The Russian Party of Socialists-Revolutionists differs
radically from the Social-Democratic Party; nay, more, both parties
disagree in their basic conceptions of policy and principle.
Nevertheless, I gladly accepted the invitation to write a preface to the
book on the Moscow trial, published by the Party of
Socialists-Revolutionists. More than that: I feel that I not only have a
right but am duty-bound to write this preface, in the name of my
social-democratic principles. For these principles indicate clearly that
the proletariat, as the most exploited and enslaved of all classes,
cannot emancipate itself without emancipating at the same time all those
who are enslaved. A proletarian, Socialist party cannot fulfill its
great, historic mission without making itself the protector of all the
enslaved and oppressed.
For this reason, Marx and Engels took up the cudgels in behalf of
oppressed Poland and raised their voices in defense of Ireland. For this
reason, Socialists always fought for the liberation of native peoples
suffering under the colonial domination of imperialist governments. And
in doing so, Socialists frequently cooperated with non-socialist,
bourgeois elements. We are, therefore, all the more obliged to come to
the defense of the persecuted and oppressed when they belong to a party
which, like ours, although not always in the same way, seeks the
emancipation of the toilers, a party which, like ours, had for many
years waged bitter, holy war against the meanest enemy of the world
proletariat, – Russian absolutism. The fight waged today by the
Socialists-Revolutionists is but a continuation of the old fight. For
there is no substantial difference between an absolutist government
which holds its power by heritage or one which is of recent creation.
There is no material difference between the rule of a “legal” Czar and a
clique that accidentally established itself in power. There is no
difference between a tyrant who lives in a palace and a despot who
misused the revolution of workers and peasants to ascend into the
Kremlin.
And the fact that the new Russian despotism is bonapartist rather
than czarist in character makes it all the more essential for the
Socialist parties of the world to come to the defense of the Russian
Socialists persecuted by this bonapartist regime. For what this regime
seeks is to make the Socialists of the entire world its associates in
its policy of persecution, – something which Czarism, for obvious
reasons, never aimed at. The Bolshevist rulers want the Socialists of
the whole world to applaud their persecution of the
Socialists-Revolutionists and Mensheviki, but the time has passed when
they could expect their assertions to pass unchallenged.
The Bolsheviki maintain that their policy constitutes the only
genuine application of Marxism, that it constitutes a strict application
of the principles of the class struggle. But the oppression and
persecution of workingmen, belonging to another current of Socialist
thought, and for no other reason than that these workers prefer to
interpret Socialism in a manner different from the Bolsheviki, is in
sharp contradiction with these class-struggle principles. We, Marxian
Social-Democrats, in common with nearly all other Socialists, stand for
democracy and for the right of unrestricted political propaganda for all
political parties. This right of unrestricted propaganda we must, above
all, demand for all the Socialist parties in Russia. It is quite
inevitable for the respective Socialist parties to find themselves
frequently in disagreement with one another. But this must be expressed
only in a struggle of argument, in a struggle for the soul of the
proletariat. Socialists who resort in this struggle against the opinions
of other Socialists to guns, bayonets, Che-Ka organizations and jails
are committing an act of violence against the proletariat and the idea
of the class struggle.
Even the Bolsheviki themselves feel this. For this reason they seek
to excuse their regime of violence in the eyes of the Socialists of the
entire world by asserting, like the wolf in the old fable, that the
sheep are trying to pollute the water which they, the Bolsheviki,
forsooth seek to maintain unpolluted. To convince the world of the truth
of this claim was the chief purpose of the Moscow trial. By this trial
the Bolsheviki sought to destroy not only physically but morally the
foremost representatives of the Socialists-Revolutionists. But the trial
produced quite the opposite effect. It resulted in the moral victory of
the accused and the moral execution of the accusers.
The Bolsheviki were first to use violence against other Socialists.
They dissolved the Constituent Assembly not by way of resistance against
any violence on the part of the Socialists-Revolutionists and
Mensheviki but because of their realization of their own inability to
obtain the support of the majority of the peasants and workers by means
of free propaganda. This was the fundamental cause of the Bolshevist
coup d’etat against the representatives of the revolutionary workers and
peasants. Hence, the abolition of all rights of all other Socialists
who refused to submit to the crack of the Bolshevist whip. Hence, the
establishment of a political regime which leaves but one form of open,
political action for the opposition – civil war. The Social-Democracy
was never averse to the use of violence in resistance against violent
persecution. It simply made the advisability of the use of such violence
conditional upon considerations of purpose and the possibility of
success. If the Social-Democracy found itself in disagreement with the
Socialists-Revolutionists in this regard, it was not from considerations
of principle but of tactics. But, if I am correctly informed on this
point, there are no substantial differences of opinion at the present
moment between the Socialists-Revolutionists and the Mensheviki. Both
recognize that an anti-Bolshevist uprising at the present moment could
not be successful and would even, under certain circumstances, lead to a
result diametrically opposed to that sought, by provoking foreign and
reactionary intervention. Armed uprising against the Bolsheviki, at the
present moment, would only delay the process now in progress in Russia
and pregnant with great consequences, – the process of the desertion of
Bolshevism by the proletarian and peasant masses and their return to the
other Socialist parties. This process represents a deadly danger for
the Bolshevist dictatorship. The real crime of which the
Socialists-Revolutionists are guilty before the Bolsheviki at the
present moment is not in the preparation of terroristic acts and armed
uprisings, but in that, like the Mensheviki and perhaps even to a larger
extent, the Socialists-Revolutionists, whose ranks are constantly
growing in number, are acquiring in ever increasing measure the
confidence of the toiling masses of Russia. This bids fair to bring
about the complete isolation of the Bolsheviki in a short time, so that
the only ones who will stand behind them will be a few capitalists and
the Red Army. Nor is the army, too, likely to continue its support of
the Bolsheviki very long, for military dictatorships must have military
successes abroad and cannot thrive merely upon suppression of uprisings
of hunger-driven peasants. In vain do the Bolsheviki seek to stem the
tide against them. The only thing they still command in full is the art
of destroying their opponents by means of falsehood and violence. They
have shown a complete lack of understanding of the pre-requisites under
which alone Socialist production is possible, as well as entire lack of
perspicacity in determining the conditions essential for the development
of capitalist production. In their aspiration for the realization of
Socialism they have destroyed Russia’s entire machinery of production,
while their present effort to patch it up with the assistance of
capitalism carries the danger of aggravating this destruction. But even
should they succeed in establishing a new capitalism in Russia and to
resume production with its assistance, they would do so in the presence
of a proletariat which they themselves have rendered unfit for struggle
and resistance.
In both cases, misery and poverty will continue to reign in Russia
for many years and will continue to fan apathy and despair, on one side,
and uprisings, provoked by the despair of the masses – on the other.
The Moscow trial was intended to distract the growing opposition of the
masses against the Bolsheviki and direct popular wrath against the
Socialists-Revolutionists. How vain the effort! The arrow, in falling,
struck the ones who fired it.
The Bolsheviki hoped to represent the accused
Socialists-Revolutionists and their entire party as allies and
associates of the counter-revolution and foreign powers. To accomplish
this aim, they did not hesitate to employ the most shameless and
dishonest methods of the regime of the old police. They outdid the
limitless shamelessness of that regime, whose prosecutors, as is well
known, needed but a few lines penned by the accused to send him to the
gallows. With all that, however, the Bolsheviki succeeded only in
exposing the mean depths of their own soul.
When the counter-revolution suppressed Marx’s Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
in 1849, Freiligrath branded this act in words of fire as contemptible
violence. He said: “This is not an open blow in an open fight. Against
me are barbarism and meanness. This blow has been struck against me by
the forces of sneaky, dirty, despicable Asiatic barbarism”.
The defendants in the Moscow trial were likewise struck not by an
open blow in an open fight. The blow struck against them was delivered
by the hired, contemptible, low hirelings of Tartar or Kalmyk socialism.
But how innocent was the despicableness assailed by Freiligrath in
comparison with the despicableness revealed by the Bolsheviki in the
Moscow trial! The shameless falsehood, contemptible cowardice and
devilish cruelty of the prosecutors, judges and secret service men
revealed in the Moscow trial are unprecedented in the history of the
world and will mark one of its most shameful pages.
How heroic do the figures of the accused men and women appear and how
disgusting and pitiful are the pack of hounds who demanded their blood,
who hurled insult and humiliation upon them in their eagerness to
persecute them in order that they might revel in their suffering!
The moral loftiness of the accused and the moral degeneration of
their accusers at the trial were so self evident and convincing, that
the whole thing formed a picture of remarkable clarity and produced an
indelible impression upon everybody, with the exception of the pack of
bloodthirsty hounds hired by the Moscow executioners to defend their
miserable case in the European press and who were low and mean enough to
do it.
The accused Socialists-Revolutionists saved the honor of Socialism,
trampled by the Bolsheviki. The names of Gotz, Timofeyeff and their
comrades will be enshrined in the hearts of the workers of the entire
world, regardless of party affiliations.
Never did the Bolsheviki descend to their present low level. Time was
when we knew many of them as honest fighters and idealists. But the
coup d’etat of 1917 placed them in a false position, which was bound to
lead consistently to their inevitable and ever-growing perversion.
From the very beginning, they founded their power upon falsehood and
violence directed against the proletariat, upon the principle that the
end justifies the means. This principle always and inevitably leads to
the degeneration of the party applying it, for it perverts the party and
paralyzes those who do not oppose this perversion.
Parties who aspire to great aims cannot afford to use any other means
than those these aims demand. A party who seeks the emancipation of the
proletariat cannot, in its efforts to gain and hold power, use means
which disorganize and demoralize the proletariat. But it was only by
such means that the Bolsheviki could strengthen their hold upon Russia
and, therefore, they preferred the destruction of the Russian and the
weakening of the world proletariat to understanding with the other
Socialist parties of Russia, which alone could secure the establishment
of a revolutionary regime that would support itself upon the broad
masses and give these masses that freedom without which it is impossible
for them to promote their spiritual development and economic
well-being.
By resorting for the sake of the strengthening and preservation of
their power to measures leading to the weakening and dissolution of the
proletariat, the Bolsheviki have shown that they are not concerned with
the emancipation of the proletariat but are simply a clique concerning
itself solely with the preservation of its own power.
This attribute of Bolshevism makes it akin to the heritage of the
French Revolution: bonapartism. Like bonapartism, Bolshevism is founded
upon falsehood and violence. But both the first and second Empires
marked the opening of new eras of economic prosperity for France and
could, therefore, support themselves not only upon the capitalists and
peasantry but also upon the broad masses of the people. Bolshevism, on
the other hand, has destroyed Russia and set all the people against it.
Its falsehood and violence, therefore, exceed the falsehood and violence
of French bonapartism. And for this reason, despite its falsehood,
meanness and cruelty, Bolshevism will not be able to maintain itself as
long as did the regime of Bonaparte in France.
The Moscow trial constituted a desperate effort on the part of the
Bolsheviki to discredit their most dangerous opponents at the present
moment in the eyes of the Russian and world proletariat. They sought to
represent these opponents as associates of the counter-revolution and
thus rehabilitate the prestige of Communism, which has lost the
sympathies of the overwhelming majority of the proletariat.
But the Bolsheviki lost the trial. It is not the accused but the
accusers and their hirelings who today stand condemned in Russia and
throughout the world. This trial, which provoked the deepest, universal
contempt, revealed even to those who hitherto still failed to see the
truth, the utter decay and degeneration of the Bolshevist regime.
But the Moscow trial is merely one of the episodes incident to the
world-wide, historic conflict conducted by Bolshevism. Out of this
conflict it will emerge discredited and condemned. A regime like that of
the Bolsheviki has already grown rotten-ripe for destruction. It is
impossible to foresee yet when and how it will fall but one thing can be
said now and with absolute certainty:
BOLSHEVISM WILL FALL IN SHAME AND DISGRACE, BEMOANED PERHAPS ONLY BY
THE SPECULATORS OF THE CAPITALIST WORLD, BUT ACCOMPANIED BY THE CURSES
OF THE ENTIRE WORLD PROLETARIAT STRUGGLING FOR EMANCIPATION. THAT IS THE
LESSON AND THE HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MOSCOW TRIAL.
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