Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/400

 pate actively in the free construction of a new society, we have solved only a small part of the difficult task. The main difficulty is in the economic domain—to raise the productivity of labor, to establish strict and universal accounting and control of production and distribution, and actually to socialise production.

The evolution of the Bolshevik party, which is today the government party of Russia, shows with great clearness the nature of the historical crisis characterizing the present political situation and demands a new orientation by the Soviet authority, that is, new methods applied to new problems.

The first problem of any rising party consists in convincing the majority of the population that its program and policies are correct. This was the most important problem during Czarism and during the period of compromise of the Chernovs and Tseretellis with Kerensky and Kishkin. At present this problem, which is, of course, far from solution or immediate solution, is, in the main, solved, since the majority of the workers and peasants of Russia, as was shown beyond doubt by the last Congress of the Soviets in Moscow, are definitely with the Bolsheviki.

The second problem of our party was the conquest of political power and the suppression of the resistance of the exploiters. This problem as well is not yet completely solved, and we cannot ignore that fact, for the Monarchists and Cadets, on the one hand, and the Mensheviki and right Social Revolutionists—who echo and follow them—on the other, continue their attempts to unite for the overthrow of the Soviet power. But, in the main, the problem of the resistance of the exploiters was already solved in the period between November 7, 1917, and (approximately) February, 1918—the time of the surrender of the Cossack Bogajevsky.

We are now confronted by the third problem, which is the most urgent and which characterizes the present period: to organize the management of Russia. Of course, we had to deal with this problem and have been at it ever since November 7, 1917. But heretofore, as long as the resistance of the exploiters manifested itself in open civil warfare, the problem of management could not became the pincipal, the central problem.

At present it has become the central problem. We, the Bolshevik party, have convinced Russia. We have won Russia from the rich for the poor, from the exploiters for the toilers. And now it is up to us to manage Russia. The special difficulty of the present period consists in comprehending the peculiarities of the transition