What is the cause of all these persecutions? The answer is simple: the continued strength and popularity of the Social-Democratic Party and labor unionists in the cities and of the Social Revolutionary Party of the country. At a recent conference in Moscow, the Soviets' leading authority, Rykov, according to the Krasnaya Gazeta, made the following declaration:
The workers are discontented with power, for they are hungry and lack clothing. In many of the large factories there are no communists. There results a political weakening of Bolshevism, notwithstanding its strategic successes. It is not possible to create a single economic plan when 80 per cent of the population are peasants who will not allow themselves to be regulated.
The Social-Democrats elected a majority in the Soviets in many parts of the country and recently secured two-thirds in certain elections in Petrograd. It was this that led Lenin to an even stronger expression than Rykov, when (early in this month of February), he declared, in the Petrograd Pravda, that "the fight between the labor unionists and the Soviets for supremacy will break up the bolshevist state system unless a settlement is soon reached." The offense of the labor unionists is very clear. They are fundamentally opposed to the so-called government set up by Lenin and his handful of associate dictators. Lenin declares, "they are out for material benefit for themselves at the expense of the general welfare of the communist state." Lenin is the sole interpreter of the welfare of this "proletarian" state; the organized proletariat has no voice.
