02.07.1998

Litvinov accuses Kerensky

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, July 4 1918

The plenipotentiary representative of the Russian Federative Socialist Republic of Soviets defends the Revolution

The chairman of the Labour Party conference has withheld from me the opportunity of conveying to the delegates the greetings of the Russian working class and their representative body, the government of the Russian Socialist Republic. He has moreover deemed it fair and just to allow Mr Kerensky to make a calumnious attack on this republic, without permitting me, as its accredited representative, to reply to his charges, in spite of my own request and that of many delegates ...

Whom does Mr Kerensky represent? ... It is natural to suppose that delegates or visitors officially invited to Labour conferences should represent the interests of labour. Does Mr Kerensky now represent those interests? Does he even pretend to represent them? Mr Kerensky in his speech made no mention of the working classes; he was honest enough not to speak on their behalf, but appealed on behalf of the intellectuals, on behalf of officers, on behalf of “Russia”.

It should be remembered that the Russian Revolution was not merely a political revolution - it was, and is, also a social revolution. And as such it necessarily sharpens the class struggle, which has now reached its extreme point, having divided the country into two opposing, completely irreconcilable components ... The different shades of political opinions and parties faded into insignificance, leaving on the political arena two parties - supporters and opponents of the soviets (councils of workers’ and peasants’ delegates).

I maintain that labour, whether in or out of power, is more than any other class entitled to speak on behalf of its country. And this is especially true in Russia, where the labouring masses are in full and indisputable control of the state apparatus, themselves forming the central and local government of their country. And when anyone speaks in the name of Russia, he must be asked point blank whether he speaks in the name of those who, after eight months of the bitterest struggles, have defeated their enemies, consolidated their power, and are now the only guardians of the political and social gains of the great Russian Revolution; or whether he speaks in the name of those who, having used the foulest means at their disposal to overthrow the authority of the workers, have failed to achieve any success in Russia itself, and are now invoking the name of foreign powers, looking for support now to Germany, now to the Allies.

Mr Kerensky, like our opponents, makes the bold statement that the soviet government does not represent the bulk of the population. But when faced with the pertinent question, ‘How then has this government maintained its power if it be against the will of the people?’, he finds no reply. The continuance of a government in time of revolution for eight months, without a standing army except voluntary detachments ... without police, without press censorship ... struggling against internal and external difficulties greater than any which have ever before confronted a government in the history of mankind, can only be explained by the unlimited enthusiastic support of the great majority of the people.

To obscure this striking truth Kerensky was only able to make misty allusions to Germany’s desire to tolerate the soviet regime. This absurd assumption ... certainly does not explain why the Russians themselves ... have not been able to overthrow the soviets, if they desire to ...

But the most striking reply to Kerensky’s false allegation as to the unpopularity of the soviet regime comes in a message from Russia, telling us that at the elections of this month to the Petrograd Soviet 233 supporters of the soviets (221 Bolsheviks and 12 Socialist Revolutionaries of the left wing) and only five anti-soviet candidates were returned. And this in Petrograd, in the most famine-stricken city in Russia, where dissatisfaction might have naturally reached its climax.

When Mr Kerensky promises in exchange for this intervention in Russian internal affairs to recreate a Russian army for the resumption of the war on a large scale, I take it upon myself to declare that this is the merest political charlatan-ism...

No! The re-creation of the Russian front is not the purpose of the much talked of Japanese or Allied intervention. The real object is of course the crushing of the workers’ government and of the Revolution, the spread of whose influence to other countries is a standing menace to international capitalism ...

Do not allow yourself to be misled by the presumption that Kerensky pleaded for one labour party in Russia against another. The overthrow of the Bolsheviks cannot mean that any other socialist or even democratic party will take over power. The soviet government, if overthrown at the present juncture, can only be superseded by the most brutal and barbarous military dictatorship, resting on foreign bayonets, with the inevitable subsequent restoration of tsarism.

Is British labour going to be a party to these dark schemes? Is the British proletariat prepared to take upon itself the responsibility before history for the crushing of the great Russian proletarian revolution?

Maxim Litvinov