against the landlords, the bourgeoisie and tlie foreign interventionists developed into a patriotic war of the working people of all the na tionalities inhabiting Russia for their fi'eedom and independence.

Under the leadership of the Party of Lenin and Stalin these nationalities consolidated the military and political alliance they had voluntarily established. It was this alliance^ operated under the leadership of the working class and the Bolshevik Party that ensured victory on all fronts during tlie Civil War,

As Stalin wrote: "... The Russian workers could not have defeated Kolchak, Denikin and Wrangel had they not enjoyed the sympathy and confidence of the oppressed masses of the border regions of for mer Russia. It must not be forgotten that the field of action of these mutinous generals was confined to the area of the border regions inhabited mainly by non-Russian nationalities, and the latter could not but hate Kolchak, Denikin and Wrangel for their imperialist policy and policy of Russification. The Entente, intervening and supporting these generals, could rely only on the elements in the border regions who were the vehicles of Russification. And thereby it only inflamed the hatred of the population of the border regions for the mutinous generals and increased the sympathy of the poi)ulation for the Soviet government. "This accounted for the intrinsic weakness of the Kolchak, Denikin and Wrangel rear, and therefore for the weakness of their fronts, that is, in the long run, for their defeat" (J. Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, Moscow, 1940, pp. 105-106).

The Liberation of Kazakhstan

At the end of 1918, Soviet rule prevailed over the greater part of Kazakhstan. The People's Com missariat of Nationalities set the Bolsheviks in Kazakhstan the task of establishing an Autonomous Soviet Republic, However, some of the leading members of the Party and Soviet bodies hin dered the proclamation of the autonomy of Kazakhstan. The Kazakh nationalists took advantage of this, and in the spring of 1919, while Kolchak was developing his offensive, they carried out, with the assistance of Kolchak's agents, a counter-revolutionary coup in the Turgai Region and captured and shot the Soviet leaders, including Amangeldy Imanov, the national hero of Kazakhstan.

Continuing its drive against the forces of Kolchak and Dutov, the Red Army went to the aid of the Kazakh people. Comrade Frunze, who was in command of the Turkestan army that was fighting Dutov, issued an appeal to the working people of Kazakhstan to set up Soviets and support the Red Army ^at was bringing the Kazakh people free dom and independence. In July 1919, a Revolutionary Committee was set up to administer the Kirghiz territory (now Kazakhstan). This committee set up organs of Soviet power in Kazakhstan.

The Liberation of Central Asia

The counter-revolutionary re volts of the Urals, Orenburg and Semirechensk Cossacks cut off Tur kestan from Soviet Russia; Turkestan itself saw the development of a counter-revolutionary movement of native feudalists and kulaks, known as the Basmachi. The British imperialists and Russian White guards who had occupied the Transcaspian Region tried to link up with the White Cossacks and Kolchak's forces and seize Soviet Turkestan. The situation in Turkestan during the Civil War was very grave. The region was cut off from its grain supplies and the population and the cattle died of starvation. The Basmachi plundered and wrecked the vil lages. The Red Army men were almost in rags and were badly armed; shells and small-arms ammunition for the Turkestan Red Army were manufactured in a primitive way in the railway workshops. Lenin and Stalin paid special attention to the struggle to maintain Soviet rule in Turkestan and sent Red Army units, munitions and provisions to help the working people of Turkestan.

The fighting in Central Asia proceeded mainly along the railways. Trains of an unusual appearance could be seen creeping along the dilap idated tracks. In front of a worn-out locomotive there was a flat car, "fortified" with bales of cotton; behind .the locomotive were freight, wagons carrying Red Army men, war materiel and supplies and a first aid station. On the flat car carrying the cotton bales machine guns were mounted. These trains were called "armoured trains." Owing to the shortage of petrol and wood, the locomotives were often fueled with cottonseed oil.

When Kolchak and Dutov were defeated, the Turkestan Soviet Republic united again with Soviet Russia. In the autumn of 1919, a commission of the Central Com mittee of the Russian Commu nist Party (Bolsheviks) and of the All-Russian Central Execu tive Committee headed by Com rades Frunze and Kuibyshev, went to Turkestan. They had instruc tions from the C.C. and Lenin to help the working people of Cen tral Asia to wipe out the remnants of the Whiteguards and to consol idate Soviet rule there.

After defeating the remnants of Kolchak's Southern Army and liberating Kazaldistan, Frunze ordered his army to effect a junction witli the Red Army of Turkestan. In fighting to liberate Turkmenia from the British interventionists and the Whiteguards, the Red Army employed the tactics of widely outflanking the enemy's positions by marching through the Kara-Kum Desert, or over the Kopet-dagh Mountains. Tn the summer the Red Army men had to march for days through the waterless desert in a temperature of 60° Centigrade, receiving a meagre water ration of three glasses per day. An equally diflhcult trek was undertaken by Red Army units under the command of V. V. Kuibyshev at the end of 19103 iR winter time, the weather being exceptionally cold for Turkmenia. The march of men, horses, and camels loaded with guns and supplies, went on for four days and nights. The sudden appearance of the Red Army from the desert caused the Whiteguards to flee in panic.

In February 1920, the Red Army, after heavy fighting, captured Krasnovodsk, the last British and V^iteguard stronghold in Tur kestan. The railway from Ashkhabad to Krasnovodsk was cleared and Soviet power was restored all over Turkmenia.

Between Soviet Turkestan and the Transcaspian Region, which the Whiteguards sfcill controlled, lay Khiva and Bokhara, the most back ward regions in Central Asia. These territories, with their mediae val order of life, served as the refuge for alHhe counter-revolutionary forces that were attacking Soviet Turkestan. Bokhara was ruled by an Emir who invited British officers to organize his army. In the beginning of 1918, the working people of Bokhara rose in revolt against the Emir, but the revolt was suppressed with great cruelty. In Feb ruary 1920, a revolt broke out in KJiiva against the Khan, and Khi va was proclaimed the Khoresm People *s Riepublio. In August 1920, another revolt broke out against the Emir of Bokhara. The Bed Army came to the aid of the rebels and finally liberated Bokhara. The Emir fled to Afghanistan under the protection of the British. Bokhara was also proclaimed a People's Republic.

The Turkestan Commission headed by Frunze and Kuibyshev did a great deal to restore confidence and friendship among the peoples of Central Asia and also to strengthen their economic and cultural ties with the Russian and other peoples of Soviet Russia. Thanks to the work of Comrades Frunze and Kuibyshev, the working people of Central Asia began better to understand that the Soviet State is the friend of the toiling and oppressed peoples.

The correct policy on the national question pursued by the Bolshevik Party, the policy of Lenin and Stalin, helped the peoples of Central Asia to outlive national strife, and resulted in the consoli dation of the Central -Asian Soviet Republics. This facilitated the defeat of the Basmachi bands. An era of peace set in for the peoples of Central Asia.

Soviet Power Is Established in Transcaucasia

The Victory of the Soviet Regime in Azerbaijan

In the spring of 1920, after Denikin was defeated, the Red Army on the Cau casian Front, led by G. K. Orjonikidze and S. M. Kirov, drew near to the borders of Transcaucasia.

The masses of the working people of the Caucasus appealed to the Red Army for assistance in fighting the counter-revolutionaries. In their appeal they wrote: "We do not wish to remain slaves, particu larly now, when by our side stands the emancipated proletariat of Russia, with whom we want to form a single proletarian international family."

The conditions of the workers and peasants in all the Transcau casian Republics were extremely hard. Power had been seized by the respective nationalist counter-revolutionary parties — ^the Menshe viks in Georgia, the Mussavatists in Azerbaijan and the Dashnacks in Armenia — ^who were in the service of the foreign imperialists and did all in their power to help the Russian counter-revolutionaries. In Jan uary 1920, the Transcaucasian Republics, governed as they were by the counter-revolutionary nationalist parties, were officially recog nized by the Supreme Council of the Entente. The workers and peasants rose in rebellion^ but they were suppressed with the aid of foreign interventionists. The land remained in the possession of the landlords. In Azerbaijan the khans and begs continued to exploit the peasants.

In response to the appeal of the working people of Caucasia the Red Army of Soviet Russia launched an offensive against the Cau casian counter-revolutionaries and on March 30, 1920 liberated the highlanders of North Caucasus and Daghestan. Soviet power was established in the whole of the liberated territory.

The establishment of Soviet power in Daghestan gave a further impetus to the revolutionary movement in Azerbaijan. The workers of Baku, led by A. I. Mikoyan, who was then working underground in that city, made preparations for an insurrection against the coun ter-revolutionary Mussavatists. In response to the request of the underground Revolutionary Committee, the Eleventh Red Army, under the command of Kirov and Orjonikidze, went to the assist ance of the insurgent Baku workers and on April 27, 1920, the Mussavatists were defeated and put to flight. Azerbaijan was pro claimed a Soviet Republic.

The Establishment of Soviet Power in Armenia

In May 1920, a popular revolt broke out in Armenia against the Daslmaeks, wlio had been openly supporting the foreign imj)erialists and the Armenian exploiters. The Dashnaoks succeeded in crushing this revolt and dealt ruthlessly with the rebels. The days of the Dashiiack regime were numbered, however. The revolutionary movement grew month after month. Another rebellion broke out in the autumn •of 1920. The Armenian Revolutionary Committee, which directed this rebellion, appealed to the Red Army for assistance, and with its aid the Dashnacks were overthrown. On November 29, 1920, Armenia be came a Soviet Republic

The Fight to Establish Soviet Power in Georgia

The Georgian Mensheviks pursued the same anti-popular policy as was pursued by the Mussavatists in Azerbaijan and the Dashnacks in Armenia. In January 1919, the Menshevik government of Georgia passed a law for the sale of "surplus'* land by landlords to private purchasers. As a result of this "agrarian reform" all the best land was taken by the landlords and kulaks. In dividing the land the landlord was given one share of the land, another share went to his wife, a third to his sister. Thus, all the land was distributed between the land lord's nearest relatives. That meant the restoration of the landed proprietorship in existence before the promulgation of the law of 1919. Deprived of the land, the peasants rose in revolt, seized the land by force and divided it among themselves. The Menshevik rulers sent punitive expeditions against the peasants and set up field courts martial. The Georgian Mensheviks claimed that theirs was democratic rule, but actually there was no democracy in Georgia. The"* Mensheviks would not permit tree elections to the Constituent Assembly. There was not a single worker or peasant in the Georgian government. All the laws that were passed were in the interests of the landlords, kulaks and capitalists. Trade unions and workers' newspapers were suppressed, strikes were banned, Bolsheviks were fiung into prison. The Mensheviks pursued a chauvinist great-power policy^ persecuting the national minorities in Georgia.

In December 1918, the Mensheviks launched a fratricidal war against Armenia with the object of annexing villages on the Armenian-Georgian border with mixed Georgian and Armenian populations. Taking advantage of Georgia's advantageous geograph ical situation, the Georgian Mensheviks prevented the transit of goods over the Georgian railways by imposing exorbitant transit dues.

In view of the fact that the Red Army was drawing near, the Georgian Mensheviks, in the spring of 1920, offered to conclude peace with Soviet Russia, and in May 1920, a peace treaty was signed. S, M, Kirov was sent to Georgia as the Soviet plenipotentiary repre sentative. He vigorously exposed the refusal of th^ Georgian Menshe viks honestly to carry out the terms of the treaty they had signed with the Soviet government. The situation in Georgia became increasingly critical for the Menshevik rulers. The revolutionary movement of the workers and peasants, led by the Georgian Bolsheviks, grew all over the country. Revolts broke out, first in one county and then in another, and the rebels established Soviet power in those districts.

In the middle of January 1921, the Armenian peasants in the border regions annexed by Menshevik Georgia rose in revolt. The revolt vSpread to the Georgian districts. On February 16, a Georgian Revolu tionary Committee was set up, which took the lead in the struggle to establish Soviet rule. The Eleventh Red Army, under the com mand of Sergo Orjonikidze, was sent to the aid of the insurgent Geor gian workers and peasants. Masses of Georgian workers, peasants and soldiers went over to the side of the Red Army. On February 25, 1921, Orjonikidze sent Lenin and Stalin the following telegram: "The Red flag of Soviet power is flying over Tiflis. Long live Soviet Georgia! "

Several days later a successful insurrection took place in Abkhasia. On March 4, 1921, the Abkliasian Revolutionary Committee sent the following radio message to Lenin and Stalin: "By the will of the working people, a new Socialist Soviet Republic has been born — Abkhasia, The Soviet Republic of this small nation servos as a strik ing illustration of the groat role of liberator being jolayed by the Red Army."

The MeAsheviks fled from Tiflis to Batum in the hope of receiving assistance from the Turkish government, to whom they promised to cede Batum; but an insurrection against the Menshevik traitors broke out in that city too. On March 19, 1921, Batum and the whole of Adjaristan were proclaimed Soviet.

The bankrupt Menshevik government of Georgia fled abroad on a French torpedo boat, taking with them -a large amount of treas ure that belonged to the Georgian people.

The Defeat of the Japanese Interventionists

The Fight Against Japanese Intervention in the Far East

The Japanese imperialists, by agreement with the Entente imperial ists, seized the Far East as early as 1918. Japan was the pioneer of military intervention in Siberia and the Far East,

The Japanese imperialists had long coveted the vast and rich Far Eastern territory. The first landing of Japanese troops in Vladi vostok took place on April 6, 1918. This marked the beginning of Allied intervention. By September 1918, 100,000 Japanese troops had been landed in Vladivostok, from where Japanese units marched northward to the region of the rivers Ussuri and Amur, and westwards to Blagoveshchensk, Chita and the Transbaikalia. The principal area of activity of the Japanese imperialists was the Amur and the Maritime Regions.

At the same time the Japanese imperialists began to supply Kolchak's army lavishly with arms, ammunition and money, and to form Whiteguard detachments on their own account. Their tools were the Whiteguard bandits Ataman Semyonov and Ataman Kalmy kov, who were notorious for the incredible atrocities they perpetrat ed. In August 1918, Semyonov's bandit forces, supplied with Japa nese artillery, captured Chita; in September, Kalmykov's bands cap tured Khabarovsk. On September 18, the Whiteguards captured the last stronghold of Soviet power in the Far East, namely, Blago veshchensk.

After the fall of the Soviets, power passed into the hands of coun ter-revolutionary govemments-~Bemyonov's government in Trans baikalia, and Kalmykov's government in Khabarovsk. The Japanese seized the Soviet fleet on the Amur, robbed the Russian fishermen of their catch and the peasants of their grain stocks and cattle. They shipped to Japan huge quantities of provisions and timber.

The Japanese imperialists cruelly suppressed the slightest attempt at resistance.The village of Ivanovka, for example, was subjected to repeated raids by the Japanese. One day the Japanese burst into the village, drove 300 peasants onto the village green, lined them up in rows, and mowed them down with machine-gun fire, row after row. Then they set fire to the village, surrounded it, and allowed no one to escape from the conflagration. The inhabitants perished in the flames. The school, packed with children, and the hospital with its bed-ridden patients, were burned to the ground. The horses, cattle and poultry were roasted alive. The hearts of the peasants in the Far East became filled with burning hatred for the Japanese imperialists. Partisan units were formed in the taiga all over the Far East. Their battle cry was: 'Tor Soviet power!"

Exceptionally popular among the leaders of the partisan war in the Far East was Sergei Lazo. At the time the February revolution broke out he was a sublieutenant in Krasnoyards:. He removed his officer's shoulder straps and placed his company at the command of the Krasnoyarsk Soviet. In 1918, he joined the Bolshevik Party and began a heroic struggle against the Japanese imperialists. After the fall of the Soviet regime in the Far East he retreated to the taiga together with the other Bolsheviks. Soon he became a popular parti san commander.

After defeating Kolchak, the Red Army drew close to the Far East, but after capturing Verkhne-Udinsk its advance eastward was halted. Its next objective was Chita, where large Japanese forces were concentrated. To attack Chita meant coming into direct collision with the Japanese troops, and that meant open war between Japan and Soviet Russia. The Soviet Republic could not afford to plunge into such a war, for a new danger was threatening on its western frontiers — the Entente's third campaign, in which gentry -ridden Poland played the leading role. To defeat the Wliite Poles and Wrangel the Soviet Republic needed a respite in the Far East, and* it was evident that to call for the establishment of Soviet power there would have meant coming into immediate collision with Japan.

The Party and the Soviet government were of the opinion that it was not worth while running the risk of war with the Japanese imperialists, whose forces were still quite formidable. The thing to do was to direct the struggle of the workers and peasants of the Far East against the Japanese imperialists while avoiding a direct military conflict with Japan.

The Party and the Soviet government therefore agreed to the formation in the Far East of a "buffer state" which would, for a time, save the R.S.F.S.R. from direct contact with Japan. Lenin sent the Revolutionary Committee of Siberia and the command of the Fifth Amy instructions to set about the establishment of a buffer state. In this way the Far Eastern Republic arose in 1920. In form it was a bourgeois-democratic state, but it was directed by Bolshe viks. The formation of this state enabled the Soviet Republic to avoid war with Japan under unfavourable conditions, and to muster forces for a decisive struggle against Japanese imperialism. Realizing that their position in .the Far East was becoming more and more untenable, the Japanese imperialists made repeated efforts to create pretexts for continuing their intervention. In January 1920, after a successful revolt Vladivostok had passed under the control of a Revolutionary Committee headed by Sergei Lazo. On April 4 and 5, the Japanese attacked Vladivostok, arrested Lazo, Lutsky and Sibir tsev, the Bolshevik leaders in the Far East, and handed them over to the Whiteguard bandits who burnt them alive in a locomotive furnace. The Japanese committed similar atrocities in other towns in the Far East,

The savage cruelty of the Japanese imperialists in the Far East gave rise to universal indignation, A revolt began in Transbaikalia. In October the partisans and the People 's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic captured Chita. Fearing that Japan would become too strong in the Far East, the United States brought pressure to bear upon her to open negotiations with the government of the Far Eastern Republic for the evacuation of the Japanese troops. The negotiations were conducted in Dairen, where the Japanese imperialists presented seventeen demands, which, if accepted, would have transformed the Russian Far East into a Japanese colony. They demanded that Vladivostok be placed under foreign control, that they be granted unlimited fishing, mining and navigation rights, that all fortresses in the Russian Far East be razed, that the Soviet Pacific Fleet be de stroyed and that the northern half of Sakhalin be leased to Japan for eighty years. Finally they demanded a guarantee that a Commu nist regime would be barred 'Tor all time" from the Far Eastern

Republic. The Soviet delegation rejected these demands of the Japanese imperialists.

Japanese intervention in the Rar East was on its last legs That was why the imperialists began still more actively to assist the Russian Whiteguards. In 1921, they set up a new counter-revolutionary government in Vladivostok.

The People's Revolutionary Army was sent to the aid of the Mari time Region.

The Battle of Volochayevka

The counter-revolutionaries' main stronghold on the road to Khabarovsk was the fortress of Volochayevka, which had been built by the Japanese. All the hills around Volochay evka were strongly fortified, and these fortifications could be reached only by crossing a plain covered with deep snowOn February 10, 1922, the People's Revolutionary Army, with the battle cry of "Conquer or die!" launched an assault upon Volochayevka. Neither the twelve rows of bar bedwire entanglements, the hurricane fire of the enemy, the frost, 40*^ below zero Centigrade, nor the biting wind could stop the he roic onrush of the Red warriors. They hacked at the entanglements with their swords, demolished them with the butts of their rifles, threw their greatcoats over them and crept towards the enemy's trenches under machine-gun fire. After two days' fighting the Whites could no longer withstand the onslaught and retreated to Khabarovsk. On February 14, 1922, the People's Revolutionary Army captured Khabarovsk. Continuing its advance it cleared the Maritime Region of Whites. In October Spassk, the last Whiteguard stronghold, was captured, and on October 25, 1922, the revolutionary troops occupied Vladivostok.

This concluding stage of the struggle for Soviet power in the Far East is commemorated in the following words of the popular parti

san song:

The Atamans' hordes we shattered

We put the Whites to flight.

And on the shore of the Pacific

We terminated the fight.

Commenting on this victory when the Civil War was over,

Lenin said: "Vladivostok is very far away, but it is our town." This explains why the brave sons of the Russian people fought so heroically in the Far East until they had driven the last of the interventionists from Soviet soil.

In November 1922, on the fifth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Soviet rule was restored in the Far East.

Soviet Russia's Fraternal Assistance to the Working People of Mongolia

The Japanese imperialists had long harboured designs of seizing Manchuria, Mongolia and the Russian Far East, right up to Lake Baikal, with the object of converting this vast area into a "Great Mongolia" which was to be a dependency of Japan. At the end of 1918, the Japanese ordered the Whiteguard Ataman Semyonov to form a "Great Mongolian State," to consist of Outer Mon golia and the present Buryat-Mongolia, which is inhabited by Buryats, kinsmen of the Mongols.

When the Red Army defeated Ataman Semyonov, the latter's partner, the Whiteguard General Baron Ungern, retreated, in 1920, with his hordes of bandits into Mongolia. In February 1921, Ungern captured Urga, the capital of Mongolia. The Mongolian people took to arms to fight the Whiteguard Ungern and the Japanese imperialists. At the head of this struggle was the Mongolian People's Revolution ary Party, the leader of which was Sukhe-Bator, a printer by trade, who organized the partisan movement. In March 1921, a Mongolian Pro visional People's Revolutionary Government was set up and it appealed to Soviet Russia for assistance. The combined forces of the Soviet Red Army and the Mongolian People 's Army launched an attack upon Urga.

The whole of Mongolia was cleared of Whiteguards. Urga was lib erated and renamed Ulan-Bator-Hoto, which means "City of the Red Warrior."

In 1924, the first Great Hural, or Assembly, proclaimed Mongolia an independent People's Republic. It concluded a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Hepublic* In an address to the. Soviet government the government of Mongolia expressed its gratitude to Soviet Russia, for the fraternal and disinterested assistance it had rendered Mongolia. The Red Army, the liberator of the Mongolian people, was given a ceremonial send-off that continued right to the Soviet frontier.

The Bolshevik Party, the Organizer of Victory at the Fronts

During the Civil War years the military and political alliance of the working class and the peasantry took definite shape. The same period saw the realization of an alliance between the working people of all the oppressed nationalities, under the leadership of the Russian proletariat.

The enemies of the Soviet regime were convinced that its defeat was inevitable, for the Red Army, which was formed in the course of the war, in the beginning lacked experienced commanding personnel, good weapons and the necessary quantities of ammunition. Further^ more, the interventionists had captured the parts of Russia that were richest in raw materials and food.

Ill spite of all this, however, the Red Army vanquished the com bined forces of tlie foreign interventionists and tho Russian bour geois and landlord counter-revolutionaries. "The Red Anny was victorious because tho Soviet government's policy for which the Red Army was fighting was a right policy, one that corresponded to the interests of the people, and because the people understood and realized that it was the right policy, their own j)olicy, and supported it unre servedly" {History of the Oonmunist Party of the Soviet Union [BoU sheviks], Short Course, Moscow,' 1945, p. 244). The Red Army was victorious in the Civil War because the Red Army men understood the aims and purposes of the war and recognized their justice.

"The Red Army was victorious because its leading core, both at the front and in the rear, was the Bolshevik Party, united in its soli darity and discipline, strong in its revolutionary spirit and readiness for any sacrifice in the common cause, and unsurpassed in its ability to or ganize millions and to lead them properly in complex situations. . . .

"The Red Army was victorious because the Soviet Republic was not alone in its struggle against Whiteguard counter-revolution and foreign intervention, because the struggle of the Soviet government and its successes enlisted the sympathy and support of the ]:)roletarians of the whole world" {History of the Ooynmunist Party of the Soviet Union [Bolsheviks] y Short Goursey Moscow, 1945, pp. 245-246),

The Bolshevik Party trained splendid commanders and commis sars who led the Red divisions and armies into battle. The heroic strug gle of the Soviet people and of the Red Army was directed by the greatest geniuses in the history of mankind — ^Lenin and Stalin.

The Bolshevik Party, Lenin and Stalin created a body of military commissars who gave political training to the Red Army men, established indissoluble bonds between the Red Army men and their commanders and imbued them with the spirit of discipline revolutionary courage and military ardour.

The Transition to the Peaceful Work of Economic Restoration

The Struggle to Restore the Country's Economy

The Soviet State's Transition from War to Peaceful Economic Construction

The International Position of Soviet Russia in 1921

At the end of 1920, after achieving victory in the Civil War, Soviet Russia pro ceeded to the peaceful work of economic construction. This transition was made in an extremely tense situation.

The defeat of the Entente's military intervention fundamentally changed the international position of the Soviet Republic. Describing this situation in November 1920, Lenin said: "... We have not only a respite— we have a new stage, in which our fundamental interna tional existence within the network of capitalist states has been won" (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXV, Moscow, 1937, Russ, ed., p. 486).

The Soviet Republic was recognized by a number of capitalist countries, which resumed commercial relations with our country. In 1920, peace treaties were concluded between the Soviet Republic c'lnd Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland and Poland. In 1921, the Soviet Republic concluded treaties with Persia, Afghanistan and Tur key, and trade agreements with Great Britain, Germany, Norway, Austria and Italy.

The improvement of the Soviet Republic's international position was due not only to the military victories it had achieved, but also to the strained situation in the capitalist countries. At the end of 1920, a grave economic crisis affected the capitalist world. In Europe, at the beginning of 1921, there were 10,000,000 unemployed and 30,000,000 workers working part time. Huge strikes took place in all the EurO' pean countries and a movement for national liberation arose in the colonial countries. In all those countries the workers and the progressive intelligentsia energetically came out in defence of the Soviet Eepublic, their watchword being "Hands off Soviet Russia!"

Under these circumstances, the governments of the capitalist countries were obliged to recognize Soviet Russia, but this did not mean that they had abandoned the struggle against the Soviets; this struggle merely assumed different forms. In the endeavour to cause the utmost ruin in the country the foreign imperialists and the Russian counter-revolutionaries sent spies and saboteurs into the country and plotted new revolts against the Soviet State.

During the whole of 1921, the foreign imperialists continued to send bandit gangs into Soviet territory. Assisted by the landlords of Poland Petliura's bands operated in the Ukraine. The bandits led by Makhno found refuge in Rumania and from there they were sent back to work against Soviet Ukraine. In Byelorussia the bands of the Polish agent Bulak-Balakhovieh were rampant. In Karelia, White Finnish army officers, directed by the Finnish Baron Mannerheim, organized a counter-revolutionary revolt. In the Far East, the Japa nese imperialists, jointly with the Russian Whiteguards, terrorized the inhabitants of Transbaikalia and the Maritime Region. Di the heart of Soviet Russia, the agents of imperialism — ^the Socialist-Revolu tionaries — organized a kulak bandit movement. In the Tambov Gu bernia its ringleader was that bandit, the Socialist-Revolutionary Antonov, and in the Saratov Gubernia just the same sort of Whiteguard, the Socialist-Revolutionary Sapozhkov. In the Urals and in Siberia, the kulaks, organized by the Socialist-Revolutionaries, incited the peasants to resist the Soviet authorities, disrupted the supply of grain to the industrial centres, buried the grain in pits and let it rot, wrecked railways, and killed Soviet officials

Economic Ruin in Soviet Russia

The seven years of war — ^the impe rialist and civil wars — caused economic ruin in Soviet Russia to a degree that no other belligerent country experienced.

During the period of the Civil War only a ninth part of the terri tory of Russia remained under Soviet rule; the rest was under the heel of the different foreign interventionists who succeeded each other.^ The productive forces of the country were in a state of ruin. In the course of the Civil War a large part of the railway tracks and over 7,000 bridges, of which 3,500 were railway bridges, were wrecked. The damage resulting from the wrecking of industrial plants and the flooding of mines amounted to hundreds of millions of rubies, and the loss inflicted upon the entire national economy of the Land of Soviets was estimated at tens of billions of rubles. The total output of agri culture in 1920 was only a half of the pre-war amount, while the pre^ war level itself was that of the poverty-stricken rural districts of tsarist Russia. In many gubernias the crop failed, and throughout the country about 20,000,000 hectares of land remained unsown. Peasant farming was in a state of acute crisis. Industry was also ruined* The output of large-scale industry was about one-seventh of the pre-war output. Tlie output of pig iron in 1921 amounted to only 116,300 tons, i.e., about 3 per cent of the pre-war output; the amount of metal produced in Soviet Russia at that time was equal to that produced in the reign of Peter I. The output of fuel diminished. The railways were completely dislocated. The number of sound rolling stock — locomotives and cars — ^was only about a third of what it was before the war. Trains travelled slowly and irregularly; it took eight to ten days to travel from Moscow to Kharkov. The streets in towns were unlit at night as neither gas nor electricity was available. The tramways ceased running. Dwellings and offices were freezing in the winter owing to the absence of fuel. The country lacked the prime necessities of life: bread, fats, fuel, footwear, clothing and soap. The productivity of labour dropped. The peoples of the Land of Soviets received as a legacy from the past a country that was not only technically backward and semi -pauperized, but was also absolutely ruined.

The political situation too was extremely tense. In the winter of 1920-1921, the peasants delivered very little grain. By the end of 1920, the surplus-grain appropriations produced over 3,200,000 tons of grain and the Soviet government was able to accumulate a grain reserve. While the war was in progress, the peasants put up with the surplus appropriations system, but on the victorious termination of the Civil War, when the danger that the landlords would return passed away and the peasants felt firmly in possession of the land, they strongly opposed this system. Furthermore, they lacked textile goods, footwear, hardware, agricultural machines, and other things they needed, and demanded that the government should supply them in exchange for the grain they delivered. But the factories were idle, and the Soviet State was unable, at that time, to supply the peasants with manu factured goods.

The situation in the country was still further complicated by the difficulties connected with the demobilization of the army and the reconversion of industry to peacetime production. Tens and hundreds of thousands of demobilized workers were unable immediately to find employment. Part of the workers went to the rural districts. The working class was becoming scattered (declassed).

The bread ration of the workers amounted to 100 grams per day, and hunger and weariness caused discontent among a section of the workers.

The Kronstadt Mutiny

The internal and external enemies of the Soviet regime hastened to take advantage of these economic and political difficulties. The activities of the counter-revolutionary elements— Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Wliiteguards and bourgeois-nationalists— revived. Posing as non-party people, they dropped their former slogan of "Down with the Soviets" and issued a new one "Por the Soviets, but without Communists!" These new tactics of the class enemy found most vivid expression during the counter-revo lutionary mutiny that broke out in Kronstadt in March 1921.

Kronstadt was the chief base of the Baltic Fleet. During the revolu tion and the Civil War, the Baltic Fleet sent many thousands of devot ed revolutionary fighters to the different fronts. Among the new recruits for the navy at that time were casual individuals, fre quently declassed elements, who had not been steeled by the revolution. The work of political education was at that time badly organized in the Baltic Fleet, and the Trotskyites, who managed to get into leading positions in the fleet, caused the degeneration of a group, a small one, of Communist sailors. Posing as "non-party" people the Social ist-Bevolutionaries, Mensheviks and Anarchists intensified their dis ruptive activities in the fleet and at a meeting of sailors held on March 1, they succeeded in securing the adoption of a counter-revo lutionary resolution. Kromtadt fell into the hands of a bunch of Whiteguard agents.

The military operations of the Kronstadt mutineers were direct ed by Whiteguard military experts, headed by General Kozlovsky. The mutineers had the support of all the counter-revolutionary forces at home and abroad. The T^iteguard Emigres in Paris organized col lections of money and provisions for the mutineers, and the American Red Cross sent food supplies to Kronstadt xmder its flag. The Con stitutional-Democrat, Milynkov, supplied the Kronstadt counter revolutionaries with the watchword "Soviets without Communists. "

In an exposure of the manoeuvres of the class enemy Comrade Stalin said subsequently: "Soviets without Communists — such was then the watchword of the chief of the Russian counter-revolution, Milyukov. The counter-revolutionaries understood that it was not only a matter of the Soviets themselves, but, first and foremost, of who would direct them" (J. Stalin, Articles and Speeches, Moscow, 1934, , Russ, ed., p. 217).

Kronstadt remained in the hands of the Whiteguards for seven teen days. The Committee of Defence of the Petrograd Fortified Area failed to crush the mutiny at its birth. Zinoviev negotiated with the traitors for seven whole days, thereby giving them time to fortify themselves. Picked units of the Red Army were sent to crush the Kronstadt counter-revolution. The Tenth Congress of the Party, which was in session at that time, sent 300 of its delegates, headed by K. E. Voroshilov, to reinforce them. On March 16, the revolution ary soldiers, camouflaged in white coveralls, commenced an assault upon the main forts of Kronstadt, rushing forward in spite of con tinuous machine-gun fire and the bursting shells which broke the already fragile ice over wEich they were advancing. In the front ranks of the assault columns was Voroshilov, setting aii example of .Bolshevik courage and valour.

On March 17, the hotbed of counter-revolution in Kronstadt was liquidated.

The Trade Union Discussion in the Party

The situation in the country was still further aggravated by the fact that the unity of the Party was being undermined from within by various anti-Leninist group lets which had revived as a consequence of the difficulties connect ed with the transition from war to the peaceful work of economic construction.

The Leninist Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party was of the opinion that at this new stage the economic ruin in the country was as dangerous an enemy to the proletarian dictatorship as interven tion and blockade had been during the period of the Civil War; that the economic chaos could be vanquished only if millions of workers and peasants were drawn into tlie struggle against it. The Party Central Committee considered that there was no justification for the furtlier maintenance of the regime of War Communism called into existence by the war, and that tho way to operate was not by issuing military commands but by employing methods of ]}er suaaion.

At the end of 1 920 and the beginning of 3 921 , a fierce discussion arose in the Party over the question of the role and tasks of the trade unions. The promoter of the discussion and of tho struggle against Lenin was Trotsky. He demanded that "the trade unions be given a shaking up, opposed the method of persuading the masses and the development of trade union democracy, and stood for downright coer cion and the issuing of orders from above in the workers' organiza tions. In the wake of Trotsky came the so-called "Workers' Opposi tion," which used this name to cover up its potty-bourgeois nature. This group demanded that the Party and the State should refrain from all interference in the economic life of the country, and that the management of the entire national economy should be transferred to an "All-Russian Producers' Congress." The "Workers' Opposition" regarded not the Party but the trade unions as the highest form of organization of the working class, Trotsky was assisted in his struggle against Lenin by Bukharin, who formed a "buffer group," and later openly imited with the Trotskyites. The Trotskyites and Bukharin ites tried to undermine the Party as the leading force in the prole tarian state, and worked to split the working class, weaken the leadership it gave to the peasantry, and undermine the dictatorship nf the proletariat.

Lenin countered the platforms of the opposition groups with the Party platform which declared that the trade unions are a school of administration, a school of economic management, a school of Communism. The trade unions should work by methods of persuasion, for in that way they would succeed in drawing the workers into so cialist construction, in mobilizing them for the speediest liquidation of the economic chaos in the country. The Party supported Lenin; the oppositionists were utterly routed.

Comrade Stalin lias described the situation in Soviet Russia on the termination of the Civil War in the following words; "Ruined by four years of imperialist war, and ruined again by three years of civil war, a country with a semi-literate population, with a low technical level, with isolated industrial oases lost in a sea of dwarf peasant farms — such was the country we inherited from the past. The task was to transfer this country from mediaeval darkness to modem industry and mechanized agriculture" (J. Stalin, Probhms of Leninism, Moscow, 1947, p. 520). This was ,a task of unprecedented difficulty.

The Eighth Congress of Soviets and the GOELRO Plan

The Soviet State exerted all efforts to remove as speedily as possible the grave domestic difficulties being experienced by the country after the termination of the Civil War.

The Eighth Congress of Soviets, which met in December 1920, drew up a whole series of measures to bring about the economic revival of the country. The congress was held in the Bolshoi Theatre, in Moscow; owing to the lack of fuel the theatre was unheated and the delegates were obliged to sit in their felt boots and overcoats. On the stage hung a huge map of the future electrification of the Land of Soviets. Small shining electric lamps indicated where electric power plants were to be built in the future. Lenin explained the importance of the plan for the electrification of the country as a means of passing from poverty and ruin to socialist construction. On Lenin's initiative, and under his direction, there was drawn up the so-called "plan of the GOELRO" (the Russian initials of State Commission for the Electrification of Russia), Lenin's GOELRO plan was the first economic plan of the Soviet State, the prototype of Stalin's Five-Year Plans. The plan provided for the erection of thirty large power plants throughout the country within the next ten years. Comrade Stalin wrote the following to Lenin about the GOELRO plan: "It is a masterly draft of a really unified and really state -economic plan. It is the only Marxist attempt made in our day to build up for the Soviet superstructure of economically backward Russia a really technical and production foundation — ^the only foundation feasible in the present conditions" (Lenin and Stalin, Selected Worhs^ Vol, II, Russ, ed., p. 365).

By the electrification of the country Lenin and Stalin meant not only the building of power plants, but the gradual reorganization of the entire economy of the country, including agriculture, on the basis of modern technique, of modern large-scale machine production. Only such a reorganization, carried through by the Soviet State, could finally uproot capitalism in the country and ensure the construc tion of an unshakable foundation of socialist economy. Lenin said that ^"Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country" (V. I. Lenin, Selected Worles, Vol. VIII, Moscow, 1936, p. 276).

The Eighth Congress of Soviets called upon the working people of the Land of Soviets to work with self-sacrificing devotion to restore the country's economy, and it instituted the decoration of The Red Banner of Labour to be awarded to those who distinguished themselves on the labour front.

Transition to the New Economic Policy

To tear the country out of the clutches of economic ruin and successfully develop the building of Socialism, it was first of all necessary to abolish the ])olicy of War Communism, which had been a temporary measure and no longer suited the new situation. The military-political alliance established between the working class and the peasantry during the Civil War rested on a certain economic basis — ^the peasants received from the workers land and protection against the landlords and the kulaks, and the workers received from the peasants grain, on loan. With the termination of the Civil War a different economic basis for this alliance was needed. The peasants had to be given the right freely to dispose of their produce.

The correct policy for the proletariat, which was exercising ' its dictatorship in a small-peasant country, was to give in exchange for grain the manufactured goods which the peasants needed. The tax in kind marked the transition to this policy. The law intro * duoing a tax in kind was passed as early as the autumn of 1918, but could not at that time be operated owing to the outbreak of the Civil War, Lenin proposed a return to the tax in kind and that tax assessments should be lower than the surplus appropriations had been.

Under this law the peasant could sell on the market all that was left over after he had made his tax deliveries to the state. Thus, he secured complete control of his surplus food stocks. To permit free trade meant a certain revival of capitalism in the country. Lenin emphasized, however, that as political power was in the hands of the working class, which also occupied the economic key positions in the country — ^the land, large-scale socialist industry, the transport system, and the monopoly of foreign trade — ^there was no danger in permitting capitalism within certain limits, and under the control of the Soviet State. When it secured a leading position in trade, the Soviet State would succeed in linking up socialist industry with peasant farming and create the conditions for liquidating capitalism in the country.

In March 1921, the Tenth Congress of the Bolshevik Party was held. This congress adopted the historic decision to abolish the surplus appropriations system and to introduce the tax in kind instead. This meant the adoption by the j)roletarian state of a new economic policy when the war was over. The New Economic Policy (NEP) — a prod uct of Lenin's genius — was conceived by him as a plan for the transition to Socialism. The main significance and point of this plan, in his opinion, was that it fully ensured the building of the foundation of socialist economy. The struggle between Socialism and capitalism was transferred to the economic arena. Here, said Lenin,

• a fierce struggle lay ahead, but the country possessed all that was /needed to ensure that in this struggle Socialism achieved complete victory over capitalism.

The . enemies of. Socialism maliciously distorted Lenin's the ory of the New Economic Policy. The Trotskyites and Bukharin ites argued that it was nothing hut a retreat; it was in their interests to argue in this way because the^r line was to restore capitalism in Russia. While Lenin regarded the New Economic Policy as the road to Socialism, the Trotskyites and Bukharinites regarded it as the road to capitalism. Comrade Stalin upheld and* developed Lenin's theory of the New Economic Policy as the only correct economic policy the victorious proletariat could adopt for the purpose of building Socialism. He gave the New Economic Policy the following classical definition: "NEP is a special policy of the proletarian state calculated on permit ting capitalism while the key positions are held by the proletarian state, calculated on a struggle between the elements of capitalism and the elements of Socialism, calculated on an increase in the role of the socialist elements to the detriment of the capitalist elements, calculat ed on the victory of the socialist elements over the capitalist elements, calculated on the abolition of classes and on the building of the foundations of socialist economy" (J. Stalin, Collected Worics, VoL VII, Moscow, 1947, Buss, ed., p. 364).

The transition to the peaceful work of economic construction on the basis of the New Economic Policy marked a sharp historic turn in the policy of the Soviet State. In proclaiming this turn the Tenth Congress of the Bolshevik Party declared that the fundamental and decisive condition for its success was the unity and solidarity of the Party.

In a resolution "On Party Unity" proposed by Lenin, the con gress ordered "the immediate dissolution of all groups without excep tion which have been formed on the basis of one platform or another," and prohibited all factional pronouncements on pain of immediate expulsion from the Party.

The Tenth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) also heard a report from Comrade Stalin on the national question and adopted the program that he proposed for making an actual reality of the equal rights possessed by the non-Bussian nationalities.

The First Results of NEP

After the Tenth Congress of the Party, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Coun cil of People's Commissars issued the first decrees giving a now direction to the economic policy of the Soviet State, By a law passed by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on March 21, 1921, the surplus-appropriations system was replaced by a tax in kind, the total return from which was to be a little over half of that obtained from the surplus appropriations. On April 22, the Council of People's Commissars fixed the total amount of the tax in kind at 3,850,000 tons, as against 6,800,000 tons obtained from the surplus appropriations. Hie Council of People's Commissars issued a series of decrees permitting free trade in grain and withdrawing the food patrols from those gubernias which had completed their grain-sur plus deliveries. The restrictions which had been imposed upon the co-operative societies with respect to the purchasing of food were removed. The co-operative societies were granted the right to pur chase all kinds of agricultural produce and to lease industrial en terprises. Small artisans and handicraftsmen were granted the right freely to purchase raw materials and to sell their finished goods.

The Party launched an extensive campaign to explain its policy. On April 9, 1921, Lenin addressed a meeting of leading members of the Moscow Party organizations at which" he dealt with the main question troubling large numbers of workers, namely, to what extent were free trade and individual production compatible with socialist production, and did free trade mean the abandonment of the build ing of Socialism in our country. In answer to these questions Lenin reminded his listeners that with the dictatorship of the proletariat in force, trade, and therefore capitalism, which was permitted within certain limits, must be controlled and regulated by the proletarian state.

Lenin set the proletarian state the following task: it "must be come a cautious, assiduous and shrewd 'businessman,' a punctilious toJiolesale merchant — otherwise it will never succeed in putting this small-peasant country economically on its feet" (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Two-Vol. ed., Vol. II, Moscow, 1947, p. 752).

Trade, to use Lenin's expression, was — in 1921-1922 — the 'Tink" which had to be grasped in order to pull up the whole "chain," i. e., to ensure the successful building of Socialism. "Com munists," said Lenin, "must learn to trade." Some Communists said: "We were not taught to trade when we were in prison." To this Lenin answered: "There were lots of things we were not taught in prison which we were obliged to learn after the revolution , but we learned them and learned them very well" (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, VoL XXVII, Moscow, 1937, Russ, ed., p. 75).

At first, economic development proceeded slowly on the basis of the New Economic Policy, for the consequences of the Civil War, the blockade and the general state of ruin made themselves severely felt. In 1921, there was a grave failure of the harvest and 20,000,000 people starved. The Volga Region, which had been devastated by the Whiteguards, was particularly hard hit.

The Soviet government mobilized resources to assist the famine stricken ; voluntary contributions were collected all over the country, tlie slogan being "Ten persons who have food must feed one starving person."

The capitalist world tried to take advantage of these new difficulties, and saboteurs and spies set fire to and blew up Soviet enterprises. The American Relief Administration adapted its operations to this hostile, subversive work.

The New Economic Policy, however, strengthened the alliance between the workers and peasants. Agriculture began to revive, and the autumn sowing in 1921 was carried out successfully. Even the famine-stricken districts sowed 75 per cent of their winter crop area. Kulak bandit ism was wiped out, the peasants assisting the Red Army in this. Industry and transport began to be restored.

The first results of the New Economic Policy were summed up at the Ninth Congress of Soviets, which opened at the end of December 1921. The congress took a number of decisions which were to adjust the entire work of Soviet bodies and the whole of Soviet legisla tion to the new conditions. It proclaimed the raising of agriculture as the most important task of the period immediately ahead; it called upon industry to supply the peasants with larger quantities of manufactured goods. To demonstrate the first achievements of agriculture it was decided to organize an agricultural exhibition in 1922.

This congress adopted a special declaration on the international position of the R.8.F.S.R., stating that world imperialism had not abandoned its designs to overthrow the Soviet State. The declaration went on to say: "The congress warns the governments of neighbouring oountries that if they, in future, encroach upon or support encroachments upon the integrity of Soviet territory and the security of the Soviet Republics, the latter, in their legitimate and just defence against those who threaten the security and welfare of the republics, will be compelled to retaliate in a way that may prove fatal for the at tacker and his accomplices."

The Economic Restoration of Soviet Russia

Failure of Attempts to Conduct Economic War Against Soviet Russia

After their plans to crush Soviet Russia by armed force had failed, the foreign imperialists began to plan economic war against her with the object of transforming her into their colony by "peaceful" means with the aid of their capital.

At a meeting of the Supreme Council of the Entente that was held at Cannes in the beginning of 1922, the British Prime Minister Lloyd George proposed that an international conference be called "to restore the vitality of the European system." In addition to the Entente countries, Germany, Austria and Soviet Russia were invited. The conference was held in Genoa in April 1922. Aiming to "restore Europe" at Soviet Russia's expense, the Entente presented the Soviet delegation with a memorandum in which it demanded the repayment of the foreign loans contracted by the tsarist government and the Provisional Government, the restitution to the foreign capitalists of their enterprises which had been confiscated by the Soviet State, and the cessation of Communist propaganda in other countries. The Soviet delegation rejected the claims of the imperialists and presented coun ter-claims for damage caused by the blockade and intervention. The Soviet government agreed to pay the pre-war debts, but demanded postponement for thirty years and also credits for the restoration of Russia's national economy. '

The attempt to enslave the Soviet Republic failed. An attempt to form a united front of capitalist states against it also fell through. The Soviet government broke this front by concluding in Rapallo, a health resort near Genoa, a treaty with Germany establishing normal diplomatic relations with her. This took place in April 1922.

When the Genoa Conference closed, the "Russian question,'^ on Lloyd George's proposal, was submitted to a Committee of Experts which met at The Hague in July 1922; but at The Hague the Soviet delegation upheld the economic independence of the Soviet Bepublics as vigorously as it had done in Genoa. After the Genoa and Hague Conferences the Soviet Republic's international position was greatly strengthened. Its prestige was raised particularly by the fact that the Soviet delegation at the Genoa Conference had demanded a universal reduction of armaments.

The Offensive Undertaken on the Basis of NEP

In his report at the Eleventh Congress of the Party that was held in March 1922, Trf,uiT) stated that the transition from War Communism to the New Economic Policy had been, in the main, completed. "The retreat has ended," he said, and called for the regrouping of all the forces of the Party and the Soviet State for the purpose of launching an offen sive upon private capital.

Building the foundation of socialist economy meant building up a highly developed industry, for that is the foundation of Socialism; but the start had to be made with agriculture. As Comrade Stalin wrote: 'Industry cannot be developed in a vacuum, industry cannot be developed if there are no raw materials in the country, if there is no food for the workers, and if agriculture, the principal market for our industry has not to some extent been developed" (Lenin anxd Stalin, Selected Works, Vol. Ill, Moscow, Russ. ed.,p. 56).

At that time there were in the U.S.S.R. 20,000,000 small, individ ual, peasant farms, three-fourths of which were poor farms. These small and dwarf farms were still being run on the old and backward three-field system. About 40,000,000 desyatins of land lay fallow every year. Pastures, wasteland and bog amounted to 50,000,000 desyatins. In tsarist Russia, the area of land that was left uncultivat ed was equal to the amount that was cultivated, namely, 90,000,000 desyatins.

In 1922-1923, agriculture showed a marked improvement. The good harvest that was reaped in 1922 enabled the gubernias which had suffered from the famine to recuperate. The peasants were success fully restoring their livestock. The Soviet government called urgently for the transition to the rotation of crops system.

The growth of the productive forces in agriculture created the basis for the rehabilitation of industry. Strict accounting was intro duced into the operation of industrial enterprises. The workers began to retmm to the towns from the rural districts. Productivity of labour increased.

Hie restoration of agriculture ensured the development first of all of the light industry, i. e,, those industries which produce consum ers' goods. The value of the entire industrial output of Soviet Rus sia rose from 550,000,000 gold rubles in 1921 to 750,000,000 rubles in 1922, but the latter amounted to only 26 per cent of the pre-war output.

The old skilled workers who had preserved the factories during the Civil War were now the first to set to work to start them rumiing again, and carried out the first assignments of the Soviet State with tremendous enthusiasm. In the spring of 1922, the Kashira Power Plant, which was built during the Civil War, was put into operation. In October of the same, year, tlie first Soviet automobile was assembled. At that time too the first Soviet aeroplane was built.

With the transition to the New Economic Policy the invest ment of Russian and foreign private capital was temporarily per mitted in the U.S.S.R. During the first two years about 4,000 small enterprises were leased. The Soviet State retained possession of over 4,500 large enterprises, the work of which had considerably improved.

As state industry grew and became firmly established, private capital was squeezed out, but still occupied an important place in trade, mainly in the retail trade. Here too state and co-operative trade gradually developed and established itself in opposition to the private trader. Effect was given to Lenin's watchword of "Learn to trade!" The Party, led by Lenin, perseveringly and methodically waged the offensive against private capital within the framework of the New Economic Policy.

The Struggle Against Counter-Revolution in the Period of Restoration

The fact that capital had been permitted to function within certain limits gave a new impetus to the class struggle in the U.S.S.R. As Lenin wi*ote: "The enemy is the petty-bourgeois element which surrounds us like the air, and penetrates deep into the ranks of the proletariat. . . . The petty-bourgeois element in the comitry is backed by the whole international bourgeoisie, which is still world-powerful" (V. I. Lenin, Selected WorJcs, Two-Vol. ed., Vol. II, Moscow, 1947, p, 740).

Having lost all hope of overthrowing Soviet rule by force of arms, the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie began to base their hopes on its degeneration under NEP conditions.

For example, the bourgeois ideologist, Professor Ustryalov, in a symposium entitled Smena Vekh, called upon the boui'geois intel ligentsia to go into the service of the Soviet State, with a view to gaining control of the entire economic and cultural life of the country and accelerating the degeneration of the Soviet State into a bour geois state. Dealing with the class basis of this trend, Lenin said: "Tlie Smena Vekli-iiOi^ express the sentiments of thousands and tens of thousands of all sorts of bourgeois people, or of Soviet employees, who are participating in the operation of our new economic policy. This is the real and main danger" (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1937, Russ, ed., p. 243).

The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had utterly ex posed their true character while the Civil War was still going on. Now they disguised themselves as non-party people and conducted a furious campaign against the New Economic Policy, speaking often at conferences of non-partj'^ workers.

Abroad there was a Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist organization which received funds from foreign governments for the purpose of organizing revolts in the Land of Soviets and of conducting espionage, sabotage and terrorist activities. The G.P.U. (State Political Admin istration), discovered an underground Socialist-Revolutionary organ ization, The members of this organization were arrested and brought up for trial before the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal on the charge of conducting counter-revolutionary terroristic activities against the Soviet State. The Second International sent lawyers to Moscow to defend these conspirators. The workers of Moscow met these advocates of the counter-revolution with a mighty demonstration of anger and derision. The Soviet court proved incontrovertibly the guilt of the Socialist-Eevolutionaries. Without even attempting to say anything in court tlie lawyers of the Second International left Moscow. The Supreme Tribunal passed sentence of death on 12 of the principal culprits, but ordered that the sentence was to be carried out only if the Socialist-Eovolutionary Party continued their tactics of terrorism and sedition.

The defeat of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Eevolutionaries, the split in the camp of the counter-revolution, and the differentiation developing among the bourgeois intelligentsia showed that the proletarian dictatorship was becoming more and more firmly estab lished and was successfully repelling the attacks of the counter revolution.

The Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

The Building of the Soviet System in the Non-Russian Regions of the R.S.F.S.R.

The People's Commissariat of Nationalities, which Comrade Stalin had directed since the beginning of the proletarian revolution, did a great deal to carry out the Bolshevik program of national self-determination by organizing autonomous national republics and regions and protecting the interests of the national minorities. As early as 1920, Russia was divided into adminis trative areas according to nationality, and the coimection between the outlying regions and Central Russia assumed the concrete form of autonomous national republics united in a federation of Soviet Republics based on common defence and economic tasks.

During the period of 1920-1922 a number of autonomous Soviet Republics and autonomous regions were formed and these affiliated to the R.S.F.S.R.

The Autonomous Bashkir Republic was formed as early as March 1919. Its first act was to restore to the Bashkir peasants the land which had been seized by the landlords and kulaks under the tsar. This en couraged the nomad Bashkirs to take up agriculture and helped to convert them to a settled way of life. Bashkir schools were set up, and in 1924 there were already 2,000 Bashkir elementary schools. The Bashkir Republic incorporated the South Urals, including its industrial region, and this served as a basis for creating a Bashkir working class.

In the spring of 1920, tho Tatar Autonomous Soviet Republic was formed. The First Congress of Soviets of the Tatar Republic elected a government and adopted a decision to affiliate to the Russian Soviet Federation. The Tatar Republic, which was severely affected by the crop failure and famine of 1921 , received assistance from the government of the R.S.F.S.R. in restoring its agriculture. In the spring of 1921, the Central Executive Committee of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic issued a decree making the Tatar language the official language of the Republic on a par with Russian. Under the tsar there were only 70 Russian village schools in the area of the Tatar Republic, but not a single Tatar school, except for the Mohammedan religious schools; in 1924, however, there were already in the Republic 1,700 elementary schools, conducted in the Tatar language.

In October 1920, the First Congress of Soviets of Kazakhstan proclaimed the formation of the Kirghiz Autonomous Republic on the territory of Kazakhstan. One of the first decrees issued by the Kirghiz Soviet government was that discontinuing further migration from Central Russia to Kazakhstan. This ensured security of tenure for the Kirghiz inhabitants and eased the task of converting the Kazakhs to a settled agricultural life. The Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the Kirghiz Republic also issued a series of decrees concerning marriage law and abolished a number of ancient laws and customs which had perpetuated the survivals of the patriarchal-tribal system among the working people of Kazakhstan.

The Soviet State conducted similar activitievS in North Caucasus and in Daghestan aimed at the national emancipation of the peoples forming part of the R.S.F.S.R.

The Daghestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was pro claimed at the First Daghestan Congress of Soviets, held immedi ately after the termination of the Civil War. The specific feature of Daghestan is that its population is divided up into nxunerous tribes speaking six different languages and thirty-two dialects. Before Soviet power was established many of the peoples of Daghestan had no alphabet. By 1924, however, there were already over a thousand schools in the Republic. Shortly after the establishment of Soviet power industry and agriculture began to develop in Daghestan. Irri gation canals were dug to facilitate the further development of agriculture.

The Karelian Soviet Republic was formed in the summer of 1920. The White Finns exerted all efforts to destroy the Karelian Republic. In the autumn of 1921, White Finnish bands invaded Karelia. This invasion had been organized by the heads of the Vyborg Bank and the big Finnish lumber companies.

In February 1922, the White Finns were driven out of Karelia by the Red Army with the active assistance of the Karelian peas ants. After firmly establishing itself in Karelia the Soviet State proceeded to develop the immense power resources of the Karelian waterfalls. The erection of a hydroelectric power plant was soon begun on the river Konda. Education made great strides; a large number of elementary and secondary schools, conducted in the native language, were opened. Before the revolution there were scarcely any schools in Karelia, not even Russian schools.

The Yakut Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in 1922. Under the tsar, Yakutia had been a place of exile for revolutionaries. The inhabitants were subjected to monstrous exploitation and were dying out. The chief task of the new Yakut Soviet Republic was to regenerate the nationalities that inhabited its territory and to raise their material and cultural standards.

In addition to the Autonomous Soviet Republics, the R.S.F.S.R. included small autonomous regions possessing their own administra tions, such as the Adygei, Votyak or Udmurt, Mari, Oirot, Komi and other regions.

Soviet autonomy helped the peoples of Soviet Russia to strength en the fraternal alliance and mutual confidence without which the proletarian state could not have existed. This mutual confildence and voluntary accord between the peo]3los constituting the R.S.F.S.R. gave the Russian Federation a durability that no multi-national bourgeois state could possess.

As Comrade Stalin wrote: 'Tf the R.S.F.S.R. is the only country in the world in which the experiment in the peaceable co-existence and fraternal collaboration of a whole nmnber of nations and peoples has succeeded, it is because it contains neither ruling nor subject peoples, neither a metro2)olis nor colonies, neither imperialism nor national oppression. In the R.S.F.S.R. federation rests on mutual confidence and a voluntary desire for union on the part of the toiling masses of the various nations. This voluntary character of the federa tion must absolutely be preserved in the future, for only a federation of this kind can serve as a transition stage to that supreme unity of the toilers of all countries in a single world economic system, the necessity for which is growing more and more palpable'^ (J. Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question ^ Russ, ed., 1939, p. 92).

Formation of the U.S.S.R

The Party's national policy, di rected by Comrade Stalin, led to the close collaboration of the Soviet peoples. Six independent Soviet Republics were formed — ^the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (R.S.F.S.R.), the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Uk. S.S.R.), the Byelorussian Soviet Social ist Republic (B.S.S.R.), the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Georgian Soviet Social ist Republic. At first, all these Soviet Republics existed as independ ent states; they had their own armies, their own currency, etc. During the Civil War they combined their forces to wage a joint struggle against the interventionists and Whiteguards. When the Civil War terminat ed, the fraternal alliance of the Soviet Republics was still further strengthened. In December 1920, a treaty was concluded between the Uk.S^S.R. and the R.S.F-S.R. establishing a military and economic alliance. Some of the People's Commissariats, such as the Commis sariats of War and the Navy, Finance, Railways, Foreign Trade, etc., were amalgamated. Similar treaty relations were established between the R.S.F.S.R. and the other Soviet Socialist Republics — ^Byelorussia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.

Experience showed, however, that these ties were not enough. Economic development called primarily for the further strengthen ing of the alliance between the peoples. Their meagre economic resources had to be combined in order that the best use could be made of them. The economic division of labour between the different regions made the separate existence of the national republics impossible. For example, the Donetz Basin, i, e., the Ukraine, was then the centre of the coal and iron and steel industry. Baku, in Azerbaijan, was the centre of the oil industry. Chiatury, in Georgia, was the centre of the manganese industry. Central Asia, i. c., Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, was the cotton growing region. The Moscow Region was the centre of the cotton textile industry and Petrograd of the engineering industry, and these are in the R.S.F.S.R. With such a division of labour, the building of Socialism was possible only if the national republics were economically and politically united. Unification was also dictated by the interests of defending the Soviet land. The successful activ ities of the joint Soviet delegation in Genoa and The Hague had proved the necessity of conducting a joint foreign policy. Unity was also prompted by the necessity of ensuring the all-round develop ment of all the nationalities in the Soviet State, where power is based not upon the exploitation of man by man but upon uniting all the peoples to form one socialist family.

Thus, life itself dictated closer and more expedient forms of collabo ration between the Soviet Republics. In March 1922, the three Trans caucasian Soviet Republics concluded among themselves a treaty of military, political and economic alliance. Thus was formed the Trans caucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The First Transcauca sian Congress of Soviets ratified the formation of the Transcaucasian S.F,S.R., set up a Transcaucasian Central Executive Committee and Council of People's Commissars, and sent a proposal to the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to call a joint Congress of Soviets of the four republics — ^R.S.F.S.R., Transcaucasian S.F.S.R., Uk.S.S.R. and B.S.S.R. — to discuss the formation of a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Similar decisions were adopted by the All-Ukrainian and All-Byelorussian Congresses of Soviets.

On December 26, 1922, the* Tenth All-Russian Congress of So viets unanimously supported the proposal of the non-Russian repub lics. The speeches delivered at this congress by the representatives of the fraternal Soviet Republics were a mighty demonstration of peoples uniting voluntarily for the purpose of building Socialism. This community of tasks to be performed found splendid expression in tlio speeoli of the representative of Azerbaijan. "Azerbaijan," he said, '^is embodied in the Baku proletariat. The Baku proletariat has a revolu tionary history. From its ranks sprang heroes and martyi's like the twenty-six Commissars who laid down their lives in the steppes of Turlonenia for proletarian ideas. The Baku proletariat has produced leaders like Comrade Stalin. And these Baku workers, jointly with the Azerbaijan peasants, have declared ever since Azerbaijan was Sovietized, that the oil which Azerbaijan' supplies to all Soviet coun tries is not the property of the Azerbaijan proletariat alone, but the property of the proletariat of all the Soviet countries." The Tenth All-Russian Congress of Soviets unanimously adopted the resolution moved by Comrade Stalin urging the necessity of forming theU,S.S.R.

The First Congress of Soviets of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was opened on December 30, 1922. In the speech ho delivered at this congress, Comrade Stalin said: "But, comrades, today is not only a day of retrospect, it is also a day which marks the triumph of the new Russia over the old Russia, the Russia which was the gendarme of Europe and the hangman of Asia. Today is a day of triumph for the new Russia, which has smashed the chains .of national oppression, organized victory over capital, created a dictatorship of the proletariat, awakened the peoples of the East, inspired the workers of the West, transformed the Red flag from a Party banner into a state banner, and rallied around that banner the peoples of the Soviet Republics in order to unite them into a single state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the prototype of the future World Soviet Socialist Re public" (J. Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question^ Moscow, 1940, p. 115). On Comrade Stalin's motion the congress unani mously adopted the declaration and treaty on the formation of the U.S.S.R., and instructed the Central Executive Committee to draft thft Constitution of the U.S,S.R.

Notwithstanding his illness, Lenin devoted considerable attention to the work of forming the U.S .S .B, He approved the initiative taken in forming the Transcaucasian S .E .8 .R . and called upon the Transcaucasian Communists to explain to the broad masses how necessary a federation was for the purpose of establishing national peace among the numerous peoples of Transcaucasia who, in the past, had been torn by national enmity. In greetings that he sent to the Ukrainian Congress of Soviets which had gathered to discuss the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Lenin stressed the world-historical importance of the fraternal union of the peoples. In a speech made in 1923 Lenin said that questions concerning nationalities are such as "for hundreds of years have occupied the European states and as have been settled only to an infinitesimal degree in democratic republics. We are settling them, and we need somebody to whom the representative of any na tion can go and give a detailed account of wi at is wanted. Where can we find such a man?. . He went on to say that the only suitable man for this job was Comrade Stalin who, as People's Commissar of Nationalities, had without interruption directed the work of forming the fraternal union of Soviet Republics. "Nobody," he added, . could name a candidate other than Comrade Stalin" (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1937, Russ, ed., pp. 263-264).

Comrade Stalin rendered enormous service in bi'inging about the formation of the U.S.S.R. and in drawing up the first Constitution of the Soviet Union.

The First Constitution of the U.S.S.R.

The structure of the Soviet State and of its organs, and the rights and duties of Soviet citizens were defined in the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. The Consti tution was finally ratified by the Second Congress of Soviets in Janu ary 1924. Every Union Republic had its own Constitution. The Con stitution of the R.S.E.S.R., like the Constitutions of the other Union Republics, set itself the task of "guaranteeing the dictatorship of the proletariat with the object of suppressing the bourgeoisie, of abolishing the exploitation of man by man and of bringing aboul; Commun'sm. , .

According to the Union Constitution, the supreme organ of the U.S.S.R. was the Congress of Soviets of the Union, In the intervals between congresses, the supreme organ of Soviet power was the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S.R. The Central Executive Committee consisted of two Chambers — the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities. All the republics, irrespective of the num ber of their inhabitants, were given the right to send an equal number of representatives to the Soviet of Nationalities.

The Union and Autonomous Republics set up their own Councils of People's Commissars.

According to the 1924 Constitution of the U.S.S.R. the right to elect and be elected to Soviets was granted to all citizens of both sexes who had reached the age of eighteen on election day, irre spective of religion, race, nationality or domicile. Only those citizens were de| rived of electoral r'ghts who exploited hired labour, private traders, ministers of rel'g'on, former police officers and gendarmes and also those sentenced by a court to deprivation of political rights.

Thus, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics constituted an en tirely new type of state, o ie which ensures the unity and friendship of the peoples inhabiting it in the work of building Socialism and of de fending the state against the imperialists, ensures the free national development of the peoples, their independence and constructive initiative in their internal affairs. Every republic was guaranteed the right freely to secede from the Union if it so desired, and affiliation to the Union was open to all existing Soviet Socialist Republics, as well as .to those which might arise in the future.

Lenin's Behests

Lenin's Last Public Utterances

In the spring of 1922, Lenin fell seriously ill. After the Eleventh Congress of the R.O.P.(B.) the Central Committee of the Party elected Comrade Stalin as its General Secretary. The Party and the working class regarded Comrade Stalin as Lenin's militant and tried comrade-in-arms, his most faithful disciple, and the continuator of his cause.

In October 1922, Lenin's health somewhat improved and he re sumed his functions for a short time. He presided at the meetings of the Council of People's Commissars, attended the meetings of the Party Central Committee and spoke at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. On November 15, 1922, he delivered a report at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, in which he summed up the five years of the revolution in Russia and the pros pects of the world revolution. Lenin said: 'The peasants realize that w© captured power for the workers and that our aim is to oroabo a so -ciali&t system with the aid of this power. Therefore, the economic prep aration for socialist economy was most important for us. We could not do this in a direct way. We had to do it in a roundabout way" (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. X, Moscow, 1938, p. 329).

Lenin amplified this idea at a plenary session of the Moscow Soviet held on November 20, 1922, when he stressed with even greater emphasis that in the conditions prevailing in Russia, the New Economic Policy was the only road to Socialism. He concluded his speech by expressing the firm conviction that . We shall all, not in one day, but in the course of several years, all of us together, fulfil this task, come what may; and NEP Russia will be transformed into Socialist Russia" (V. I. Lenin, OoUected Works, Vol. XXVII, 3rd Russ, ed., p. 366).

This was Lenin's last public speech. His illness took a grave turn for the worse. In January and February 1923, hurrying to take advan tage of every moment between the attacks of his illness, he managed to dictate his last testame it to the Party and to the country. It was contained in his articles "Pages from a Diary," "On Co-operation," "Our Revolution," "How We Should Reorganize the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection," and "Better Fewer, but Better."

These articles of Lenin taught the Party and the working class how to use the New Economic Policy as a means of building Socialism in our country, surrounded as it is by capitalist countries. In the article "How We Should Eeorganize the Workers' and Peasants' luspeotion" he urged the necessity of preserving and strengthening the unity of the Party, as the vital condition for the further success of the proletarian dictatorship. In his last article, "Better Fewer, but Better," he urged the necessity of strengthening the alliance between the working class and the peasantry and of achieving the utmost development of large-scale machine industry, the basis of Socialism. As he put it figuratively, it was necessary to change "firom the peas ant, muzhik horse of poverty ... to the horse of large-scale machine industry, of electrification, of Volkhovstroy, etc/' (V. I. Lenin, Selected TForfcs, Two-Vol. ed., VoL II, Moscow, 1947, p. 855.) In all his last articles and speeches Lenin gave concrete directions as to how this was to be accomplished.

He was of the opinion that Socialism could be achieved in agricul ture by uniting the individual peasant farms to form co-operative farms, and by reorganizing agriculture on the basis of machine industry and electrification. In his article "On Co-operation" he showed that the Land of Soviets possessed all that was needed to build complete socialist society. Amplifying Iiis co-operative plan, Lenin showed tliat the medium through which the ];easants were to bo drawn into socialist construction was co-oxieration; but complete co-oper ation and the transition to Socialism could not be achieved without a cultural revolution, for the cultural backwardness of the peasants was the most serious obstacle to the socialist re-organization of agriculture.

Lenin called for the raising of cultural standards in the U.S.S.R. and in this regard urged that a start should be made by abolishing that shameful survival of tsarism — illiteracy. The standard of literacy in Russia was still far below that of the more cultured countries in West ern Europe. In 1920, the rate of literacy in Russia was 319 per 1,000 and in some districts it was even lower. Lenin demanded that school teachers should be placed on a level on which they had never stood nor ever could stand in bourgeois society.

The main points of Lenin's great plan for the building of Socialism in our country may be enumerated as follows: having seized power, hold the key positions in the economic life of the country; place the country's economy on. the basis of modern advanced tech nique; build socialist industry and by means of it technically re-equip agriculture; organize the peasants in co-operative societies and convert small individual backward agriculture into large-scale collective so cialist agriculture; secure the economic independence of the Land of Soviets and build up its defences; strengthen the U.S.S.R. as the base of the struggle for Socialism all over the world.

The Twelfth Congress of the Bolshevik Party

In March 1923, Lenin suffered a severe relapse. He was taken to the village of Gorki near Moscow. His condition roused grave apprehensions. The entire people waited anxiously e^ery morning for the bulletin of their leader's health.

In April 1923, while Ijenin was ill, the Twelfth Congress of the Party was held. The proceedings were directed by Comrade Stalin. In its decisions the congress took into account all the directives Lenin had given in his last articles and letters.

The congress strongly rebuffed all those who interpreted the New Economic Policy as a retreat from the socialist position and wanted to divert the development of the Land of Soviets to the path of tie res toratioi of capitalism. The Trotskyites and Bukharinites proposed that vital branches of industry should be leased to foreign capitalists, and Trotsky even wanted to have the Putilov and Brj^ansk Plants closed because they were not showing a f^rofit. Trotsky's supporters tried to thrust upon the Party tjie disastrous policy of d'sru^>ting the alliance between the working class and the peasantry. They proposed that iiidusory should be developed by ex )loitiag the peasaits. They also proposed that the debts contracted by I'.he tsar's government sl^oiiJd be j?aid to tie foreign ca 2 htalists and that t)ie mono^ioly of foreign trade be abandoned.

The Twelfth Congress of the Bolshevik Party unanimously reject od and condemned all these defeatist proposals of the Trotskyites and Bukharinites. It proposed that industry should be developed not at the expense of the peasants, but in close conjunof.^on witiii tliem. The congress devoted considerable attention to jiroblems concern ing tlie policy of the Soviet Stale on the national question.

The reporter on this subject was Comrade Stalin, who unfolded a broad program of naeasures for abolishing the economic and cultural inequality that existed among the peoples of the Soviet Union. He par ticularly emphasized that the Russian proletariat, who had ren dered the oppressed nationalities fraternal assistance in their struggle against their enslavers, should now render them "real, systematic, sincere and genuine proletarian assistance" in economic and cultural development. "The Russian proletariat," he said, "must takn every necessary measure to establish centres of industry in those republics" (J. Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, Moscow, 1940, pp. 137-138). The congress denounced the Georgian national deviators who had opposed the formation of the Transcaucasian Pederation and the cementing of friendship among the Transcaucasian people. The Trotskyites and Bukharinites supported these Georgian nationalists.

The Foreign Imperialists Attempt to Drag the U.S.S.R. into War

The foreign imperialists resolved to take advantage of tJie grave sit uation created in the country and in the Party by Lenin's illness and, by means of new acts of provocation, tried to drag the U.S.S.R. into war and thus disrupt the work of socialist construction. Foreign spies developed extensive espionage and sabotage activities in the U.S.S.R. The Soviet government had a number of British spies arrested and deported them. Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, sent the Soviet government an ultimatum demanding "damages" for the arrest of the spies, that the Soviet plenipoten tiary representatives be recalled from Persia and Afghanistan because of their alleged anti-British activities, and that British fishermen be per mitted to fish off the Soviet coasts. The ultimatum was accompanied by a threat of new intervention.

The bourgeoi's press in Great Britain and France launched a fierce anti-Soviet campaign. Encouraged by Curzon 's ultimatum, the dregs of the various Whiteguard gangs abroad became active again. In May 1923, V. V. Vorovsky, the Soviet representative in Italy, a most prom inent Bolshevik and outstanding Soviet diplomat, was assassinated while in Switzerland, by a Whiteguard,

The working people of the U.S.S.E.. answered Curzon 's ultimatum and the assassination of Vorovsky with huge protest demonstrations in which they expressed their determination to resist. All over the country funds were collected for the construction of an aircraft squadron which was named "Ultimatum. " At that time also the society known as the Friends of the Air Fleet was inaugurated.

In answer to all acts of provocation the Soviet government sent a note contai liiig the categorical warning that "the position of the Soviet Republic has not, cannot have, nor will have anything in common with dependence upon the will of a foreign government."

Curzon 's act of provocation roused a storm of protest and indigna tion among the British workers, and the Conservative government was forced to resign. At the end of 1923, the so-called "Labour govern ment," headed by Ramsay MacDonald, came into office in Great Brit ain, and in February 1924, yielding to the demands of the British workers, the MacDonald government recognized the Soviet government and established diplomatic relations with it.

The Difficulties of Restoring the National Economy

International complications were aggravated by the difficulties of restoring the na tional economy. The growth of industry lagged behind the country's requirements. At the end of 1923, there were about a million unem ployed in the country. In July 1923, the Supreme Council of National Economy, which was headed by the Trotskyite Pyatakov, issued an order to the State Trusts to make the highest possible profit by raising the prices of manufactured goods. The price paid for, grain, oa the other hand, was kept at a low level.

The result was that the peasants found it difficult to buy manufac tured goods and the factories had no market for their products. Co-oper ative and state trade lacked working capital. The Soviet currency became unstable. This affected the economic position of the workers and peasants. The Trotsky ites declared that these temporary economic difficulties were indicative of a "crisis" of the whole economic sys tem of the U.S.S.R. under the New Economic Policy.

At this time the Soviet government was exerting efforts to reform the currency by replacing the depreciated paper currency with chervon tsi, or ten-ruble notes, having a firm gold backing. The Trotsky ites sabotaged this financial reform by issuing orders to raise the prices of manufactured goods and declared that the reform and stabilization of the currency was unprofitable for industry. Instead of reducing prices, the Trotskyites advocated "commodity intervention," that is to say, the purchase abroad of deficient goods. As a means of obtaining funds they advocated the raising of taxes, the raising of prices of manufactured goods, and so forth. Their object in pressing for these measures was to frustrate the building of Socialism, which had successfully begun, to cause a rupture between the working class and the peasants, and to convert the economy of the U.S.S.R, into an appendage of capitalist Europe.

Taking advantage of the aggravation of the international situa tion, the economic difficulties in the U.S.S.R. and of Lenin's illness, the Trotskyites began secretly to rally the remnants of the defeated anti-Leninist groups for another attack upon the Party. Tliey wore joined by the "Democratic Centralists," remnants of tlio "Workers' Opposition," former "Left Communists," Menshevik typos expelled from the Party, and similar scum, who were united by their common hatred for the Leninist Central Committee of the Party.

In the autumn of 1923, the Trotskyites dragged the Party ijito an other fierce discussion, but the Party rallied around Comrade Stalin who was fighting for Leninism against Trotskyism. The Trotsky ites were exposed and defeated. The platform of the Trotskyite op])03i tion was unanimously condemned and defined as a potty-bourgeois deviation, as the revision of Leninism.