Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/59



—First of all permit me to greet the Third All-Russian Trade Union Congress on behalf of the Council of People's Commissaries. Comrades! The Soviet Government is at the present moment passing through a period of the utmost gravity in many respects; a period which places before us interesting and complex problems, and which lays particular tasks and particular responsibility upon the Trade Unions in the work of constructive socialism. For this reason I would much rather deal, not with particular decisions of the recent party congress but with those changes in the conditions of Soviet policy which link together the problems of social construction with the activity of the Trade Unions.

Comrades, the distinguishing feature, of the present moment is the transition from problems of a military nature to those of peaceful economic construction, the former of which had up to the present time absorbed all the attention and activity of the Soviet Government. It must be pointed out here that this is not the first time that the Soviet Government and the Soviet Republic are passing through such an important phase. It is the second time that we are returning to conditions which render the task of peaceful construction one of first importance. The first time in the history of the Soviet Republic was in the beginning of 1918; at that time, after a short but powerful attack by German imperialism, when the old capitalist army had completely collapsed and when the conditions were such that we neither had nor were able in a short time to create an army, the Brest peace was forced upon us by German imperialist rapacity. Then in the beginning of 1918 it seemed as if military problems had become a thing of secondary importance and we were in a position to devote ourselves to problems of peaceful construction.