Bolshevism: A Curse & Danger to the Workers — John Shaqi
Bolshevism: A Curse & Danger to the WorkersLee, H. W. (Henry William)
History
Bolshevism: A Curse & Danger to the Workers
Lee, H. W. (Henry William)
Communism; Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921
Our minds go back to the Leeds "Convention," held in June, 1917. The
delegates at that Conference declared that they were in favour of
Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils being formed in all the large
industrial centres of the country. Nothing whatever came of it. But
the W.S.C.s then controlling the revolutionary undercurrent in Russia
were totally different from the Bolshevist tyranny of to-day, and many
of the delegates who formed the W.S.C.s in various parts of Russia
after the Revolution have been imprisoned or shot because they opposed
the domination of Lenin and Trotzky.
Last Tuesday I saw two friends whom I met in Petrograd in April, 1917,
and both of them absolutely confirm the statements made in the Press
about the hundreds of men and women who have been shot without any
trial or confirmation of the charges brought against them.
An article which appears in the "Nineteenth Century" of January,
written by Mr. Pierson, who was imprisoned in the Fortress of St.
Peter and St. Paul last October, after being arrested at the British
Embassy in Petrograd at the same time that Captain Cromie was shot,
also confirms the brutalities that are taking place constantly in
Petrograd and other parts of Russia.
A letter in the "Daily Express," written by Colonel John Ward, M.P.,
shows the terrible hell which Bolshevism is making, and the methods
that are being pursued by the followers of Lenin and Trotzky. If the
Soldiers' and Workmen's Councils had done their duty in the latter
part of April, 1917, after Lenin made his two hours' speech in the
Duma on April 17, they would have sent him back whence he came,
because it is a well-known fact that he was allowed to pass through
Germany with thirty other companions in a first-class saloon. I am
quite convinced that it was not the Russian people who were paying his
expenses during the time he was carrying on his pernicious propaganda
work in various parts of Russia. The downfall of the Soldiers' and
Workmen's Councils has been the consequence of their giving Lenin and
his thirty companions full freedom to spread their anarchical creed
and the wiping out of duly elected Assemblies.
The leading men of the Bolshevik movement in this country are out for
the overthrow of things as they are by physical force as soon as they
feel confident that they have a good number of the rank and file of
the wage-earners behind them. I want to warn the wage-earners--men and
women of my own class--against being associated with such people,
because I know that their tactics cannot remedy the economic and
industrial injustices under which the industrial workers are
suffering. They can be rectified by Social-Democratic education,
scientific organisation in the trade union movement, and by using
political powers to that end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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