11.12.1997

Deeds not words

From ‘The Call’, paper of the British Socialist Party, December 13 1917

The struggle in Russia is not yet decided. At the moment of writing Kaledin, Kornilov (who has succeeded in escaping from prison), Dutov and other reactionary generals have raised the flag of revolt against the proletarian government of the Bolsheviks.

Although Kaledin is in a strong position of holding the great grain-producing districts of Russia, it is hardly likely that he will have any decided success against the Bolsheviks. As shown by the municipal elections a short time ago, and by the present elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks have the vast masses behind them. The main army supports them, and the Cossacks are by no means united in supporting the counterrevolutionary generals.

That the Bolsheviks are meeting with much greater success than our capitalist press would have us believe is shown by the altered tone of Sir George Buchanan’s latest utterance to the Russian press representatives.

At first the British and French governments haughtily refused to have anything to do with Russia’s new government. Trotsky’s communications were to be thrown into the waste paper basket - how indeed could the British and French governments treat with Trotsky, expelled from France and forcibly detained in Canada? But they reconciled themselves to the impossible. Trotsky’s demand for the release of Chicherin and Petrov was discussed at the Paris Conference, although it was found “impossible to accede to the Russian threat”.

And now Sir George Buchanan begs the Russian people to believe in the good intentions of the British government. He goes so far as to say that when a stable government has been constituted and recognised by the Russian people, Great Britain will consent “to examine with that government the aims of the war and possible conditions of a just and durable peace”. The previous Provisional Government of Russia was considered stable - why did they not accede to the repeated Russian request to reconsider their war aims?

The first Russian Revolution had for its clarion call ‘Peace, bread and the land for the peasants’, but whilst recognising these demands of the people in words, the coalition of Cadets and minimalist socialists were not prepared to translate their words into deeds.

Now we have a government in Russia which not only talks of the land for the peasants, but is proceeding to give it them; a government which not only talks of pressing social reforms such as housing, the state control of workshops, factories, banks, food supplies - but proceeds to carry out these measures; a government which not only talks of the evil of secret diplomacy, but proceeds to publish the secret treaties showing the hypocrisy and lust of conquest of all the imperialist governments. Above all we have a government which not only talks of the blessings of peace, but enters into negotiations for immediate peace. Small wonder that our own capitalist government finds it hard to have relations with the Russian government.

The masses here must force our own rulers to move. We must see that the peace which Russia must conclude to save herself from utter ruin shall not be a separate peace - but a general peace without annexations or indemnities.

The heroic struggle carried on by the Bolsheviks is not merely a struggle for the triumph of the Russian working class: it is the struggle for the supremacy of the workers the whole world over. Let us, by every means at our disposal, help on the triumph of the Russian Revolution and our own emancipation by forcing Britain to join Russia in negotiating for peace.

Zelda K Coates