V. I. Lenin

Draft Decision of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on the

Report of the Delegation to the Genoa Conference


Written: 15 or 16 May, 1922
First Published: Published for the first time; Published according to the manuscript
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, pages 356-357
Translated: David Skvirsky and George Hanna
Transcription\HTML Markup: David Walters & R. Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License


The All-Russia Central Executive Committee’s draft resolution on bile’s report should be drawn up approximately as follows:

1. The delegation of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee has carried out its task correctly in upholding the full sovereignty of the R.S.F.S.R., opposing attempts to force the country into bondage and restore private property, and in concluding a treaty with Germany.

2. The international political and economic situation is characterised by the following features.

Political: the absence of peace and the danger of fresh imperialist wars Ireland, India, China and others; worsening of relations between Britain and France, between Japan and the United States, etc., etc. ((in greater detail)).

3. Economic: the “victor” countries, exceedingly powerful and enriched by the war (=by plunder), have not been able to re-establish even the former capitalist relations three and a half years after the war currency chaos; non-fulfilment of the Treaty of Versailles and the impossibility of its fulfilment; non-payment of debts to the United States, etc., etc. (in greater detail).

4. Therefore, Article One of the Cannes resolutions, by recognising the equality of the two property systems (capitalist or private property, and communist property, so far accepted only in the R.S.F.S.R.), is thus compelled to recognise, even if only indirectly, the collapse, the bankruptcy of the first property system and the inevitability of its coming to an agreement with the second, on terms of equality.

5. The other articles of the Cannes terms, as well as the memoranda, etc., of the powers at Genoa, are in contradiction to this and are, therefore, still-born.

6. True equality of the two property systems—if only as a temporary state, until such time as the entire world abandons private property and the economic chaos and wars engendered by it for the higher property system—is found only in the Treaty of RapaIlo.[1]

The All-Russia Central Executive Committee, therefore:

welcomes the Treaty of Rapailo as the only correct -way out of the difficulties, chaos and danger of wars (as long as there remain two property systems, one of them as obsolete as capitalist property);

recognises only this type of treaty as normal for relations between the R.S.F.S.R. and capitalist countries;

instructs the Council of People’s Commissars and the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to pursue a policy along these lines;

instructs the Presidium of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee to confirm it by agreement with all republics that are in federal relations with the R.S.F.S.R.;

instructs the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and the Council of People’s Commissars to permit deviations from the Rapallo-type treaty only in exceptional circumstances that gain very special advantages for the working people of the R.S.F.S.R., etc.


Endnotes

[1] The treaty signed by Soviet Russia and Germany on April 16, 1922 at Rapailo (near Genoa) at the time of the Genoa Conference.

Under this treaty the signatories renounced all claims arising from the First World War. On the condition that the Soviet Government would not meet similar claims of other states, the German Government renounced its demand for the return to former German owners of enterprises nationalised by the Soviet Government. At the same time the two countries established diplomatic relations and most favoured nation treatment in economic questions, The signing of the Rapallo Treaty was a major achievement of Soviet diplomacy. It strengthened the Soviet state’s international position and wrecked the attempts to form a united anti-Soviet front. This treaty showed the Soviet Government’s desire to normalise relations with bourgeois states solely on the basis of recognition of the equality of the two systems of ownership.