V. I.   Lenin

Plan of a Speech at a Meeting of
The Communist Group of the Fourth All-Russia Congress of Trade Unions[1]

Plan of a Speech 18/V


Written: Written May18, 1921
Published: First published in 1959 in the Fifth Russian Edition of the Lenin Miscellany XXXVI. Printed from the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, 3nd English Printing, Progress Publishers, 1977, Moscow, Volume 42, page 302b.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2003). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
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1. Rules of the R.C.P.: the Party and groups.

2. C.C. resolution-and its CONCEALMENT.

3. Ryazanov and his role. (Ryazanov’s anti-Party resolution.)...

4. Tomsky and his mistake or crime?... ((Composition of the Four.))

5. The workers’ extremely nervy, wrought up state, discontent:

{{
Burden on the workers.
1920 surplus appropriation- on the peasants.
Alleviation for the peasants: still depends on the harvest.
For the workers: profound resentment at the spectacle of “lighters”,[2] theft, and so on.
}}


Notes

[1] The meeting of the Communist group of the Fourth All-Russia Congress of Trade Unions to discuss the activities of the A.C.C.T.U. was held on May 18, 1921. The congress Steering Commission set up by the C.C. of the R,C.P.(B.) drafted a reso-lution on the activities of the A.C.C.T.U. which was to be used as a basis for the resolution of the T.U. Congress, and directed commission member M. P. Tomsky, Chairman of the A.C.C.T.U., to put this draft down for discussion by the Communist group. Tomsky, however, did not do this. The group’s, meeting adopted a resolution tabled by D. B. Ryazanov, which ran counter to the Party decisions concerning the relations between the Party and the trade unions. The plenum of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) on May 18 condemned Byazanov’s resolution, decided to remove Tomsky from the commission and relieve him of his post in the A.C.C.T.U., and to remove Ryazanov from trade union work.

On behalf of the Central Committee Lenin took the floor at a group meeting and revealed the anarcho-syndicalist nature of Ryazariov’s motion. The group, by an overwhelming majority, rejected Ryazanov’s resolution and adopted that of the Central Committee. There is no record of Lenin’s speech in the Central Party Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.C. of the C.P.S.U.

[2] During the years of industrial breakdown and disorganisation following the First World War and the civil war some of the industrial workers became declassed. It was said of such people that they did not do their jobs at the factories, but made "cigarette ligliters" there, that is, they took advantage of the slackening of labour discipline to make articles of domestic use for the black market.


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