The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-11-07

Speech Delivered by Gregory zInoVev
IN LenIngrad.
IF l were asked, what is the most
4 important result that we have at
tanned during the eight years since
the Bolshevik revolution, in Novem-
Der, 1917, would reply: The most
important thing is that today, all
working men and women of the Nm
ion Of Soviet Republics are support
ers OF the revolution.
We have followed the right path
and If we have not completely at
tanned, that form OF life which the
working class must create, the fault
is notsours. II we still have difficulties,
it is because we have years Of severe
fighting behind us, during which the
whole bourgeois world was proceeding
against us.
General Results of Eight Years.
r BEGIN with the question of our
home policy. still have vivid
recollection that on the eve Of the
revolution one Of the most powerful
arguments against it was the meager
bread ration in Petrograd. The town
was only provisioned with bread for
two days. If the revolution is carried
out, said many, then tomorrow Petro-
grad (Leningrad) will be without
bread, and the already existing starva-
ton win be increased tenfold.
recollect that on the first anniver-
sary Of the revolution our speakers
pictured the time when we would be
able to revert to white bread. For
years there was no more urgent and
actual question for our city, and for
all the workers of Russia, than the
question of the bread ration. Now it
no longer troubles us.
There were times when the ques-
ton of fuel was for us literally a
question of life and death, when
everything hung by hair, and when
we had to send the best workers of
Petrograd to the Donetz Basin in
order that they might be able to OBJ
tain for us some meagre consign-
ment of fuel. Later we were cut
off from the Donetz Basin; Russia be-
gan slowly to freeze before our eyes,
one after another the factories closed
down. Daily We received reports as
to children frozen in our children's
homes Nowhere was there a ray Of
hope of our ever being able to es-
cape from our situation.
IT present we have difficulties Of
"A quite a different nature; we do
not know where we shall dispose of
our coal and our naphta. The COM
rades from Baku who yesterday brot
us $4,000 rubles, on behalf of the dis
tTicts damaged by inundation, related
that the productivity of the naphta
industry is steadily growing, but it is
difficult to find markets for 1t. This,
however, in my opinion, Is only a
temporary difficulty. s
You remember the fate of our Sow
let money. Recently many of us were
millionaires, even milliardaires, as our
salaries were reckoned in hundreds Of
millions. But as millionaires we had
a fairly hard time We are no longer
troubled with the question of STABILIZE
ing our currency. We have now a
real genuine Soviet currency.
Call to mind the turn of affairs in
1921:the transition to the New Eco
nomic Policy, to the so-called Nep.
That was time Of great uncertainty.
Many workers stood at the cross road
and hesitated It was not only the
non-party workers who vacillated, but
many Communists too It. must now
be understood that by means Of the
Nep we shall arrive at socialism and
the complete emancipation of the
working class.
Even a superficial glance at the
events of the last seven years show