Comrades, we are opening our Party Congress at a difficult, complicated and peculiar stage in the Russian ancin the world proletarian revolution. I’m the first period after the October Revolution the forces of the Party and of he Soviet government were almost entirely absorbed by the tasks of direct defense, of offering direct resistance to our enc mics, the bourgeoisie at home and abroad, who could not reconcile themselves to the idea that the socialist republic could exist for any length of time. We nevertheless gradually began to consolidate our position and the tasks of construction, organizational tasks, began to come to the fore. I think
that this work of construction and organization should be the keynote of our Congress.
Speeches at the Eighth Party Congress
V. I.Lenin
PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
MoNE0 1971
