The Socialist Fatherland in Danger

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Report to the extraordinary joint session of the 5th All-Russia Central Executive Committee, the Moscow Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Men’s Deputies, the trade unions and the factory committees, July 29, 1918

Comrades, the Soviet power has no right, and neither has the Party which is the leading party in the Soviets, to conceal or embellish the actual state of affairs in the revolution. The old slogan given us by one of the most militant socialists of the past epoch, Ferdinand Lassalle – say what is; declare and tell the masses that which is the case – is also the basic rule for every really revolutionary politician, and is therefore also our rule.

And, with strict observation of this rule, it has been shown to you here that what is now happening on the Volga, in the shape of the Czechoslovak mutiny, puts Soviet Russia in danger and therefore also endangers the international revolution. At first sight it seems incomprehensible that some Czechoslovak Corps, which has found itself here in Russia through the tortuous ways of the world war, should at the given moment prove to be almost the chief factor in deciding the questions of the Russian revolution. Nevertheless, that is the case.

In order to provide a full exposition of events I will briefly recall the circumstances and causes of the appearance of this corps on the Volga and in the Urals. This is also necessary because around this matter lies and slanders, on the one hand, and ignorance, on the other, are weaving rumors which are being exploited by our enemies.

The Czechoslovak Corps consists in the main of former prisoners-of-war from the Austrian army. And for characters having [?] the patriotism and national dignity of our bourgeoisie, how symbolic in this respect are the facts I mention, that when former prisoners-of-war, released by us, are now sitting on the necks and on the backs of the Russian peasants and workers, the entire bourgeoisie gloats and gives them money, with the intention of finding support from the brilliant Czech officers.

Such is the national dignity and self-respect of the despicable bourgeoisie.

The Czechoslovak prisoners-of-war, who in their time, under Tsardom, were interned in Siberia, were released, and already at that time strove to get to France, where they had been promised the earth but where in actual fact it was intended they should die in the interests of the French stock-exchange. The Russian Tsarist government, for reasons that do not concern us, refused to let them go. In Kerensky’s time they again applied to leave for France, but again without success. During the Germans’ summer offensive in the Ukraine, the Czechoslovak Corps was there (it was formed in the South), armed from head to foot. Though they had been organized to fight against German imperialism, the Czechoslovaks were ready to retreat without fighting, merely because, in the Ukraine, fighting against the Germans would have meant fighting for the Soviet power. While this Corps did, in certain circumstances, and in a formal way, help in organizing the fight against German imperialism, it proved, in any case, to be incapable of fighting for the workers and peasants of the Ukraine and Byelorussia.

So, withdrawing without a struggle from the Ukraine, the whole Corps entered the territory of the Soviet Republic. Here the representatives of the Corps approached the Council of People’s Commissars and the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs with a request that we let the Czechoslovaks go to France. We replied that if this request did not proceed from the French military mission and the commanding personnel, if this was the desire of the soldiers themselves, then we would not hold them back, provided they gave up their arms, which, having been taken from the Tsar’s arsenals, belonged to us. The Czechoslovak corps sent delegates to conclude an agreement, and permission was given. The soldiers were disarmed, but, through insufficient attention on the part of our authorities, not all the arms were handed in: a considerable number of machine guns and rifles were left, hidden in straw and mattresses.

Movement of the echelons was effected, along the Trans-Siberian line in the direction of Vladivostok, without any hindrance, until April 4 [The text has ‘July 4’ for the date of the Japanese landing, but this is evidently a mistake for ‘April 4’.], when there appeared in our port on the Pacific Ocean a Japanese landing party which consisted, to start with, of four companies. We did not know how rapid would be the build-up of Japanese forces, which, in principle, could occupy our territory right up to the Urals and beyond. And, to amplify the inner significance of the event, we must say that of all the Allied countries which most insistently demanded Japanese intervention in the war, striving to hurl against the Germans a fresh army half a million strong, it was none other than bourgeois France that demanded and wanted this more than any other. It was none other than bourgeois France, which supported the Czechoslovak Corps with the milliards of its stock exchange, that was sending this corps eastward. And now a precise conjuncture of events occurred: in alliance with the French bourgeoisie and in pursuit of its own robber interests in the Russian Far East, the Japanese landed their expeditionary force and established a link between the Czechoslovak Corps and their units.

The Soviet power was ready to put up the most vigorous and sharp resistance to the invasion by the Japanese hordes (here our chief defense lies in our great spaces), which were advancing from Vladivostok towards Chelyabinsk.

Meanwhile, the Czechoslovak Corps, which was stretched out along the Trans-Siberian line as far as Vladivostok, was in a position, at a signal from the French stock-exchange and the Japanese General Staff, to seize this railway and prevent us from barring the way to the Japanese, who would then advance rapidly, by express train, to the Urals, and through them. Under these conditions until the question of the Japanese landing at Vladivostok had been clarified, we were obliged to halt further movement eastward by the Czechoslovak echelons and this we did. And as soon as we had done this, I summoned, acting on the instructions of the Council of People’s Commissars, the representatives of the French mission and the British diplomatic mission, on the one hand, and, on the other, the representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council, Professors Maxa and Cermak, whose roles in this conspiracy against the Russian people were not the least important. I told them that we now lacked the right to send the Czechoslovaks through our own country to the Far East, but we considered it possible to send them to Archangel or Murmansk (at that time, of course, the Anglo-French landing had not yet taken place):

however, we needed to have confirmation from the official representatives of Britain and France that they were really willing to receive the Czechoslovaks and prepared to provide the means of transport needed for their conveyance. We were not in a position ourselves to convey the entire Corps to its destination, and, owing to the shortage of foodstuffs in the North, we could not maintain it on the coast for an indefinite period. In short, we had to have a firm guarantee that Allied transport would be provided in good time. I was given my answer by General Lavergne [The text has ‘General Sveri’, which must be a muddle for ‘General Lavergne.’], who is present here, and the British plenipotentiary Lockhart who, if I am not mistaken, is on his way. They both said that they could not give the guarantees I had requested, because the question of sea transport is now very complicated and difficult, and they could assume no responsibility for it. I pointed out to them that, through their agents and through the Czechoslovak National Council, they were calling on the Czechoslovaks to go to France, promising them the earth if they went there, and blaming us for not letting the Czechoslovaks go: yet, when we raised in a practical way the question of how the Czechoslovaks were to be transported, they answered evasively. Lavergne and Lockhart replied that they would consult their governments and then give me their answer. Week after week passed, month after month, yet no answer came. And now it is as clear to us as can be, both from the papers which were seized at the office of the Czech National Council and from the statements and depositions given by many White Guards under arrest, that what we had here was a malicious, carefully worked-out plan. The essence of this plan was that the imperialists of France did not want a superfluous Czechoslovak Corps, but that for them it was ten times more important to have the Czechoslovak Corps on Russian territory, directed against the Russian workers and peasants, thus creating the nucleus around which the White Guards, the Monarchists, all the bourgeois elements scattered about the country, and so on, could group themselves. This plan, devised long before, was put into effect at a signal given from Chelyabinsk, where a conference of representatives of all the units of the Czechoslovak Corps was held. Our telegraph operators have provided me with the text of a telegram sent by this congress to the French military mission at Vologda, in which, despite the evasive language used, the fact that a rising against the Soviet power was being prepared emerges quite clearly. In the telegram they say that everything is ready, they are pulling their echelons back from East to West, and concentrating their forces. This refers (if my memory does not deceive me) to May 25 or May 22, that is, to a date preceding that on which the Czechoslovaks rose in open revolt at Chelyabinsk, and subsequently in other places as well.

Thus, the actions of the Czechoslovaks took place in the setting and according to the arrangements of a definite Anglo-French counter-revolutionary plan. It was about then that we received from abroad a warning that the British were planning to make their first landing at this same time, with the aim of establishing their forces along the Murman coast. It may be said, of course, that we, the Soviet power, are to blame for having passively watched this mutiny being prepared passively, because we did not have a sufficiency strong and disciplined army that was ready, on receipt of a formal order, to concentrate in a particular area at a particular moment and go over to the offensive. In order to organize and arm the workers and peasants, to make them capable of launching an offensive given their lack of training, their slight, inadequate experience and that fatigue of which Comrade Lenin so rightly spoke here [See Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.28, p.29: ‘The Russian people’s state of extreme war fatigue’], it was necessary that they be inwardly filled, saturated, with awareness that there is no other way, that they should understand that the Czechoslovak mutiny, with everything that surrounds it and has grown up around it, does actually signify in the true sense of the word, a mortal danger for Soviet Russia.

In order that such a feeling should be created in the country it was necessary that events should develop in a certain way, and from the beginning of these events we did everything we could to ward off the danger. And here it must be said that in the initial period we did not receive even from those local Soviets that were closest to the events that had occurred over there along the Trans-Siberian Railway and up to Chelyabinsk, the’ response that we had the right to expect. The local Soviets did not appreciate the full scope of the diabolical conspiracy. Among them were Soviets that were so faint-hearted that they tried to pass the Czechoslovaks on into the responsibility of neighboring Soviets which were, perhaps, stronger. All this was due to the fact that there was no full and clear awareness that it was not a question of misunderstandings at Syzran, Penza and Chelyabinsk, but a question, in the direct and immediate sense of the word, of life and death for the working class in Russia. And the Czechoslovaks had to seize a whole series of towns and provide a point of support for the White Guards and monarchists, and the latter had to carry out compulsory mobilization of the adult inhabitants, on the one hand, and, on the other, requisitions and confiscations in favor of the landlords and capitalists, before the Soviet elements in the localities concerned, at Omsk, Chelyabinsk and the entire zone near the front, realized clearly what was happening and before the people at large started to realize that the die has been cast for Russia: either we vanquish the Czechoslovaks and all those around them, or they will destroy us.

And this poor appreciation of the importance of the moment, on the part of the conscious sections of the population was, in the last analysis, reflected also in the consciousness of our Red Army units. We have sufficient armed forces to employ against the Czechs, and we are now, of course, transferring to the front such substantial forces as will, together with those which are there already, outnumber the Czechoslovaks by at least two or three to one.

But, comrades, by itself this is not enough. Thanks to the diabolical scale of the conspiracy and the conduct of the Czechoslovak officers – and their commanders are extremely chauvinistic – the Czechoslovaks have put themselves in a position where they must either fight to a finish or else go under. Among them there are elements that know the Soviet power will not punish the blind, ignorant, deceived workers, and still less the peasants, but only those guilty of this conspiracy and actively participating in it: the professors, officers and NCOs and the more hardened and corrupt among the soldiers. These elements now reckon that there is no escape, that they must fight to a finish. This gives them the energy of despair, the energy of helplessness, and, besides that, they are surrounded by a crowd of Russian bourgeois and kulaks who create about them a milieu which, though not very extensive, is nevertheless sympathetic. As regards our Red units, they consider that they are at home, and that though the Czechoslovaks are capturing one town after another, the possibility still exists that the Czechoslovak question may be solved by propaganda and agitation. This is the reason for the extremely protracted character, in one way and another, of the operation, which has this disadvantageous aspect for us, that we are cut off from Siberia, our principal and fundamental source of foodstuffs, so that the working class throughout the country is in a state of severe hunger. And thus, weighing the relation of forces, our morale and that of the enemy, the general food situation in the country, the need, as quickly as possible, to purge Siberia and restore it to the bosom of Soviet Russia, the inadmissibility and dangerousness of a long-drawn-out operation – we must decisively alter in our favor the situation which has been created. How are we to do this?

Our Red Army units lack the needful moral and military cohesion, because they have not yet been tempered in battle, and even though there are among them many soldiers who have been in battle as individuals, as military collectives they are, as a whole, in need of organizational, disciplinary and moral influence. If the units lack the old-style military bearing, this may be replaced by clear and distinct consciousness of the iron necessity of fighting. In the given case, the absence of military, mechanical discipline is compensated by the discipline of revolutionary consciousness. Here, in this hall, we number some two thousand persons, or more, and the overwhelming majority, if not all of us, share the same revolutionary view point. We are not going to make a regiment out of you, but if we were to be transformed this very day into a regiment, armed and sent off to the front, I think that it would not be the worst regiment in the world. Why? Because we were trained soldiers? No, because we are united by a definite idea, inspired by firm consciousness that, at the front to which we were being sent, history is putting the question point-blank, and there we must either conquer or die. This is the consciousness we have to create in our Red Army units. Naturally, they cannot by one wave of somebody’s hand be lifted all at once to the political level of the Central Executive Committee, the Moscow Soviet and the factory committees of Moscow, but within each regiment and each company we must and can create a firm nucleus of Soviet people, of Communist revolutionaries. This nucleus, though small in numbers, will be the heart of the regiment and the company: in the first place, it will be able to mistake, and to pass on to the masses, a correct estimate of each situation, and in dangerous situations it will not let the unit run away, it will support the commissar or the commander, it will say:

’Stop! This is a matter of life and death for the working class’...

Comrades capable of going into each unit and forming a close nucleus of five to ten members can be found only among the most conscious workers. And we have them both in Moscow and in Petrograd. Moscow has already furnished some two or three hundred agitators, commissars and organizers, a considerable number of whom have gone into Red Army units. But Moscow will, I am convinced, furnish twice as many as that. You, the organs of Soviet power, and you, the factory commit- tees, look around you: everywhere, in the districts, in the trade unions, in the factory committees, you will find comrades who are now performing work of first-class importance but who are more urgently needed at the front, for, if we do not overcome the Czechoslovaks, that work they are doing, and all the forces of the factory committees, the trade unions and so on, will go for nothing. We must overcome the Czechoslovaks and White Guards, strangle the serpent on the Volga, so that all the rest of our work may possess meaning and historical significance. You are required to furnish some hundreds of agitators – first-class, militant Moscow workers who will go to the front, join the units and say: ‘We shall stay with this unit till the war is over: we shall go into it and carry on agitation both among the masses and with every individual, for the fate of the whole country and of the revolution is at stake, and, whether there be an offensive, a victory or a retreat, we shall be with the unit and shall temper its revolutionary spirit.’ You must and you will give us such people, comrades! I was talking yesterday on this very subject with the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, Comrade Zinoviev, and he told me that the Petrograd Soviet has already supplied a quarter 9f its membership, that is, about two hundred, sending them to the Czechoslovak front as agitators, instructors, organizers, commanders and fighters. In this lies the fundamental condition for the turn that we have to bring about. What the old armies provided through months of prolonged schooling, correction and drill, which mechanically forged a unit, we have to provide, as I have already said, spiritually and by ideological means, introducing into our army the best elements of the working class, and this will fully ensure our victory, despite our weakness where commanding personnel are concerned. We have irreproachable, devoted commanders at the lowest level, but only at the lowest level, of the military hierarchy. Where higher commanding personnel are concerned, we have too few officers who are devoted to the Soviet power and who honestly carry out their obligations: worse still, as you know, some of them have actually gone over to the enemy’s camp. There have been several such cases lately. Makhno went over on the Ufa front, and Bogolovsky, a professor at the General Staff Academy, went over almost at once when he was appointed to the Yekaterinsburg front. He has disappeared, which obviously means that he has fled to the Czechoslovaks. In the North the former naval officer Veselago has sold himself to the British, and a former member of our White Sea commissariat has also gone over to the Anglo-French imperialists, and has been appointed by them to the command of armed forces. The officers seemingly do not take full account of the acuteness of the situation which is created for us not only by their past but also by their present. You all remember how harshly the soldiers and sailors of the old army dealt with their officers at the critical moments of the revolution.

Since power passed into the hands of the workers and peas- ants, we have opened the doors to experts and specialists in military matters, so that they may serve the working class as in the past they served the bourgeoisie and the Tsar, but a considerable section of the officers evidently think the situation is changing in their favor, and they are mounting adventuristic conspiracies and openly going over to the camp of our enemies.

The counter-revolutionary officers, who make up a substantial section of the old officer corps, are creating the conditions for embittered and justified hostility and hatred on the part of the worker masses towards their conspiratorial elements, and suspicious distrust towards officers generally. I think that the hour is near, and perhaps has already arrived, when we shall have to curb these intriguing, prancing officers with an iron curb. We shall make a list of all those ex-officers who are not ready to work voluntarily at the creation of the workers’ and peasants’ army, and, for a start, we shall shut them up in concentration camps. Comrades, when British imperialism set about crushing the Boers of South Africa under its iron heel, it set up such camps for these Boers – for the farmers themselves and for their wives and children. Now, when our officers are fraternizing with British imperialism, we shall remind these allies of the imperialists precisely of the British concentration camps. At the same time, we shall call on the comrades in the Soviets, the Party organizations and the trade unions to mobilize from among themselves, as quickly as they can, all those comrades who have had some experience of command. All who know how to command even the smallest units must be placed immediately at the disposal of the Commissariat for Military Affairs, so as to be posted to the Czechoslovak front. You, Soviet and trade union organizers, must take all the combatants among you, all who have been NCOs or ensigns, and send them all, without exception, to the Czechoslovak front. Their place is now not here, in civilian jobs: we need to have our own commanders in the small units, for practice has shown that if there are genuine Soviet commanders in charge of the small military units, we need fear no higher commanders – though, I ought to note, in passing, that if we observe suspicious conduct on the part of any officer who has been entrusted with powers of command, then, needless to say, the matter is plain and simple, the guilty man must be shot. But it is not a matter of how matters stand in the rear, whether close to the front or far from it. There is no-one in a high commanding position who has not a commissar on his right and another on his left, and if the specialist is not known to us as a man who is devoted to the Soviet power, these commissars are under orders to be vigilant, not taking their eyes off this officer for one moment. But we do not have, as we ought to have, military commissars actually at the front itself, in order to assume responsibility and superintendence, so that there may be at the front, to the right and to the left of each specialist, a commissar with a revolver in his hand, and so that, if these commissars perceive that the specialist is wavering and betraying, he may be shot in good time.

The French revolution also started with very little, and it also had to enlist officers from the old army, but it laid down a condition binding upon them: either victory or death. We put the choice in the same way before those whom we sent to the Czechoslovak front. And so that this may not remain without foundation, we need to have in every unit, in every headquarters and organization, our own Soviet people, for whom this war is their war, the war of the working class, and who will not be held back by any dangers. We need to bring about a turn in another profound sense.

During these eight or nine months of Soviet power it has been our habit to deal too lightly with our opponents in the civil war. Until recently this policy always worked for us. We smashed the bands of Alekseyev and Komilov in two ticks, with small detachments of Baltic sailors or Red Guards from Petrograd and Moscow. As a result, we now have comrades who served in those Red detachments but who are now occupied with Soviet work: they sit in their sacred offices which, to be sure, are Soviet offices – and read reports about actions at the front. Such ‘base’ feelings are manifested, we observe, also among many commissars: not all of them, alas, have that revolutionary tempering which is invincible in struggle, when it is necessary to be able to sacrifice one’s life or to make others sacrifice theirs, for what is at stake is what is highest for us, the fate of the socialist revolution. To our shame, there have been cases when certain commissars were not the last to abandon a town. At times when the commissar, like an honorable captain, ought to be the last to leave the ship, or else go down with it, there have been comrades who, at the first sign of danger, took to their heels and fled to a safe place.

The military commissar, appointed by the Soviet power, holds a post which has very great powers and responsibilities, and it is no empty saying that the military commissar must be of a high standard, for the commissar’s position is one of the highest that the Soviet Republic can confer. The commissar is the representative of the armed forces in the country, and this is a great power, because it decides on whose side power lies. And whoever among the commissars does not feel that he possesses strength, tempering and selflessness should get out: he who assumes the title of commissar must lay his life on the line!

I have to say, comrades, that in some provincial cities the local Soviet authorities and institutions are also not always up to the mark. There have frequently been cases when the Soviet has been among the first to be evacuated, withdrawing to some other, safe town a great many versts away, and waiting there peacefully for the Red Army to recapture for it the residence it has abandoned. I declare – and this view is common to the whole Soviet power – that this cannot be allowed: that, if the Soviet army has lost a town, then it is, to a considerable degree, the fault of the local Soviet and of the military commissar, and it is incumbent upon them to do their utmost to recover that town. Whether as agitators or as front-rank fighters, the members of the Soviet of a town which has been captured by the Czechoslovaks must be at the front, in the foremost firing-line, and not vegetating peacefully in some backyard. I am here emphasizing the negative aspects just because we must; above all, say what is, and these negative aspects do exist. And besides, we are assembled here not for the purpose of lauding the many particular instances of heroic conduct in the struggle – there have been such instances at the front, and they are increasing – but for the purpose of finding resources and, in a consistent, practical way, improving the situation on the Czechoslovak front. But I cannot refrain from mentioning what Comrade Raskolnikov has reported to us about the heroic fight put up by one of our armed vessels on the Volga, which perished heroically.

You see, our Baltic sailors now on the Volga – and their numbers are increasing all the time, we are arming an ever larger number of steamships, and we hope that more powerful guns than three-inch ones will make their appearance on the Volga – are conducting themselves as becomes the revolutionary calling of the Red Baltic Fleet.

There have also been examples of magnificent valor on the part of Red Army units. But the state of the units is chaotic, many things about them are not as they should be, and their heroic breakthroughs do not result from a single, common, fundamental effort, because for such an organized effort there is not yet everywhere the awareness that what is at stake at the front is life or death for the working class, and therefore for the whole country. True, our situation has, by and large, improved in every respect. I mentioned that we have created on the Volga a big and strong naval flotilla, which will soon make the White Guards and Czechoslovaks aware of its presence. We have also sent army units there which, along with those already on the spot, will give us a tremendous superiority in armed force. We must ensure that we have this superiority in armed force. We must ensure that we maintain that superiority in moral force which is ours by right, for we are defending the cause of the working class and not that of the French and British bourgeoisie. This moral superiority can be ensured only by living people, by representatives of the working class from our best urban industrial centers. And we are now, in addition to all the measures of which I have spoken, proceeding to a further mobilization of workers, to supplement the cadres of our workers’ and peasants’ Red Army. This evening a draft decree is being tabled in the Council of People’s Commissars, for mobilizing in the immediate future, in the coming week, the workers who were born in 1896 and 1897 in the provinces 9f Vladimir, Nizhny-Novgorod, Moscow and Petrograd. You know, comrades, that we mobilized the workers in the cities of Moscow and Petrograd who were born in 1896 and 1897. They have already furnished examples of the sort of units that will be created. They will be our best units. Now Moscow is going to furnish another example, another model. We want to mobilize in Moscow the workers who were born in 1893, 1894 and 1895, and it is your duty, the duty of the district soviets, trade unions, factory committees and all labor organizations, to help us, in the factories, to carry through this mobilization. You must show the workers that it is their duty to submit to mobilization.

Such help is needed also in Petrograd, in our northern capital. Without your help and co-operation – but we are sure we shall have this – we cannot carry out this mobilization. Thanks to you we carried out the first mobilization splendidly, without a hitch, and you will now make it possible for us to carry out this second, somewhat wider mobilization. You will spread our influence throughout the province of Moscow and conduct the mobilization of the two age-groups, and we shall form several new divisions to help the divisions that are now on the Czechoslovak front.

We want you to understand clearly that the situation is serious. We have lost Simbirsk and Yekaterinburg. These are facts which bear witness to the extreme seriousness of the situation and to the circumstance that what we are fighting against is not small, scattered bands but a trained army, rein forced by Russian officers, who, while not distinguished by great talents, do, at least, possess great advantages. The danger is serious, and we must respond to this serious danger with a serious rebuff.

We can and we must understand this. It must enter into the consciousness of every worker, wherever he may be. It must be called to mind in connection with everything and, above all, in connection with the famine, for the Czechoslovaks and White Guards are blocking the gates of Siberia, through which we could be receiving grain. In the course of the next few days you must give us tens and hundreds of workers, you must take from their civilian jobs those who have had previous military experience, and even though they are, perhaps, insufficiently experienced, you must place them all at the disposal of the War Department. You must facilitate the mobilizing of the three age-groups in Moscow city and the two age-groups in Moscow province. These are the practical tasks that confront us. I do not doubt that the workers of Moscow will give an example to their country and cope successfully not only with all the tasks that face them but also with the wavering, unstable Soviets on the Volga and in the Urals, and with the weak units which now will be able to find support from the will of the proletariat -- and this will lead us to victory, it is already half-way to victory. I have referred to the French revolution. Yes, comrades, we need to revive the traditions of that revolution, to the full. Remember how the Jacobins in France spoke, even while the war was still going on, about complete victory, and how the Girondins screamed at them: ‘You talk about what you are going to do after victory: have you then made a pact with victory?’ One of the Jacobins replied: ‘We have made a pact with death.’ The working class cannot be defeated. We are sons of the working class: we have made our pact with death and, therefore, with victory!