In connection with this ferocious document and its announcement that “counter-revolutionists” would be subject to “pitiless destruction,” that “counter-revolutionary agitators” would be “mercilessly shot,” it is important to remember that during the summer of 1917, when Kerensky was struggling against “German counter-revolutionists” and plots to overthrow the Revolution, the Bolsheviki had demanded the abolition of the death penalty. Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and others denounced Kerensky as a “hangman” and “murderer.” Where is the moral integrity of these men? Like scorpion stings are the bitter words of the protest of L. Martov, leader of the radical left wing of the Menshevist Social Democrats: In 1910 the International Socialist Congress at Copenhagen passed a resolution in favor of starting a campaign in all countries for the abolition of the death penalty. All the present leaders of the Bolshevist Party--Lenin, Zinoviev, Trotsky, Kamenev, Radek, Rakovsky, Lunarcharsky--voted for this resolution. I saw them all there raising their hands in favor of the resolution declaring war on capital punishment. Then I saw them in Petrograd in July, 1917, protesting against punishing by death even those who had turned traitors to their country during the war. I see them now condemning to death and executing people, bourgeoisie and workmen, peasants and officers alike. I see them now demanding from their subordinates that they should not count the victims, that they should put to death as many opponents of the Bolshevist régime as possible. And I say to these Bolshevist “judges”: “You are malignant liars and perjurers! You have deceived the workmen’s International by signing its demand for the universal abolition of the death penalty and by its restoration when you came to power. No idle threat was the proclamation of February: the performance was fully as brutal as the text. Hundreds of people were shot. The death penalty had been “abolished,” and on the strength of that fact the Bolsheviki had been lauded to the skies for their humanity by myopic and perverse admirers in this country and elsewhere outside of Russia. But the shooting of people by the armed detachments of the Extraordinary Commission went on. No court ever examined the cases; no competent jurists heard or reviewed the evidence, or even examined the charges. A simple entry, such as “Ivan Kouzmitch--Robbery--Shot,” might cover the murder of a devoted Socialist whose only crime was a simple speech to his fellow-workmen in favor of the immediate convocation of the Constituent Assembly, or calling upon them to unite against the Bolsheviki. And where counter-revolutionary agitation was given as the crime for which men were shot there was nothing to show, in many cases, whether the victim had taken up arms against the Soviet power or merely expressed opinions unfavorable to the régime.