Resolution of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee (November 1918)

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The Soviet Republic faces increasing danger of invasion by the united hordes of world imperialism. Having entered the arena of world-wide slaughter under the false slogans of democracy and brotherhood of the peoples, the victorious Allied predators are now trampling more and more upon the weak peoples and states. The German working class, which was itself a victim of the policy of the bourgeois-noble monarchy of the Hohenzollerns, is now being ruthlessly stifled by Wilson, Lloyd-George and their accomplices. Belgium, freed from the Germans, becomes the booty of Britain: Hungary, Bohemia, all the countries of the Balkan Peninsula, are occupied by foreign armies. All the neutral countries meekly bend their necks beneath the yoke of the victors. France herself, a member of the group of victorious states, is actually occupied by Anglo-American and colonial armies, whose task is to stifle the revolution of the French proletariat.

Under these conditions of world-wide brigandage, plundering and violence, our country alone is now the true home of the independence of the working class, the bulwark of the weak and oppressed peoples, the fortress of the social revolution, namely, Soviet Russia.

Against it is directed all the malice, all the hatred of the world’s bourgeoisie. In the North and in the South, in the East and in the West, the Anglo-American and Franco-Japanese predators have advanced and are advancing hostile fronts against Soviet Russia: they are arming the White Guards, the Cossack Generals, the sons of the landlords and bourgeois, of the kulaks of town and country, landing expeditionary forces and threatening us with more and more hordes.

The All-Russia Congresses of Soviets have shown before the face of all mankind their desire to live in peace and fraternity with all peoples, and at the same time their readiness to defend, arms in hand, the socialist republic against the attacks of imperialist forces. Nothing with great satisfaction the successes of the Red Army and the Red Navy, the All-Russia Central Executive Committee reiterates the need to increase tenfold the efforts of the workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors, in the defence of the workers’ and peasants’ country.

By decree of the All-Russia CEC dated September 2, the Soviet Republic was proclaimed an armed camp.

This decree must now be put into effect in all branches of economic activity and state administration.

It is necessary to ensure that the army gets its supplies, and for this purpose to increase the productivity of labor.

It is necessary to ensure that the army and navy get their food, together with Moscow, Petrograd and all other centers of organized labor.

To this end, all grain-procurement and railway organs, at the center and in the localities, must be made to work at maximum tension and with the greatest conscientiousness.

Not only in the army and the navy, but also in the grain-procurement and transport spheres, and in war industry, a military regime must be established, that is, a regime of strict labor discipline, corresponding to the situation of a country which the bandits of imperialism have forced to transform itself into an armed camp.

In order to put these measures into effect, the closest unity must be created between the War Department, the Extraordinary Commission for Producing Supplies, and the departments of communications and grain-procurement, in joint work for the fulfilment of practical tasks.

To this end, the All-Russia CEC resolves to set up a Workers’ and Peasants’ Defence Council under the chairmanship of Comrade Lenin, as Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, to consist of the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic, Comrade Trotsky; the People’s Commissar of Communications, Comrade Nevsky; the Deputy-People’s Commissar of Food, Comrade Bryukhanov; the Chairman of the Extraordinary Commission for Producing Supplies, Comrade Krasin (or their deputies); and, representing the Central Executive Committee, Comrade Stalin. [The name-index gives: Stalin, I.V. Old Bolshevik. Worked very closely with Comrade Lenin during the October Revolution. Member of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) continuously since 1912. During the Civil War was a member of the Revolutionary War Councils of various fronts. At present General Secretary of the RCP(B).]

The Defence Council is endowed with full powers for mobilizeing the country’s forces and resources in the interests of defence. The decrees of the Defence Council are unconditionally binding on all departments and institutions, both central and local, and on all citizens.

Direct leadership of the army and navy, and also of all institutions of the military and naval department, remains as before in the hands of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic.

In order to secure greater concentration of the activity of the latter institution, a Bureau is to be formed from it, consisting of Comrade Trotsky, as Chairman; the Commander-in-Chief, Comrade Vatsetis; and Comrade Aralov.

November 30, 1918