Communism -- Soviet Union; Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921
The comrades who left us acted like deserters, because they not only
abandoned the posts entrusted to them, but also disobeyed the direct
instructions of the Central Committee of our party, to the effect that
they should await the decisions of the Petrograd and Moscow party
organisations before retiring. We blame decisively such desertion. We
are firmly convinced that all conscious workers, soldiers and peasants,
belonging to our party or sympathising with it, will also disapprove of
the behaviour of the deserters….
Remember, comrades, that two of these deserters, Kameniev and Zinoviev,
even before the uprising in Petrograd, appeared as deserters and
strike-breakers, by voting at the decisive meeting of the Central
Committee, October 23d, 1917, against the insurrection; and even AFTER
the resolution passed by the Central Committee, they continued their
campaign at a meeting of the party workers…. But the great impulse of
the masses, the great heroism of millions of workers, soldiers and
peasants, in Moscow, Petrograd, at the front, in the trenches, in the
villages, pushed aside the deserters as a railway train scatters
saw-dust….
Shame upon those who are of little faith, hesitate, who doubt, who
allow themselves to be frightened by the bourgeoisie, or who succumb
before the cries of the latter’s direct or indirect accomplices! There
is NOT A SHADOW of hesitation in the MASSES of Petrograd, Moscow, and
the rest of Russia….
… We shall not submit to any ultimatums from small groups of
intellectuals which are not followed by the masses, which are
PRACTICALLY only supported by Kornilovists, Savinkovists, _yunkers,_
and so forth….
The response from the whole country was like a blast of hot storm. The
insurgents never got a chance to “say openly their opinion to the
masses of workers and soldiers.” Upon the _Tsay-ee-kah_ rolled in like
breakers the fierce popular condemnation of the “deserters.” For days
Smolny was thronged with angry delegations and committees, from the
front, from the Volga, from the Petrograd factories. “Why did they dare
leave the Government? Were they paid by the bourgeoisie to destroy the
Revolution? They must return and submit to the decisions of the Central
Committee!”
Only in the Petrograd garrison was there still uncertainty. A great
soldier meeting was held on November 24th, addressed by representatives
of all the political parties. By a vast majority Lenin’s policy was
sustained, and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries were told that they
must enter the government…. _See next page._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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