V. I. Lenin

Tenth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.)

March 8-16, 1921[1]


Written: 8-16 March, 1921
First Published: First published in full in 1921 in the book: Desiaty syzed rossiiskoi kommunisticheskoi partii. Stenograficheski otchot ( The Tenth Congress of the R.C.P. Verbatim Report, March 8-16, 1921), Moscow; Published according to to the text of the book collated with the verbatim report
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 1st English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 32, pages 165-271
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\HTML Markup: David Walters & R. Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License


Table of Contents

Part I

1. Speech At The Opening Of The Congress, March 8
2. Report Of The Political Work Of The Central Committee, March 8

Part II

3. Summing-Up Speech On The Report Of The C.C. Of The R.C.P.(B.), March 9
4. Preliminary Draft Resolution On Improving The Condition Of Workers And Needy Peasants.
5. Speech On The Trade Unions, March 14 .

Part III

6. Report On The Substitution Of A Tax In Kind For The Surplus-Grain Appropriation System, March 15
7. Summing-Up Speech On The Tax In Kind, March 15

Part IV

8. Preliminary Draft Resolution Of The Tenth Con-Gress Of The R.C.P. On Party Unity
9. Preliminary Draft Resolution Of The Tenth Con-Gress Of The R.C.P. On The Syndicalist And Anarchist Deviation In Our Party
10. Report On Party Unity And The Anarcho-Syndicalist Deviation, March 16
11. Summing-Up Speech On Party Unity And The Anarcho-Syndicalist Deviation, March 16
12. Remarks On Ryazanov’s Amendment To The Resolution On Party Unity, March 16
13. Speech On The Fuel Question, March 16
14. Proposal On The Fuel Question, March 16
15. Speech In Closing The Congress, March 16


Endnotes

[1] The Tenth Party Congress was held in Moscow on March 8-16, 1921. It was attended by 694 delegates with voice and vote and 296 with voice only. They represented 732,521 Party members. The items on the agenda were: 1) Report of the Central Committee 2) Report of the Control Commission; 3) The trade unions’ economic role; 4) The Socialist Republic in a capitalist encirclement foreign trade, concessions, etc.; 5) Food supply, surplus-food appropriation, tax in kind and fuel crisis, 6) Problems of Party organisation; 7) The Party’s current tasks in the nationalities question; 8) Reorganisation of the army and the militia question; 9) The Chief Administration for Political Education and the Party’s propaganda and agitation work; 10) Report of the R.C.P.’s representative in the Comintern, and its current tasks; 11) Report of the R.C.P.’s representatives in the International Trade Union Council; 12) Elections to the Central Committee, the Control Commission and the Auditing Commission. The Congress resolutions dealt with the key political and economic problems.

Lenin lead much of the work of the Congress: he delivered the opening and closing speeches and gave reports on the political activity of the C.C., the substitution of a tax in kind for the surplus appropriation system, the Party’s unity and the anarcho-syndicalist deviation, the trade unions and the fuel crisis. He drafted the main resolutions. He gave a theoretical and political substantiation of the necessity of transition from War Communism to the New Economic Policy (NEP). The Congress adopted historic decisions on the substitution of a tax in kind for the surplus appropriation system, and the transition to NEP, which was designed to draw millions of peasants into the organization of the planned socialist economy.

The Congress paid special attention to the Party’s unity. Lenin exposed and sharply criticised the anti-Marxist views of the opposition groups. The resolution “On Party Unity” adopted on Lenin’s motion ordered the immediate dissolution of all factions and groups which tended to weaken the Party’s unity. The Congress authorised the Central Committee to apply, as an extreme measure, expulsion from the Party to C.C. members who engaged in factional activity.

The Congress also adopted Lenin’s draft resolution “On the Syndicalist and Anarchist Deviation in our Party”, which exposed the views of the Workers’ Opposition as an expression of petty-bourgeois, anarchist vacillations. The propaganda of anarcho-syndicalist ideas was found to be incompatible with membership in the Party. With the country engaged in peaceful socialist construction, the Congress came down in favour of broader democracy within the Party.

The Congress summed up the discussion on the trade unions’ role in economic development, condemned the ideas of the , the Workers’ Opposition, the Democratic Centralism group and other trends, and approved Lenin’s platform by an overwhelming majority, terming the trade unions as a school of communism, and suggesting measures to develop trade union democracy.

A commission headed by Lenin worked out the Congress’s decisions on the Party’s nationalities policy in the new conditions: to eliminate the actual inequality of peoples which had been oppressed in tsarist Russia, and draw them into socialist construction. The Congress condemned the anti-Party deviations on the nationalities question, great-power chauvinism and local nationalism, which were a grave danger to communism and proletarian internationalism.

On the newly elected 25-man Central Committee were Lenin, Artyom (F. A. Sergeyev), F. E. Dzerzhinsky, Leon Trotsky, L. Kamanev, G. Zinoviev, M. I. Kalinin, G. K. Orjonikidze, M. V. Frunze, Y. E. Rudzutak, J. V. Stalin, Y. M. Yaroslavsky; S. M. Kirov, V. V. Kuibysllev, V. Y. Chubar were among the alternate members.

The historic decisions of the Tenth Congress charted the ways of transition from capitalism to socialism, and methods of construction of socialism in the new conditions; they stressed the importance of greater unity between the proletariat and the peasantry, and stronger Party leadership in the construction of Soviet Russia.