434 THE CLASS STRUGGLE AN OPEN LETTER 435 Why did you go to Russia, and what do you expect to get out of it? You went there to help the Czecho Slovaks, of course!
That is what the diplomatic declarations said. To help the CzechoSlovaks to get out of Russia to fight on the western front. But aside from the fact that these declarations speak of the westward movement of the Czecho Slovaks. and nobody certainly imagines that the Czecho Slovaks can go to the western front by moving westward from Siberia you will remember that the intervention plans regarding Russia were laid long before the editors of the American papers learned how to spell the name of CzechoSlovaks, or before they knew whether the Czecho Slovaks were inhabitants of Africa or Australia.
Some time ago saw a plan of Russian intervention, which was submitted to the State Department by some great defenders of American business and democracy. It was submitted last March, and it openly spoke of the necessity of finding a pretext for intervention in Russia. Very frankly it contemplated the possibility of inducing somebody to invite an Allied intervention. The Cadet Party was expected to do the inviting. but even the Cadets did not dare openly to invite foreign intervention in Russia. The statement purporting to come from the Cadet Party, inviting Allied intervention, was fabricated in Paris by former Russian ambassadors and other adventurers who represented nobody but themselves. Even Kerensky could not be induced to plead for an armed intervention in Russia, and now he, who was your hero two months ago, is ostracised by respectable society. And so the interventionists had to resort to political trickery, which would be comical if its consequences were not so tragic. The population on the Murman coast has invited you to take Archangel! The population on the Murman coast, forsooth! Some illiterate Lapp fishermen and a handful of intellectuals truly true representatives of Russia! Later the interventionists succeeded in bringing to Archangel old man Tchaikovsky and a few other members of the dissolved Constitutional Assembly, which forthwith was proclaimed as the legitimate government of Russia in the declaration issued by Allied representatives at Archangel. But in Vladivostok not even that much could have been accomplished, as far as the local population is concerned. In the face of an Allied armed occupation, Vladivostok in the municipal elections gave an overwhelming majority to the Bolsheviki. The workers struck in protest against Allied occupation in Vladivostok, and your papers triumphantly declare, after having said for many days that the strike would not materialize, as most of the workers would not strike, that the strike is a fizzle, as the Allies have been successful in replacing the strikers with Chinese workingmen. Fighting for democracy by arraying coolie labor against Russia! Not interfering in internal affairs of Russia. yet arraying one group of people against another!
What are you doing in Russia, sir? Don you think that people have eyes to see and ears to hear with? Who invited you to Vladisvostok? Was it Colonel Semenoff, a discredited Czar official, and General Horvath, a notorious swindler and adventurer at the head of a few thousand troops composed of Chinese riff raff, saloon keepers, gamblers and other adventurers of the wild east, who valiantly rose in defense of civilization because the workers rule in Siberia was putting an end to the unspeakable social conditions in the towns of the far wild east. If your purpose is to get the Czecho Slovaks out of Russia so that they may fight Germany, why don you send them to Finland to fight the Germans there? Why are you not similarly interested in aiding the Finnish workers, who are now in Russia, in an attack upon the German masters of Finland? The British Government gave assurances a few days ago to the Finnish proGerman White Guard Government that it would not encourage any groups or factions in Finland. Did this declaration mean, if anything, that the British Government under no circumstances would encourage the anti German workers of Finland to fight against their masters? But when in Southern Russia the Cossack General Krassnoff, armed and supported by German troops, makes an attack against the Soviet Russia, his activities are being hailed in the press as a part of the work of liberation in Russia. How can you explain that paradox? We are told over and over again that this is a war for democracy and against German militarism, yet it seems that in Finland the blackest reaction,