Before the Capture of Kazan

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Speech at the meeting of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on September 2, 1918

Comrades, I did not expect that I should have the opportunity to address you at this time, to address the highest organ of the Soviet Republic, and I came here not on the business of the department in which I work but recalled by the news of the attempt on the life of Comrade Lenin. In conversation with comrades about this I could describe the situation that has been created only as one in which, besides the fronts we had already, yet another front has been created – in the chest of Vladimir Ilyich, where life is now struggling with death, and where, as we hope, that struggle will end with the victory of life. On our war fronts victory alternates with defeats: there are many dangers, but all comrades undoubtedly realise that this front, the front in the Kremlin, is now the most worrying of all. At the front, the front where the armies are, the news of the attempt on the life of the leader of the working class produced not depression and dismay, so far as I could judge from first impressions, but, on the contrary, an upsurge of bitterness and of will to revolutionary struggle. There is no need to say how the conscious fighters at the front felt about Comrade Lenin when they learnt that he was lying with two bullets in his body. We knew that no-one could say of Comrade Lenin that his character lacked metal: now there is metal in his body as well as in his soul, and for this he will be still dearer to the working class of Russia.

Turning to the front from which I have come, I must say that I cannot, alas, report decisive victories, but, on the other hand, I am able with complete confidence, to affirm that these victories are on the way: that our position is firm and sound: that a decisive turn has taken place: that we are now guaranteed, so far as this is possible, against any big surprises, and that each week that passes will strengthen us at the expense of our enemies. As regards the masses in the army, they have undergone a certain schooling, both military and political, and an enormous contribution was made to this by those advanced workers from Petrograd, Moscow and other cities who were sent to the front. It is hard to evaluate the importance at the front of every conscious, advanced worker. At the most critical moment, when Kazan had fallen and the battle was renewed, the Communist comrades took all the difficulties of the situation on their own shoulders. They organized vanguard units. These set out numbering fifty and came back twelve. They are agitators but, when necessary, they take up rifles, like the commissars, get in among unreliable units and provide them with a strong armature. They establish everywhere a hard, sometimes severe, regime, because war is, in general, a severe business. At the same time, thanks to these forces and to the close contact between our units and the population, a tremendous change has been brought about in the mood of the Volga peasantry.

Our country is huge and requires immense forces and political efforts. In the Volga and Ural regions we have not worked on the mass of the peasantry in the way that virgin soil is ploughed up, consciousness has not yet been aroused among the poor but they have already come into contact with Red Army units which do not plunder or steal, and although some excesses have occurred here and there, we have, on the whole, firmly disciplined units. Here again an immense role is played by those same workers from Petrograd and Moscow. Political circumstances are turning out entirely to our advantage: our units are getting stronger and are growing, spiritually and numerically, whereas among the enemy, according to the reports obtained by our intelligence, utter disorder and breakdown prevails in his units, and those workers and peasants whose attitude to him was one of indifference or only slight hostility are now his enemies and our friends. This is evident from the fact that when our artillery falls silent, the bourgeoisie of Kazan at once rallies to the White Guards, but when our artillery roars, when our aircraft fly over and shower dynamite on the bourgeois quarters, meetings start to be held in the working-class quarters, the bourgeois hide themselves in corners, and the White Guards find themselves isolated. In so far as our units undertake attacks, our command adheres to tactics of caution. We have no right to suggest any change, if our command considers that these tactics correspond to the character of the units involved in this war, and, at the same time, these tactics guarantee us against dangers and major surprises, while we can also expect that they will bring us sure and solid success. On the other fronts there is also wavering this way and that, but on every front the chances of success are now very much greater than they were. The situation is best of all in the Povonno-Tsaritsyn [Povorino is about 330km north-west of Tsaritsyn, and is the junction of the Moscow-Tsaritsyn railway line with the Kazan-Kharkov line.] direction, where we are on the offen sive against Krasnov’s bands. The latest dispatches, which are probably known to you, speak of the capture of Kachalinskaya stanitsa. Here a certain 6th Cossack Regiment was disarmed, and another, similar regiment joined us and, together with our units, pursued the fleeing enemy. This, comrades, was no accidental occurrence, there are profound inner reasons for it. The working class and the working masses have understood that it is a matter of life and death, that they are engaged in a mortal conflict, and that every day helps to bring a change in the situation in our favour. And so what is required of us is work, tireless work, resolute and intense work.

In the sphere of command, things are better than they were, though still far from satisfactory. Our new front was formed when the old apparatus of command was, in general, withering away, and the apparatus of military organisation was designed for the old front. Hence the duality in organization. We formed divisions on the basis of volunteering, and, in accordance with this, we formed extensive staffs for these divisions. We have already done away with the voluntary principle. We have gone over to the conscription of workers and peasants who do not exploit the labor of others, and the staffs of the old divisions must be transformed to where the process of formation is going ahead with great success. Close to the new front, in those places where the peasant finds himself under direct threat from the blows of the Czechoslovaks and White-Guards, the peasantry are increasingly eager to co-operate in creating new formations.

At the top of our military apparatus we lack at present the necessary unity. We have the former Supreme Military Council, which was set up in relation to the old front, and the Revolutionary War Council at Arzamas [Arzamas is about 100km south of Nizhny-Novgorod, on the railway line between Moscow and Kazan.], which was organized for the needs of the Eastern front, though we have now brought the North-Eastern front under its authority as well.

What are the urgent tasks before us?

It has been said here that Britain intends to wage war against us for three years. It is hard, comrades, to make any forecast where time is concerned. When the world war began, they thought it would last three months, yet it is now entering its fifth year. At present, important British diplomats are saying that war with Soviet Russia will last three years, and those successes which we have had do not in the least mean that we shall finish the war in the next three weeks or three months. These successes merely prove that the working class is learning to fight and to create a military organization, and that the Soviet Republic is able, if it so desires, to defend itself. How long the imperialist onslaught will go on, what forms it will take, and what further measures we shall have to adopt for our defence, it is impossible to say. One can state only that the danger is still extremely great, and that it will be especially great during the next two months – until the coming of winter, which will paralyse, at least for the duration of that season, any increase in British aid to the Czechoslovaks. These two months that lie ahead will be a time of most intense, energetic and, I will say, heroic work on our part for the military consolidation of all the borders of the Soviet Republic. We are exhausted, we are poor in all respects including the military respect, and we need to place all the country’s resources at the service of the defence of the Soviet Republic.

You must proclaim that in these conditions, in which we are now faced with the concentrated fury of world imperialism, which has turned its Anglo-French and Japano-American face towards us, we are obliged to transform the Soviet Republic into one single armed camp, and all our resources, all our forces, everything the country possesses, and the personal possessions of each individual citizen and citizeness, must be devoted directly to the defence of the Soviet Republic. We have to mobilize people, soldiers, to mobilize the spirit and the ideological forces of the country, and this mobilization must assume an intense, heroic character, so that everywhere, and, in particular, on the British stock-exchange, where they quote the blood of the Russian people, they may know that, while we live, we will surrender to no-one, that we shall fight to the last drop of blood.

The measures of which I speak follow from the objective situation, from the dangers which surround us and which are not to be measured by the Czechoslovak forces and the pitiful Anglo-French expedition, dangers which may grow and assume a different physiognomy and different dimensions.

We need to become strong and powerful. To this end we must, first and foremost, ensure supplies for our army. And in our economic circumstances this will be possible only if we mobilize the entire resources of the country. Work in the supply sphere must be centralized. In charge of this work we have already placed such an energetic and expert worker as Comrade Krasin. He must be given the widest powers and all the material resources needed if our military supply service is to be raised to the proper level. Everything must be put at the disposal of the organizers of supply!

We also need, as I have already mentioned, to centralize the military apparatus. The lack of co-ordination which resulted from the duality of the fronts – one ceasing to exist and the other coming into existence – must be ended. At the head of the armed forces and resources of the Soviet Republic must be placed a single leading organ, in the shape of the Revolutionary War Council, and a single Commander-in-Chief. All the other institutions of the All-Russia General Staff, as an organ of supply, must be subordinated to this Revolutionary War Council, and they must receive from it the fundamental directives that will ensure that we have unity in the disposition of all the country’s armed forces and resources, in their transfer from one part of the country to another, from one front to another, in the provision of supplies and equipment that have to be got ready and assembled in the shortest possible time. Along with this, we need to continue the work of agitation and organization which has been and is being carried on here in the rear. Every train that brought to us at the front ten, fifteen or twenty Communists, together with a stock of literature, was as precious to us as a train that brought a good regiment or a plentiful quantity of guns. Every detachment, every group of Communists regenerated one or other sector of the front, ensured its staunchness, established communications, and, what is not the least important factor in this matter, ensured for us a certain behaviour on the part of the officers who are now at the front. In that connection I must mention that many, especially among the young officers who were brought up under the former regime, have become closely linked with the new army, with our party, with the Soviet power, and are filled with profound respect for the Soviet activists. Among the General Staff officers with this outlook there are many who are acting not from fear but from conscience. This was shown by the following example. When Kazan fell it was easy for the officers to sell themselves to the enemy. Yet many fell in battle, while others hid themselves for weeks and then secretly made their way over to us. But there are also elements prepared to betray us at the first opportunity, and there are wavering elements that need an iron corset – and such an iron corset is provided by one or two good Communists. Without Communists our army will be incapable of fighting, and if many here complain that we have depopulated a whole number of important institutions, I do not quite understand this attitude of theirs.

These complaints, coming from certain organs, are not altogether comprehensible or normal. If we fail to smash the forces opposing us, then, of course, all the Soviet institutions will go smash, and basic Soviet politics is now being put into effect before Kazan, Simbirsk and Samara and the other sectors of our front. So, give us all the elements that you can give. You will proclaim that the task of the front is now the central task, and that the entire country is a reservoir for supplying that front. You will transform the country into an armed camp: you will centralize the work of supply and make available for that work all the necessary resources that the country can provide: you will centralise the military administration, placing all military authority in the hands of the Revolutionary War Council. Thereby, you will show your will to win and to live, and let us hope that, within the few weeks in which the leader of the working class will recover, we shall conquer on the other fronts too, and that news of the downfall of our foe at Samara, Simbirsk, Ufa, Orenburg and in Siberia will be brought to a session of our CEC at which Comrade Lenin will be our dear guest.