Marx-Engels |  Lenin  | Stalin |  Home Page

   Lunacharsky Articles and speeches on international politics

7th anniversary of the October Revolution

The ceremonial meeting of the plenum of the Moscow Soviet, together with the deputies of all district councils, took place on November 6 in the Hall of Columns.

The meeting began at 6½ pm. Presiding comrade. IE Lyubimov opened the meeting with a brief introductory speech. Those present honored by rising the memory of dear leaders and fighters who gave their lives for the good of the working people. A. V. Lunacharsky delivered a brilliant report at the meeting and was greeted with thunderous applause. The presentation of the report is based on a newspaper report.

“Looking back at the path we have traveled,” says Comrade. Lunacharsky, we must say that October surpassed all the most daring and optimistic hopes, as far as the USSR is concerned. However, there is another side of October that might disappoint us, and that is that the response of October outside of Russia turned out to be much more muted than we expected.

Describing the history of the struggle in this period of the Western European proletariat, Comrade. Lunacharsky notes the tremendous organizational work done by the working class abroad.

Turning to our internal situation, the speaker states the enormous merit in creating the Red Army as an instrument of armed resistance of the proletariat. To thunderous applause, the speaker declares that during this time, among the organs of state power, the GPU has been and still is in the first place, which, with all its strength and skill, carried out the Red Terror - this glorious page in our history.

Speaking further about the construction of state power, Comrade. Lunacharsky points out that there was nowhere such a renewal of the state apparatus after the revolution that we had. It was necessary to master the entire hundred-millionth mass of the population, down to the last village, and subordinate everything to its influence. “We know,” continues Comrade Lunacharsky, “that our state apparatus is not yet in a brilliant state, that it still needs to do a lot of work on itself in order to involve our genuine Soviet democracy in the work, but we also know for sure that we are steadily growing, that the workers' and peasants' state apparatus is growing stronger before our eyes every day and year.

Speaking of our economic tasks, the speaker dwells on the question of state capitalism, through which we must lead our state to communism. The path of war communism, which we embarked on in the early years, was not a mistake; we were forced to pursue our policy in this way.

Concerning the question of our mastering the state economic levers, comrade. Lunacharsky says that although far from everything has been done here, the growth of our economy is evident here too. Our monetary system has astonished even our enemies, our commerce is recovering, industry is rapidly developing. We restored 75 percent. agricultural products. The village begins to live a normal economic life, reaching out for melioration, for the tractor, for agronomic education.

Later Comrade. Lunacharsky gives a detailed analysis of the development of individual branches of our economy and comes to the conclusion that we have made great strides in the field of economic development.

In the later part of his speech, comrade Lunacharsky draws the plenum's attention to our international position, especially emphasizing the strip of recognition of the USSR by the Western European powers.