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A Stalin's Speech Delivered at the Second All-Union Congress of Soviets January 26, 1924 Comrades, we Communists are people of a special mould. We are made of a special stuff. We are those who form the army of the great proletarian strategist, the army of Comrade Lenin. There is nothing higher than the honour of belonging to this army. There is nothing higher than the title of member of the Party whose founder and leader was Comrade Lenin. It is not given to everyone to be a member of such a party. It is not given to everyone to withstand the stresses and storms that accompany membership in such a party. It is the sons of the working class, the sons of want and struggle, the sons of incredible privation and heroic effort who before all should be members of such a party. That is why the Party of the Leninists, the Party of the Communists, is also called the Party of the working class. Departing from us, Comrade Lenin adjured us to hold high and guard the purity of the great title of member of the Party. We vow to you. Comrade Lenin, that we will fulfil your behest with credit! For twenty-five years Comrade Lenin reared our Party and finally trained it to be the strongest and most highly steeled workers' party in the world. The blows of tsardom and its henchmen, the fury of the bourgeoisie and the landlords, the armed attacks of Kolchak and Denikin, the armed intervention of England and France, the lies and slanders of the hundred-mouthed bourgeois press - all these scorpions constantly chastised our Party for a quarter of a century. But our Party stood firm as a rock, repelling the countless blows of the enemy and leading the working class forward, to victory. In fierce battles our Party forged the unity and solidarity of its ranks. And by unity and solidarity it achieved victory over the enemies of the working class. Departing from us. Comrade Lenin adjured us to guard the unity of our Party as the apple of our eye. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that this behest, too, we will fulfil with credit! Burdensome and intolerable has been the lot of the working class. Painful and grievous have been the sufferings of the labouring people. Slaves and slaveholders, serfs and sires, peasants and landlords, workers and capitalists, oppressed and oppressors—so the world has been built from time immemorial, and so it remains to this day in the vast majority of countries. Scores, nay, hundreds of times in the course of the centuries have the labouring people striven to throw off the oppressors from their backs and to become the masters of their own destiny. But each time, defeated and disgraced, they have been forced to retreat, harbouring in their breasts resentment and humiliation, anger and despair, and lifting up their eyes to an inscrutable heaven where they hoped to find deliverance. The chains of slavery remained intact, or the old chains were replaced by new ones, equally burdensome and degrading. Ours is the only country where the oppressed and downtrodden labouring masses have succeeded in throwing off the rule of the landlords and capitalists and replacing it by the rule of the workers and peasants. You know, comrades, and the whole world now admits it, that this gigantic struggle was led by Comrade Lenin and his Party. The greatness of Lenin lies before all in this, that by creating the Republic of Soviets he gave a practical demonstration to the oppressed masses of the whole world that hope of deliverance is not lost, that the rule of the landlords and capitalists is short-lived, that the kingdom of labour can be created by the efforts of the labouring people themselves, and that the kingdom of labour must be created not in heaven, but on earth. He thus fired the hearts of the workers and peasants of the whole world with the hope of liberation. This explains why Lenin's name has become the name most beloved of the labouring and exploited masses. Departing from us. Comrade Lenin adjured us to guard and strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat. We vow to you. Comrade Lenin, that we will spare no effort to fulfil this behest, too, with credit! The dictatorship of the proletariat was established in our country on the basis of an alliance between the workers and peasants. This is the first and fundamental basis of the Republic of Soviets. The workers and peasants could not have vanquished the capitalists and landlords without such an alliance. The workers could not have defeated the capitalists without the support of the peasants. The peasants could not have defeated the landlords without the leadership of the workers. This is borne out by the whole history of the Civil War in our country. But the struggle to consolidate the Soviet Republic is by no means at an end -it has only taken on a new form. Before, the alliance of the workers and peasants took the form of a military alliance, because it was directed against Kolchak and Denikin. Now, the alliance of the workers and peasants must assume the form of economic cooperation between town and country, between workers and peasants, because it is directed against the merchant and the kulak, and its aim is the mutual supply by peasants and workers of all they require. You know that nobody worked for this more persistently than Comrade Lenin. Departing from us, Comrade Lenin adjured us to strengthen with all our might the alliance of the workers and the peasants. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that this behest, too, we will fulfil with credit! The second basis of the Republic of Soviets is the alliance of the working people of the different nationalities of our country. Russians and Ukrainians, Bashkirs and Byelorussians, Georgians and Azerbaijanians, Armenians and Daghestanians, Tatars and Kirghiz, Uzbeks and Turkmens are all equally interested in strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not only does the dictatorship of the proletariat deliver these nations from chains and oppression, but these nations on their part deliver our Soviet Republic from the intrigues and assaults of the enemies of the working class by their supreme devotion to the Soviet Republic and their readiness to make sacrifices for it. That is why Comrade Lenin untiringly urged upon us the necessity of the voluntary union of the nations of our country, the necessity of fraternal cooperation between them within the framework of the Union of Republics. Departing from us. Comrade Lenin adjured us to consolidate and extend the Union of Republics. We vow to you. Comrade Lenin, that this behest, too, we will fulfil with credit! The third basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat is our Red Army and Red Navy. More than once did Lenin impress upon us that the respite we had won from the capitalist states might prove a short one. More than once did Lenin point out to us that the strengthening of the Red Army and the improvement of its condition is one of the most important tasks of our Party. The events connected with Curzon's ultimatum and the crisis in Germany once more confirmed that, as always, Lenin was right. Let us vow then, comrades, that we will spare no effort to strengthen our Red Army and our Red Navy. Like a huge rock, our country towers amid an ocean of bourgeois states. Wave after wave dashes against it, threatening to submerge it and wash it away. But the rock stands unshakable. Wherein lies its strength? Not only in the fact that our country rests on an alliance of workers and peasants, that it constitutes an alliance of free nationalities, that it is protected by the powerful arm of the Red Army and the Red Navy. The strength, the firmness, the solidity of our country is due to the profound sympathy and unfailing support it finds in the hearts of the workers and peasants of the whole world. The workers and peasants of the whole world want the Soviet Republic to be preserved, as an arrow shot by the sure hand of Comrade Lenin into the camp of the enemy, as the pillar of their hopes of deliverance from oppression and exploitation, as a reliable beacon pointing the path to their emancipation. They want to preserve it, and they will not allow the landlords and the capitalists to destroy it. Therein lies our strength. Therein lies the strength of the working people of all countries. And therein lies the weakness of the bourgeoisie all over the world. Lenin never regarded the Republic of Soviets as an end in itself. To him it was always a link needed to strengthen the chain of the revolutionary movement in the countries of the West and the East, a link needed to facilitate the victory of the working people of the whole world over capitalism. Lenin knew that this was the only right conception, both from the international standpoint and from the standpoint of preserving the Soviet Republic itself. Lenin knew that this alone could fire the hearts of the working people of the world with determination to fight the decisive battles for their emancipation. That is why, on the very morrow of the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, he, the greatest of the geniuses who have led the proletariat, laid the foundation of the workers' International. That is why he never tired of extending and strengthening the union of the working people of the whole world - the Communist International. You have seen during the past few days the pilgrimage of scores and hundreds of thousands of working people to Comrade Lenin's bier. Soon you will see the pilgrimage of representatives of millions of working people to Comrade Lenin's tomb. You need not doubt that the representatives of millions will be followed by representatives of scores and hundreds of millions from all parts of the earth, who will come to testify that Lenin was the leader not only of the Russian proletariat, not only of the European workers, not only of the colonial East, but of all the working people of the globe. Departing from us. Comrade Lenin adjured us to remain faithful to the principles of the Communist International. We vow to you. Comrade Lenin, that we will not spare our lives to strengthen and extend the union of the working people of the whole world - the Communist International! Illustrated supplement to Pravda, No. 215, September 24, 1922 Signed: J. Stalin text source: Lenin Mausoleum: http://neptune.spaceports.com/~stalin/stalin_3.htm [EMAIL PROTECTED]
