Page:Resolutions and Theses of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (1922).djvu/28

 proletarian revolution, has during the five years of its existence, regardless of all difficulties and perils definitely demonstrated its strong will and great power to live and develop. The Soviet State has come out stronger than before from the horrors of civil war.

Owing to the unexampled heroism of the Red Army it has overthrown on all fronts the military counter-revolution, which was equipped and supported by the world bourgeoisie. Politically, it has repulsed all the attempts of the capitalist States to rob the Russian proletarian revolution of the fruits of the social revolution by diplomatic trickery and by economic pressure, striving for the recognition of the rights of private ownership of the means of production and for the renunciation of the nationalisation of industry. It unswervingly defended the fundamental condition of proletarian emancipation, i.e., the collective ownership of the means of production, against the attack of the world bourgeoisie. It saved the workers and peasants of the Soviet Republic from being reduced to the status of a colonial dependency by refusing to impose upon its shoulders the colossal national debt.

The Fourth World Congress of the Communist International establishes the fact that Soviet Russia, the proletarian State, as soon as it was no longer compelled to defend its existence by force of arms, has proceeded with unexampled energy with the development and reconstruction of the economic system of the Republic, while not swerving from the path which leads to Communism. The various phases and measures leading towards this aim, the transition phase of the so-called new economic policy, are products, on the one hand, of peculiar objective and subjective historic conditions in Russia, and on the other hand, of the slow trend of development of the world revolution and of the isolation of the Soviet Republic in the midst of capitalist States. Notwithstanding the enormous difficulties created by these conditions, the workers' State is able to record considerable progress in economic reconstruction.

Just as the Russian proletarians have paid dearly for the conquest and defence of political power and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship in the interests of the workers of the world, it is they again who must bear the brunt of the battle during this period in which they are confronted with the problems and tasks of the transition from capitalism to Communism.

The Fourth World Congress with great satisfaction establishes the fact that the policy of Soviet Russia has ensured and consolidated the most important pre-requisite for the construction and the development of the Communist social order, viz., the Soviet Power, the Soviet order, the dictatorship of the proletariat. For it is this dictatorship alone which