386 THE CLASS STRUGGLE SOVIET RUSSIA SPEAKS TO BRITAIN 387 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, inconsiderable in proportion to Russia area, without. police, without Press censorship, indeed with a greater liberty of speech and Press than exists in any other country (the repeatedly made, and as repeatedly disproved, allegations to the contrary notwithstanding. 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 desire to tolerate the Soviet regime. This absurd assumption may or may not explain why Germany has not yet overrun the whole of Russia, but it certainly does not why the Russians themselves, who could free themselves from the strongly entrenched Czarist regime and from the Kerensky Government with its army, many millions strong, have not yet been able to overthrow the Soviets, if they desire to.
As a matter of fact, all attempts to do this have utterly failedattempts which have been carried out by generals, officers, and so called White Guards formed from the capitalist and middleclass youngsters and some well to do Cossacks. Even the capitalist class had to admit that Captain Semenoff in Siberia was able to enlist only about 500 Buriats (a primitive Siberian tribe. completing his detachments, General Krasnov is advancing on the Don with the aid of German troops, and on the top of this now comes the latest revolt of the Czecho Slovaks (Austrian prisoners of war. headed by Russian counter revolutionary officers. But the most striking reply to Kerensky 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 Petro grad Soviet 233 supporters of the Soviets (221 Bolsheviks and 12 Social Revolutionaries of the left wing) and only 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 interyention in Russian internal affairs to re create a Russian army for the resumption of the war on a large scale, take it upon myself to declare that this is the merest political charlatanism, for he promises what he knows full well that neither he nor any antiSoviet party can perform. Anyone even slightly acquainted with Russian affairs will understand the emptiness of such promises.
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. Intervention is advocated by ex officials and ambassadors of the Czar regime living abroad and supported by French bankers and international Shylocks who hope thus to be able to extract from the impoverished Russian people their pound of flesh, the interest on the loans contracted by the ex Czar.
Do not allow yourself to be misled by the presumption that Kerensky pleaded for one Labor Party in Russia against another.
The overthrow of the Bolsheviks cannot mean that any other Socialist or even Democratic party will take over the power. The Soviet Government, if overthrown at the present juncture, can only be superseded by the most brutal and barbaric military dictatorship, resting on foreign bayonets, with the inevitable subsequent restoration of Czarism. Is British Labor 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?