The Revolt

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Report to the Fifth All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’, Cossacks’ and Red Army Men’s Deputies, on July 9, 1918, the day following the suppression of the revolt by the Left SRs which took place on July 6-8, 1918

Comrades, an unforeseen interruption occurred during the Fifth All-Russia Congress of Soviets, owing to recent events in Moscow, the echo of which has not yet finally subsided. I spoke of unforeseen events although, to a certain extent, their symptoms were present already on the eve of this Congress. If you remember – and, of course, you do remember it – the first political question with which the present Congress began its work concerned, precisely the provocations being committed by certain groups and individuals in the sphere of our international relations. The Fifth Congress adopted a first resolution which severely condemned those groups which consider it possible, acting behind the back of the Soviet power – at the given moment, behind the back of the All-Russia Congress of Soviets – to decide political questions according to their own discretion, and in particular to try and decide, in practice, the question of whom the Russian Republic is today to be at peace with, and with whom it is to be at war. Then, when this question had been voted on, the Left SR group left the meeting-hall, and this withdrawal was already, in itself, profoundly symptomatic. It meant that, after the principal and most acute question in the sphere of foreign policy had been decided, that question on the settlement of which, one way or the other, the fate of the inhabitants of the Russian Republic and the fate of the entire revolution depends, the so-called Left SR Party considered itself obliged to withdraw, as though striking its name out of the Soviet muster-roll. This first warning was not fully understood at the time.

On July 6, at three o’clock in the afternoon or thereabouts, this political enigma, this political half-riddle found most clear and distinct expression in the provocative assassination of the German ambassador, Count Mirbach. This murder was a senseless and dishonest act of violence against the policy which is being followed by the All-Russia Soviet power. The murder itself was carried out by using the apparatus of Soviet power. Here we had an action that was unlike the terrorist actions carried out in former times by the best fighters of the SR party. You all know that in the past we took a negative view of terror. At the same time, however, we felt moral respect for those sincere heroes who, in the epoch of Tsardom, sacrificed their own lives to destroy the hangmen of the Tsarist regime.

In the present action the facts are completely opposite, not only politically but also morally, to what I have just mentioned.

The SRs called themselves a Soviet party. I refer to the so-called ‘Lefts’. As such they entered Soviet institutions and made use of Soviet power, and to accomplish their act of terrorism it was not their own Party apparatus, their own personal forces that they utilized. In order to promote Party measures they acted dishonestly from within the Soviet organization, making it their task to utilize Soviet institutions, or institutions formed to safeguard the Soviet regime, in order to fulfill their plans. In particular, for the purpose of gaining entry to the German Embassy, they stole documents, forging the signatures of persons whose subordinates they were. And so, relying on stolen and forged documents, they got into the presence of the German Ambassador and carried out their act of terrorism. For what purpose? So as, by killing the German Ambassador, to throw a weighty argument into that scale of the balance which stands for war.

Thus, in order to bring about war, this group ignored the views of the All-Russia Congress of Soviets, as expressed in your vote of July 4. In order to wreck the policy of the Soviet power, this group utilized the institutions of that power, entering into them as a Soviet party and acquiring Soviet authority through the ruling organs of that power. This is perfidy without precedent in history, or, at least, in the history of revolutions.

It is an act of perfidy such as only the Azefs [E.F. Azef was a notorious provocateur who, having become a trusted member of the SRs’ terrorist organization in the early 1900s, used his position to betray a number of leading SRs to the Tsarist police. He was exposed by Burtsev in 1908 and fled abroad.] of the revolution could commit. These Azefs first expounded before you here their point of view, the point of view of war, but when you rejected it, then, using the authority which you had not managed to strip from them and which they still wielded, they went to one of your institutions and used your own weapon in order to paralyze your will. That is why I say again that this crime is an act of perfidy without precedent in all revolutionary history.

Furthermore, obeying the logic of the situation in which they had placed themselves by their murder of Count Mirbach, this group, acting, so far as we can judge, behind the backs of nine-tenths of their own party, found themselves compelled immediately to launch an open revolt against the Soviet power.

In those hours when we in the Kremlin received the first reports about the persons who had made the attempt on Count Mirbach’s life, when Comrade Dzerzhinsky, with characteristic knightliness, took upon himself, despite his friends’ warnings, the mission of proceeding to the place from where, according to the first rumors, the attack had come, so as to ascertain on the spot who was responsible, we began to receive reports that patrols sent out from Popov’s unit were arresting guards and individual representatives of the Soviet power. Comrade Dzerzhinsky was arrested by Popov’s unit, which was subordinate to him and which, when, in Red Square, I presented them with their colors, had sworn to be loyal to the Soviet power. His arrest was made with the direct participation of prominent members of the Left SR party – Aleksandrovich, Karelin, Kamkov, Spiridonova and Cherepanov. After a certain lapse of time, a group of armed sailors from Popov’s unit appeared at the Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, and from there a former member of the Commission, Zaks, also a Left SR, telephoned me to say that this group had captured Comrade Latsis and taken him away. Zaks himself had been against this action, but, evidently in a state of utter confusion, he left the Commission building. [This is G.D. Zaks (1882-1937), not to be confused with S.M. Saks (1884-1937) a Bolshevik since 1906 (or with S.E. Saks, see note on page 181).] By this time the rising had already assumed an open character: the Left SRS took Popov’s unit under their direct leadership and began to post sentries, send out patrols, and arrest representatives of the Soviet power: thus, for example, they arrested Comrade Smidovich, the chairman of the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.

There was a profound logic in all these actions. When I moved the first resolution, I asked the Left SR party whether they considered themselves bound by the discipline of the Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies and of the Congress of Soviets. I said, not just in my own name but also in that of the Communist Party, that we would bow to the vote of the All-Russia Congress, whatever it might be, on the international question, the question of war and peace, and all other questions.

I asked the Left SR party whether they too accepted the vote of the All-Russia Congress of Soviets and promised to take account of it at the given moment, where the crucial question of war and peace was concerned. I received no answer to that question. This failure to answer was, in itself, already an answer. It meant that this group of intellectuals supposes that in its policy it bases itself on a certain section of the peasantry – whereas, on the question of violating the peace of Brest Litovsk, the SR party does not enjoy the support of any significant stratum of the peasantry. This group of intellectuals, urged on and whipped up by the unbridled public opinion of the bourgeois classes, impelled by neurasthenia and by the daily hysterical howling of the SR and bourgeois press, worked itself into a state of frenzy in which it thought that it could decide, on its own, no more and no less than the question whether the land of Russia should go to war or not, whether Moscow and Petrograd should or should not be subjected to the direct threat of occupation. And it decided these questions in its own way, regardless of you and against you: and in doing this it had the audacity to refer to the vote of the best element of the Russian people. Against it we put the workers of Petrograd, the workers of Moscow, the overwhelming majority of members of this Congress: but, in its frenzy, urged on by bourgeois public opinion, this group ignored them all. This group was interested only in the public opinion of the kulaks, who expressed dissatisfaction with the Soviet power not because of the Brest peace but because of our grain-procurement policy. The ignorant elements in the countryside express discontent because they receive inadequate supplies of cloth. They forget that the workers have received just as little bread – that they, in any case, are suffering from lack of bread just as the peasants are suffering from the state of textile production. It is true that the most backward strata of the peasants are dissatisfied with the Soviet power on these grounds, but it is not true that they want war. Is there a single conscious person who today, in our present circumstances, thinks it possible for us to fight Germany?

And the Left SRs, a group of intellectuals, flesh of the flesh of the bourgeois intelligentsia, have planted their flag in the discontent of the workers, of a section of the workers, in the discontent of a section of the kulak peasants. They have placed their intellectual’s cap and bells upon the discontent of a section of the masses and declared: ‘Along with us, the people call for immediate war with Germany.’

Ask and ask again today all the Soviets, today, when the question has become serious, when life has put it to us point-blank, after this provocative terrorist act – not, of course, those sham Soviets that sit in dark corners and did nothing to help repulse the offensive of the Germans and the Haydamak [The Haydamaks were the Ukrainian nationalist forces loyal to Petlyura: they took their name, and features of their uniform, from Ukrainian rebels (against Poland) in the 18th century.] when the enemy advanced to Voronezh, Kursk and Bryansk, advanced to the Don, where we are now fighting with Krasnov, where our Red Army men are beating off attacks, dying, struggling, defending the Soviet Republic: do not ask those who in their dark corners are sucking their kulak’s ration, but ask the conscious soldiers who have been through the school of war, the best elements of the Soviet power in the major centres, where the population is more cultured, where it evaluates the entire international situation, where it knows what can and what cannot be done. Ask in the localities – you must, after the congress you will have to do this – whether they want war. And they will all tell you that those who, by an act of terrorism and not through our will, not through our consciousness, but mechanically, from without, have tried to bring down war upon our heads, have acted as our worst enemies, as traitors to the Soviet power!

The Left SRs themselves clearly and distinctly knew and felt that they had in fact crossed over into the camp of counter revolution, for there is not a single bourgeois party that would not call for war with Germany – apart, of course, from those which have become pro-German owing to the proximity of German troops. All the newspapers and organs of the Right SRs and Mensheviks have called for immediate rupture of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, while at the same time dishonestly passing over in silence the fact that Anglo-French forces are now, at this very moment, advancing in the area of the Murman coast, and that we are concentrating our forces there in order to defend the Soviet Republic, just as we shall concentrate them in North Caucasia and elsewhere against Turkish, Haydamak and, in case of danger, German invasion, for we strive everywhere, so far as our forces allow, to defend the Soviet Republic not only against the German forces wherever they attack us, violating the treaty of Brest- Litovsk, but also against the Anglo-French forces which are now trying to strike a treacherous blow at us. The bourgeois press keeps quiet about that, and the bourgeoisie itself even quieter. Helping them, the Left SRs tried to draw us into war with Germany, in the knowledge that this attempt is already in itself a revolt against the Soviet power. In general, by the character they gave to their rising, the Left SRs placed themselves in the camp of counter-revolution. They aimed their first blow at the chairman of the Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Speculation and Sabotage. By this alone they showed whose camp they belonged to!

Even to those among us who were inclined to look with benevolent, temporising tolerance, upon the behaviour of the Left SR party, as such, those who said: ‘It must be individual madmen and criminals who have committed this terrorist act, but it is not possible that the Central Committee of the Party can be mixed up in it’ – even to them it was already plain one hour, half-an-hour, after the murder of Mirbach that this was a real conspiracy, a revolt, organized under the direct leadership of the Central Committee of the Left SR party. And, of course, we could not, as we had done before, issue straight away an order for the immediate capture and bringing to trial of the two provocateurs who had tried by means of a terrorist act to involve our country in war, for order was given that sufficient military forces be at once concentrated for the task of suppressing the counter-revolutionary revolt organized under the banner of the Central Committee of the Left SR party.

To acquaint you, in broad outline, with the course of the military operations which have taken place in the last few days I will read you extracts from the reports which were sent to us concerning them.

The commander of the Lettish Division, former General Staff Colonel Vatsetis, a man who belongs to no political party, a soldier, reports that he was informed, from Government sources, that at about noon on July 6 Popov’s unit was concentrated in Trekhsvyatitelsky Lane: that this unit, made up of troops of all branches, was in a state of full combat-readiness: and that among the members of this unit were leaders of the Left SRs. On receipt of this information it became quite clear that we were faced with a thought-out, organized plan of action and full combat-readiness on the part of the Left SRs for an immediate attack. Vatsetis goes on to list the forces which were at the disposal of the rebels, but his information regarding the main body of their forces is uncertain owing to the fact that the rebels themselves could not say exactly which units they had inveigled into the revolt were really for them, which were against them and which were neutral. He says that they had between 800 and 2,000 infantry, and, as regards artillery, also depending on the same circumstances, between four and eight guns, and sixty machine-guns: also some bomb-throwers and hand-grenades. In addition, news came in that some units had gone over to the Popovites. The impressive numbers of their force and (the main thing) its complete combat-readiness and concentrated disposition, gave our adversaries a great advantage, where imminent events were concerned, when it came to seizing the initiative. The Central Committee of the Left SR Party possessed all the advantages in that respect, for it had on its side the advantages that perfidy gives: all members of the Central Committee of the Left SRs always had free access to the Kremlin whenever they wanted it, and, in particular, access to Comrade Lenin, and therefore they could carry out arrests and murders, and steal whatever papers they wanted, as they did at the office of the Commission presided over by Comrade Dzerzhinsky. They had this opportunity because, I repeat, they enjoyed the advantage of perfidy, and this weapon they used against a revolutionary party which they considered, or which they called, their brother-party.

The task which faced the military authorities was, after the initiative had been taken by the rebels, to concentrate sufficient forces to crush them as quickly as possible. How the Soviet units coped with their task is shown, with particular reference to some of them, in the report of the Commissar of the Lettish Rifle Division, Comrade Peterson, a revolutionary worker known to many who are here.

I must first mention that a unit of internationalists led by our ex-Hungarian comrade Bela Kun placed itself at the disposal of the Soviet power. Because of this, the Left SRs and the peasant delegation of the All-Russia CEC, led by them, put about the slander that we were arming German prisoners-of-war, whereas, in fact, we were offered the services of a small but tightly-knit Communist, socialist unit of Hungarians, led by an old Hungarian socialist – a unit made up of blood-brothers of those Hungarian workers who are now shaking Budapest and all Hungary with their revolutionary struggle. However, it was not possible to concentrate the troops during the night, precisely because the enemy had the advantage of the initiative, and so the operations assumed the character of a daylight battle. Our units were stationed by the church of Christ the Saviour, on Strastnaya Square, by the Pushkin monument, on Arbatskaya Square, and also, of course, in the Kremlin. ‘At about 3 am on July 7,’ the same Vatsetis reports, ‘I learnt that the enemy’s principal forces still remained passive in the area of Trekhsvyatitelsky Lane, but that during the night they had temporarily occupied the Post Office and had tried, unsuccessfully, to take over the power station.’

I omitted to mention that during the night between July 6 and 7 a small detachment of Left SRs, Popov’s unit, captured the telegraph office, taking it not by force but by treachery – Soldiers of Popov’s unit seized the People’s Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs, Comrade Podbelsky, took his motor-car, and in this car went to the building and entered it unhindered, with their leaders. Everywhere we see one and the same method of operation being used: the Left SRs operate with false identity papers in their hands, the identity papers of the Soviet power and this accounts for the (too fleeting) advantage they enjoyed, which seemed to them very important at the beginning, at the time when their supporters put out an order over the telegraph to the effect that no more regard should be paid to any decrees on telegrams from the Council of People’s Commissars, as they were hostile to ‘the Left SR party now in power’.

Subsequently, operations developed as follows. The Left SR force was driven out of the telegraph office by the Lettish comrades and Bela Kun’s unit. Each individual order was carried out by the troops, but, as they had gone to the collecting-points by night, they were unable to find their bearings.

The Left SRs opened fire on the Kremlin. It must be said that events were taking place before us which could be described as symbolic: and when, from a building in the Kremlin, we saw shells – fortunately, only a few – falling in the courtyard, we said to ourselves: ‘The Council of People’s Commissars is now the natural target for the Left SRs. They have raised the banner of revolt against the Soviet power, and so they must, by the force of logic, bombard the Kremlin, where stands the pillar of the Soviet power.’

On the 7th the Left SRs withdrew in disorderly fashion from the area of Trekhsvyatitelsky Lane, scattering along the road to the Kursk Railway Station. After Popov’s men gave up the station they were no longer an organized body. The appropriate forces for their pursuit were placed at the disposal of Comrade Antonov. [The Comrade mentioned here and elsewhere is V.A. Antonov Ovseyenko.] In the report by Podvoisky and Muralov it is said that Antonov found twelve versts out along the Vladimir Highway’ the rebels’ line of retreat, a broken-down armoured car equipped with guns, and, twenty versts along the same highway, some guns, bombs and so forth. Altogether, by 12 o’clock on the 7th we had taken about 300 prisoners.

In the same way the detachments of Left SRs, a few dozen men, who had come here from Petrograd were arrested and disarmed. Also arrested was a force of three or four hundred men which had been sent here from the Western frontier zone. A telegram was intercepted in which struggle by various dangerous methods was advocated. In Petrograd the affair was confined to the disarming of some Left SR squads, which was effected quickly, though we lost ten killed and ten wounded at the Corps of Pages building, where this took place. In other parts of Petrograd the disarming was carried out painlessly and without losses.

This is the factual aspect of what happened. It is clear to you. As regards the political aspect, I spoke to you about that at the beginning of my report. I must now merely draw a few conclusions regarding the purely military aspect. Undoubtedly, the Left SRs succeeded in concentrating considerable forces almost without the Soviet power noticing, but these forces proved to be fictitious. When our comrades who were arrested – Dzerzhinsky, Latsis, Smidovich – got into conversation with the Left SR detachment that was guarding them, it became clear to them that a considerable part of this detachment was, in feeling and mood, on the side of the Soviet power – that the men were confused and did not know what it was all about, and when the arrested comrades openly and courageously explained the situation to them, they went over to our comrades’ side, laid down their arms, and said: ‘You can leave.’ It happened that one of our scouts was captured and taken to the rebels’ headquarters by two Finns: on the way he deprived both Finns of their rifles and bombs, and took them both prisoner. Clearly, those who went into battle did not show any special readiness to fight against the Soviet power. We were told from this rostrum not so long ago, and yet already long ago so far as the Left SRs are concerned: ‘We don’t need a Red Army, what we need is guerrilla units: we don’t need war, we need rebellion.’ Well, the rebellion that the Left SRs wanted so much has taken place, but it turned out to be a rebellion not against foreign imperialism but against the Soviet power. They got their guerrilla detachments ready for this rebellion, and they revealed how completely useless they were – and, contrariwise, the superiority our Red Army over them. Our units displayed tremendous superiority, both moral and physical. I speak of moral superiority because the operations against the Left SRs could have been carried out in such a way that Popov’s unit would have suffered very heavy losses, but this method was rejected. Our artillery men brought their guns up by hand to a distance of two hundred paces, aimed them directly at the Left SR headquarters, and destroyed it, as our comrades who were there now confirm to us, with amazing accuracy. The Left SR headquarters was itself pervaded with a guerrilla atmosphere of indecision, mutual suspicion and hostility. There was no staunchness: a few well-aimed blows caused the rebels to take refuge in most miserable flight, and the revolt was liquidated with only a small number of casualties.

All that now remains is to draw the political lessons of this revolt, this miserable shameful parody of a revolt. We already possess a mass of evidence that many members of the Left SR party look with indignation upon an adventure which was dreamed up behind their backs. This we have witnessed if only by reading the statement of the Left SRs of Moscow which denounced the small group of intellectuals, surrounded by a yawning void, who brought themselves to a state of real political intoxication.

The rebel opposition tried to find means from a variety of sources. Here there were peasants, from among the village poor, who feel aggrieved, which is not surprising, for it is hard for everyone now to live in post-war Russia, and the poor peasants, in their remote corners, have not yet learnt to comprehend our policy as a whole. When somebody talks to them of the Ukraine, they sincerely think about this question and sincerely sympathise with the Ukraine – but, at the beginning of the war, under Tsardom, wasn’t there exactly the same talk about Serbia, about the crucifixion of Belgium, whom we had to go and help? What did we say in reply then? We said then that by this war you won’t liberate either Belgium or Serbia or Poland!

Whoever came out victorious from this slaughter, the small, weak and backward peoples would be sacrificed to the powerful predators, and would be trampled on: and when they tell us that the Ukraine has been seized, that it is being crucified by counter-revolutionary imperialists, we who, of course, know as well as anybody else what is happening in the Ukraine, say: the Ukraine can be freed only by a force that will free all Europe and allow Soviet Russia to breathe freely: but turning our Soviet Russia into that one and only force, which would intervene in the battle between the imperialist predators and pour out its lifeblood, would mean squandering fruitlessly that moral capital, that possession which we are now called upon to preserve here, in the form of the power of the workers and peasants. So long as we stand here, watching out for all blows and revolts, stand with the banner of Soviet power, workers’ and peasants’ power, in our hands, hope will glimmer and kindle among the workers, among all the oppressed in all countries. They will say: ‘Look, the Russian workers, in most difficult conditions, surrounded by an imperialist ring, are not surrendering but are marching with us. That means that we, too, the workers of all countries, can develop great revolutionary forces and perform a much greater historical feat than the young Russian working class has performed.’ From the moment that we intervened in this accursed war through our own fault, we should be the basest traitors to world socialism, for our intervention would mean a mortal blow to the Soviet Republic. If, of course, we are attacked, and it does not matter what might cause this attack, if it were brought on by the most cruel provocation committed by the Left SRs, we should all, as one man, defend ourselves to the last drop of blood: I do not even have to talk about that. We shall all defend ourselves against all predators, from whatever direction they may fall upon us, but at the same time we do not hide the fact that we have been weakened to the utmost degree by the entire preceding course of events, and that we are against any war.

When a revolutionary class knows that its enemies are attacking it, that class always finds in itself sufficient revolutionary vigour to create a very great obstacle and hindrance to the attacking enemy and to force him to expend huge masses of imperialist forces. But if we were now to be drawn into war with Germany because the German ambassador has been murdered, if we were obliged to yield up Petrograd and Moscow, the Russian workers and peasants would know that we had been forced to do this not by historical inevitability but only by the provocation of the Left SRs. And I therefore say that a party which could be so crazy, so senseless, being a tiny clique, a mere handful, as to stand out against the will and consciousness of the overwhelming majority of the workers and peasants that party committed suicide, once and for all, on July 6 and 7. That party cannot be revived!

If they do not trust us, if they do not trust the Russian workers and peasants, then I ask, on whom did these adventurers count in the fight against Germany? After all, it was not that they were organizing a party conference, or a party split, in some congress held abroad: what they wanted was to set Russia against Germany and bring war upon us. Yet they did not trust – whom? The workers and peasants! They wanted to bring about war against them and despite them, a war that the workers and peasants would have to wage, the very ones behind whose backs they organized their conspiracy. By what means would they wage this war? They themselves have told us. They said: it will not be a regular war with Germany but a revolt, carried out by the organizing of guerrilla units. We saw, in Trekhsvyatitelsky Lane, the military viability of such guerrilla units, from the fact that our scout whom they caught succeeded in taking two of their men prisoners, along with their rifles; or from the fact that after the first shell burst the whole troop scattered, saying that if the entire headquarters had done a bunk, why should they stay put any longer? And they ran off down the Vladimir Highway. And it is with such handfuls, with this sort of armies and this sort of ideas, that they sought to rise up against us in order to wage war with Germany.

Even though this episode is now closed, the danger that this provocation may achieve its purpose has still not disappeared, because the extreme militarist party in Germany, which nothing satisfies, not even the peace of Brest-Litovsk, is ready to make use of any gift that is presented to it, whether from the hands of the Right SRs, the Monarchists or the Left SRs. The danger has not yet passed. We do not know what the result will be, but one thing we do know, and that is that, after the adventure of July 6-7 there is one political party fewer in the land of Russia.

We shall go along with you into every place and to every peasant, and ask him: do you want now, at the present time, today, to go to war with Germany? If you don’t then be it known to you that the Left SR party wanted to make you do just that, and because we, the Soviet power, consider that it would be fatal for you to do it, they tried to make out that we are agents of German imperialism, friends of its extreme wing. They depicted us as enemies of the Russian people merely because we said that the Russian people would be mad if, of its own volition, it were to open the gate to war! We shall go from here to every peasant and tell him the names of those deputies who gave their approval here to this dishonest provocation. We shall say to every peasant in every remote comer of the countryside:

Ivanov or Petrov, do you want, now, to fight the Germans? And we shall see what, after that, the Soviet power in the localities will have to say, what the millions and tens of millions of workers and peasants will have to say. Their answer will be the same as your declaration, made here, that you maintain the same view which you affirmed at the decisive congress [i.e., the Fourth Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants Deputies. – L.T.]: we do not want to go to war. We have bought peace in return for expensive concessions. We know now, at the present moment, by what dishonest methods Anglo-French imperialism is trying to drag us into war, and how our worst enemies are trying to capture towns so as to pave the way for Anglo-French imperialism. In vain! At Yaroslavl the counter-revolutionary gangs were surrounded by our troops, and Syzran, after being captured by the Czechoslovaks, was recovered by us. I do not doubt, comrades, that the dishonest adventure of the Left SRs will bring sobriety to the minds of those who were still wavering and doubting, and did not realize what the source was, which the comer, that the hysterical howling came from, about the peace, about our decision not to go to war with Germany. We do not doubt that for our Red Army, too, the events in Moscow will serve as a lesson for the strengthening of discipline. In the Red Army they appreciate better than anyone else that we need an army constructed on scientific principles, that guerrilla units are amateurish, that is, childish units, that we need to consolidate discipline so that never again will an adventure like that one be possible. The Moscow experience enables every soldier to see that, where discipline is lacking, bloodshed and fratricide can occur. The Red Army is the armed organ of the Soviet power, it does not serve itself, or any small group – it serves the aims of the workers and peasants. The will of the people is represented in the All-Russia Congress of Soviets, and, consequently, it is the duty of the Red Army firmly and unquestioningly to suppress those who dare to declare themselves against the sovereign organ of the Soviet power. Let us tell this Red Army, explain to it, that what we see here is a single team, a single principle, in the shape of the Czechoslovak attack on the Volga and in the Urals, and the advance of Anglo-French imperialism from the Murman coast, and the Left SRs’ revolting in Moscow: and though the wretched and shameful assassination of the German ambassador had a different subjective connection, objectively everything was directed to one and the same end, and all this is guided by the hate-filled bourgeoisie, whose press incites the Mensheviks and Left SRs, sets them on us, saying: ‘Force them to do the impossible, make them clash with German imperialism: let the Russian working class break its heart against the rock of German imperialism while that is still strong.’

This is the purpose common to the Czechoslovaks, the Anglo-French expedition, and the rest. We say to the Red Army that we want to guard against war, and if we manage to make peace on the Anglo-French front, we shall write that down as a gam – that we have achieved peace, that we want to be neutral, and that the imperialists have left us in peace, gone away from us. We shall thereby win a great victory for the Russian people. If the White Guards or the British, with their expeditionary force, and the Mensheviks and the Right SRs, and the Left SRs attack us, we shall defend ourselves as fiercely as we can. Where that is concerned we are not joking! We would have been prepared to say: ‘Haven’t all these children got into a muddle? What a wretched game this is, played by children who have got excited and gone too far!’ I and other members of the Council of People’s Commissars said: ‘These children – wretched, irresponsible creatures that they are – don’t realize what they are saying.’ Could we take it seriously, could we see in this a conspiracy? But, at the same time, you see, these were children who, trying to provoke a situation, organized a revolt, and killed persons who were objectively under the protection of the Soviet power. No, there is no room here for such children. What is at stake here is not the fate of a particular group of intellectuals, but the fate of Soviet Russia, and we are not going to let that be put at risk by anybody’s tricks. The Soviet power can have only one method, applying in politics this principle which you will consider correct and which you will approve: if anyone attacks the Soviet power not with criticism but with deeds, then we shall answer his iron with steel. We must defend the workers’ and peasants’ power with those forces and in those ways that we know, and with the same measures that are used in attacks on the Soviet power. The Soviet power exists and will continue to exist, strengthening the Russian revolution for the establishment of the republic of labor in Europe and the world.