Page:Lenin - Against the Plague of Nations; An Address to Thinking People on the Polish Question (1920).pdf/8

 lives of tens of thousands of the best comrades at the front it is the question of saving from starvation. To accomplish this it is necessary to enforce discipline and obedience with the utmost rigidity.

I saw a comrade who recently came from Siberia and comrades Lunatcharski and Rykov, who recently returned from Ukraine and Northern Caucasus. They were stunned by the riches of these regions. In the Ukraine wheat is fed to the hogs, in the north of Caucasus dishes are washed with milk. From Siberia are arriving trains with wool, hides and other goods; there are tens of millions of poods of salt while our peasants are suffering from want and are declining to give bread for paper while here in Moscow the workers are starving in the shops.

"Because we lost Crimea several thousands of people will have to starve half a year more, and all this is due to lack of organization and discipline.

"If all our measures are fully enforced we shall be protected against disorganization and demoralization caused by the imperialistic war. The stocks of grain accumulated fer the year beginning August 1, 1917, amounted to 30 million poods, for the year beginning August 1, 1918—110 million poods, and from August 1, 1919 up to date, over 150 million poods. But we have not completed the conquest of Ukraine, of Northern Caucasus and of Siberia. When we shall have completed this task, we shall be able to provide to the workers two pounds of bread daily.

"One of the chief obstacles to our work in the rural districts is the fact that we do not know how to work on a national scale. Even our leading comrades in this work here in the centre are accustomed to the old underground ways when we sat in small circles here or in foreign countries and did not even dare to think of placing our work on a national scale. At present we have to know and remember that we have to manage millions. Everyone of you going to a village either as a delegate or as an envoy from the Central Committee should remember that we have a large state apparatus which is functioning very inefficiently because we do not know enough to manage it well. Every agitator has to co-ordinate his work with the work of the Council of People's Commissars, the Council of General Education and the Commissariat of War. The work should be arranged in such a way that each teacher and every war commissary would work in the spirit of the Soviet. Under such conditions, with the proper direction of our endeavors, you will increase your forces tenfold, and each hundred of agitators will leave after them a trail in the form of an organized apparatus functioning as yet unsatisfactorily, awkwardly, but still existing. In this field as well as in others I wish you success." (Long applause.)