ADDRESS OF THE PEOPLES COMMISSAR ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Comrades: Upon Soviet Russia has fallen the task not only to construct
the new but also to recapitulate the old to a certain degree, or,
rather, to a very large degree--to pay all bills, first of all the bills
of the war, which has lasted three and a half years. The war put the
economic power of the belligerent countries to a severe test. The fate
of Russia, a poor, backward country, in a protracted war was
predetermined. In the terrible collision of the military machines the
determining factor, after all is said and done, is the ability of the
country to adapt its industries to the military needs, to rebuild it on
the shortest notice and to produce in continuously increasing quantities
the weapons of destruction which are used up at such an enormous rate
during this massacre of peoples. Almost every country, including the
most backward, could and did have powerful weapons of destruction at the
beginning of the war; that is, it obtained them from foreign countries.
That is what all the backward countries did, and so did Russia. But the
war speedily wears out its dead capital, demanding that it be
continuously replenished. The military power of every single country
drawn into the whirlpool of the world massacre was, as a matter of fact,
measured by its ability to produce independently and during the war
itself, its cannons and shells and the other weapons of destruction.
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