Grigorii Zinoviev, Speech by Comrade Zinoviev to Army Conference of Communists. January 26, 1920

Excerpt

Original Source: RGVA, f. 190, op. 2, ed. khr. 284, ll. 31-3.

{Applause} Comrades, after our troubles in the autumn at our first meeting with representatives of communist soldiers from the front line I wish first of all to use this occasion to bring you warmest greetings from the Petrograd Soviet and all Petrograd workers for the excellent work done by our army, mainly with your help, in those days which were so difficult for Petrograd. Only after paying this tribute do I come to the main theme of my report {applause}.

Comrades, the question of Labor Armies has only arisen quite recently. A couple of months ago we might say that no one had even dreamt of Labor Armies, whereas that question has now become a completely practical reality, and the Soviet Government has already decided to organize three Labor Armies. I will even detail which armies they are to be, but we must get a clear understanding what these Labor Armies will be, what part they will have to play - and especially why we have to go over now to a system of Labor Armies.

Everyone knows that the situation at the front could not be better. No one can doubt that we are close to seeing an end to the war, at least on most of the fronts which have given us so much trouble up to now. But at the same time everyone knows that in the near future we are carrying out one further mobilization of the class of 1921, which had been deferred for a certain time. A peasant or a worker is perfectly entitled to ask: if you have trounced Kolchak and Denikin and defeated Iudenich why do we now need a fresh mobilization? Why on the one hand are we preparing to transfer the army to peacetime duties, while at the same time we are carrying out another mobilization? And after two years of war it would be perfectly natural if comrades raised the point: perhaps we could simply disband the army, just keeping a small force on the frontiers.

These questions are being raised and front-line communist soldiers must above all come to a clear understanding on these questions, so that, as they lie in the firing line, In the trenches, in their barracks or in the rear, they can give clear answers to every rank and file peasant. Mobilization is going ahead because, though our battle is three-quarters or maybe even nine-tenths won, we still have some fighting to deal with. We must finish off Denikin no matter what it costs. Up to date communiques announce that he has still got about 40 000 troops and he is about to cross into Romania. But Denikin is still putting up a certain resistance on the Don. Besides that we have to liberate the Caucasus, and we must tree Bessarabia in the near future. We have got to tree the Caucasus above all because our oil is there, without which Russia's industry cannot be firmly re-established. 1f we don't get Baku with its huge reserves of oil we cannot assure proper supplies for our industry in Moscow, Petrograd or Ivanovo-Voznesensk.

Apart from that it is essential to free the Caucasus because millions of our brother peasants and workers are suffering there, not freed even now. Tseretelli and Chkheidze are in power there. Having held power for two years they have contrived to keep the peasants from even having the slightest chance of getting land. The peasants there have received no land; it has remained in the hands of the former owners. Tseretelli and Chkheidze, as you may have read recently, have been in Paris asking the English and French gentlemen capitalists for help against us, which help they have been promised, as has Denikin. Just as we have helped Denikin, so we will help you too.' That must be said with quite a biting irony, for, as we know, Denikin's affairs have come to a sticky end. And when the French minister Clemenceau said with a smile, as it were: 'I'll help you just as I helped Denikin', he probably looked at them with pity and thought: 'You'll finish up the same way as Denikin has. You've just enough rope to hang yourself.' (applause].

There's no doubt about it, the Mensheviks will get short shrift from our Red Army. There's no escape for them. Nevertheless, according to radio-telegrams, the English and French have decided to send 200 000 troops. Probably 20 000 rather than 200 000 - they like to exaggerate a bit - but there is going to be a fight for the Caucasus, for Baku is a tasty morsel; even now they're probably thinking that they've got the oil in their pocket. Besides that the Caucasus and Bessarabia are tremendously important to us. Our Red Army men - and especially our communist Red Army men - need to study the geography of our country, and not only our country, but the whole world. They must know the configuration of the globe. The Caucasus is the gateway to a whole series of countries where we may expect to find hundreds of millions of potential allies. When we take the Caucasus we can move on further - just as when we take Bessarabia we shall come into contact with tens, or rather hundreds of millions of people who look to us for brotherly help.

When we take these places we shall be In touch with Asia Minor and Turkey; we shall help the mountain people against the Turks. When we have conquered the Caucasus mountains we shall join up with a whole' series of peoples who are oppressed by the English. We are only at the start of the world revolution now. When we get through these gates we will see the flame of revolution spreading to India, Persia and a whole series of other countries, where hundreds of millions of people are under the heel of English capitalists and where they are waiting for the first Red Army regiment to appear in order to make their own revolutions.

That is why, comrades, the question of the Caucasus is not for us just about oil - although that is quite important - nor just about liberating several million peasants, who are still suffering under the capitalist yoke, but besides all that we have to think of the further development of our revolution, because our revolution will achieve its final victory only when we got new nations to join us. And in the east a hundred million oppressed peoples are waiting for us. They are so worked up there it is like a powder store just waiting for a match. There they pray to the Soviet Union; every word of the Soviet Government and the Communist International is received as gospel; in those places they are waiting for us to come to them. And now the time is near when we may not only dream of this but can actually go there, bearing in mind that we see in those areas the interests of our whole revolution and of all the world. Warfare along the old fronts is coming to an and, but, pushing towards the East, opening the way to those oppressed nationalities, one front will remain active in the near future - in the next few months or weeks.

Come what may, for weeks or months the struggle will be in the Caucasus, where the main conflict will be centered, because that is where the interests of the workers and peasants clash with the interests of English and French capitalists. Just as a short while ago Petrograd was the most important point and these two forces clashed round Petrograd, so we shall see the same happening in the Caucasus. The main forces will be concentrated there. And we shall need a definite army there. That is why we must conceive the war as having ended in such a way that we have got rid of a whole lot of fronts, but a few remain - and those are the fronts which will determine the fate of our revolution. Besides which, we know full well that victory in the present war does not always guarantee that you won't have another war on your hands tomorrow. We drove out Iudenich in the summer of 1919, but by the autumn he was back visiting us again. This time we have given him a good drubbing, but we can only hope that he will no longer be resurrected from the dead ...

Source: V. P. Butt, ed., Russian Civil War: Documents from the Soviet Archives (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 156-160.