09.07.1998

Hands off Russia!

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, July 11 1918

The news from Russia is exceedingly grave. It would appear that the intervention has already begun and a British armed detachment has been landed at Murmansk ...

Organised labour, in spite of the sorry Kerensky episode [the Labour Party allowed the deposed head of the provisional government to address its conference, while refusing Maxim Litvinov, the Russian ambassador, the right of reply], must speak in no uncertain terms and protest against this shameful attempt. For the document which Kerensky has himself published as coming from some of the parties of the defunct constituent assembly itself protests against military intervention in Russian affairs, even though it declares Russia still to be at war with Germany.

Hands off the Russian Socialist Republic!

Russian stroke crushed

The attempted stroke of the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left against the soviet government is the first of its kind in the very heart of the republic. It was crushed without difficulty - one more proof of the strength of the Bolshevik regime, but it is of enormous significance by reason of the fact that the left Socialist Revolutionaries have until recently cooperated with the Bolsheviks and only passed into opposition after the conclusion of peace, as a protest against the Brest-Litovsk treaty.

One would never have expected their opposition to go so far as to foment a rebellion and, as many of their leaders belong to the brightest personalities of the Russian Revolution, the surmise is obvious, and is indeed suggested in the official Russian communiqué: they harboured in their midst a number of spies and agents provocateurs of the Azev type, who worked in collusion with certain foreign agents, anxious to embroil the Russian government with the Germans by murdering the German ambassador, and to push Russia back into war by overthrowing the Bolshevik government.

This, we see now, is the meaning of the dark hints recently circulated in this country as to the impending fall of the soviet government. There is more in this business than appears to the readers of the censored daily press.