The Truth About the Allied Intervention in Russia

by Morgan Philips Price

THE TRUTH ABOUT
THE
ALLIED INTERVENTION
IN RUSSIA.

 

 

BY
M. PHILIPS PRICE
CORRESPONDENT IN RUSSIA
OF THE
„MANCHESTER GUARDIAN“.

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Типографія Т-ва Рябушинскихъ, Страстн. б., Путинковскій п., д. 3
МОСКВА—1918,

One of the most deadly weapons wielded by the ruling classes of all countries is their power to censor the press; for thereby they are able to create under the pretext of military necessity an artificial public opinion with the object of hiding their fell designs. Never was this fact more clearly demonstrated than at the present moment; never was it more obvious that the governments of the Central Powers and the Allies, in order to suppress the workers and peasants revolution in Russia, must hide from their own people the truth about this revolution, must represent it to the proletariate of the West as the work of a gang of robbers. Just as a criminal or weak-minded man, alter having commited some offence against public law, tries to shift the blame on to any person he finds handy, so the ruling classes of Europe, after butchering their people in a cruel four-years war, now in terror before the judgement of humanity and the inner prickings of conscience try to create for themselves pleasant illusions and find convenient scapegoats, on which to vent their wrath.

One cannot be surprised of course that the governments of England, France and Germany should through the official agencies and their press censors endeavour to blacken the work of the Russian Revolution. Living here in the besieged castle of the Russian Workers and Peasants Soviets, surrounded by the armed hosts of the European warlords, I am in a position to see mote clearly than those outside this iron ring the power possesed by the ruling classes, whose fell designs include the strangling of this youngest of the governments of the toiling masses. For this is what I have to face day after day. Telegrams to my newspaper are suppressed or if passed by the British censor are decapitated, so that no sense is left in them, postal communication is severed, provocative rumours about what is happening here are spread in London and Paris and my attempts to deny them are frustrated. All the technical apparatus of the capitalist states of Western Europe is set in motion against those whose duty it is to tell the truth about the Russian Revolution and to convey to the West the cry of the Russian people for help. But let not the governments of England and France forget that „foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o'erwhelm them to mens eyes“. Those who suppress the truth create forces that bring the truth into the light of day, but by methods which they least expect.

Knowing therefore the love of freedom and the sense of justice of the British working man, I am in these few lines appealing to him to understand the facts that I have here set before him—facts which I have obtained after 4 years residence in Russia. When he has read them he will be able to judge for himself whether the policy of the British government towards the Russian Revolution is a policy of which he approves.

I begin from the beginning. The Russian Revolution in March 1917 was nothing less than the first practical step taken by the working classes of a European country to protest against the indefinite dragging on of the war for objects hidden in the Chancelleries of secret European diplomacy. There is not better proof of this than in the fact that the first act of the first all-Russian Soviet conference in May 1917 was an appeal to the workers of the world to lay down their arms and make peace with each other over the heads of their governments. The Russian workers and peasants were brought to this conviction by their intense sufferings during the previous two and a half years. The war in fact had brought their economicaly poorly developed country to ruin, the industries were at a standstill, famine was raging in the towns and the villages were filled with maimed soldiers, Long before the March revolution one could see that the Russian army was no longer capable of the offensive, even if it had the inspiration to effect one, and meanwhile all the towns in the interior of Russia were, even in 1916, filled with deserters.

The next fact I wish to set forth is that the Governments of the Allies, by refusing to allow the Stockholm Conference to take place in the autumn of 1917, destroyed the belief of the Russian peasants and workers in the sincerity of the Allied cause, weakened the hands of those in Germany, who were working for peace, played into the hands of the Prussian war patty and made the calamitous Brest-Litovsk peace inevitable.

The „bolshevik“ revolution of October 1917 was the second protest of the Russian workers and peasant against the continuation of a war which they had not the physical strength to carry on, nor the moral justification to support. It seemed better for them to risk the dangers of making peace single-handed with the Prussian warlords than be ruined by being dragged along in a war for objects which were disclosed in the secret treaties between the Allies. The October Revolution differed from the March one. For the first time in the history of the world a people realised that only by radicaly altering the whole form of human government was it possible to put down war. Declining all ideas of a compromise peace between the rulers of the countries at war (a solution which would only have lead to another war) the workers and peasants of Russia dared to create a government, which, by putting an end to the political and economic power of landlords and financial syndicates, definetely rooted out that poison in human society which alone is the cause of war. For the Russian people under Tsarism saw more clearly perhaps than the workers of England and Germany that the competition between the great banking and industrial trusts of London, Paris, Berlin and New York for spheres of influence, mining and railway concessions in undeveloped countries like their own, was the root cause of all modern wars and that therefore, to put an end to war, the social and political system, which breeds the exploiting trust, must be once and for all overthrown.

Form this it follows that the workers and peasants of Russia after the October Revolution were forced to undertake a task, which the weak Kerensky government (controlled as it was, mainly by landlords and bankers) could not even attempt to solve, name to take directly under its authority the principle means of production, distribution and exchange. For this reason the railways, waterways and mines were declared state property and the banks taken under government control. But Russia was bankrupt. Exhausted by the cruel war, through which Tsarism had dragged her for 3 torturous years, her economic power was completely broken down. Food and the raw materials of industry in the country were reduced to a minimum and the land flooded with valueless paper money. To repay the bankers of London and Paris the war debts of Tsarism, the Russian workers and peasants would have to export annually, for many years to come in gold of raw material a sum not less than one milliard roubles (30,000,000 pounds sterling) without obtaining any return. To bear this burden in addition to others, brought about by the ruin of the industries, the collapse of the railways and the famine, was impossible without reducing the people to slavery. The Russian workers and peasants therefore could no longer admit the principle that they should pay tribute to foreign bankers for the doubtful honour of serving as their cannon fodder. So the repudiation of the debts of Tsarism and the nationalisation of all the natural resources of the Russian Republic to serve the interests of the people was the first and most essential of the principles of the October Revolution. But no sooner was this done than the governments of England and France began to plot for the overthrow of the Russian Soviet government. In November 1917 the French Government paid a large sum of money to the Ukrainian Rada in order that it should raise rebellion against the workers and peasants government. On the Don, General Kaledin received arms and ammunition from the Allied military missions, in order that his Cossacks should join in the attack. But the peasants of the Ukraine and labouring Cossacks refused to be the tool of the Paris and London Stock Exchanges, threw off the yoke of the Rada and of General Kaledin and created their own revolutionary soviets in federal union with the Soviet Government of Great Russia. Then followed the tragicomedy of Kieff, when the Ukrainian Rada, which had been bought by Allied gold, finding itself threatened by its indignant revolutionary peasantry, sold itself to the German warlords and invited the armed forces of the Central Powers to protect its class interests.

Foiled in their attempts to use the Ukrainian Rada, the Allied governments began to spread rumours that the leaders of the Russian workers and peasants government were agents of Germany and had betrayed the working classes of England and France, beause they had brought Russia out of the war. Against these slanders may be set the following facts. The necessity for Russia to obtain peace was dictated firstly by the impossibility of undertaking the work of social reconstruction at home, if a foreign war was draining the country of its material resources; and secondly by the desire of the workers and peasants of Russia to maintain a neutral position between the armed camps of Europe, and to show to the workers of other lands that they had no partiality to any of the warring governments. The best proof that the Soviet government was sincere in its desire to make peace not with the German government, but with the German people was seen in the course of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. The Soviet government not only showed no desire to bring the negotiations to a speedy conclusion but did everything possible to cause them to drag on indefinitely, so as to expose to the German people the rapacity and cynism of the German government. By these tactics they were largely responsible for the great strike in Germany during January.

This was the first real protest of the German people against the war, and the policy of their government, and it was brought about by the tactics of the leaders of the Russian Revolution. Contrast this with the tactics of the Allied governments, who, in spite of their loud assertions that by armed forced alone can Prussian militarism be crushed, have after 4 years battering away at the Western front at the cost of thousands of the noblest lives failed to call forth a single demonstration in Germany against the war. Trotsky succeded in the Council Chambers of Brest-Litovsk in creating that spirit of rebellion among the German people, which all the heavy guns and armoured tanks of Field-Marshal Haig had failed to create in the course of the whole campaign. But the strike in Germany failed and the German government was left free to crush the Russian Revolution. Why did the strike fail?

Because Hindenburg and the Prussian junkers were able to appeal to the more uneducated and less class-conscious among the German people and to say to them: „Dont withraw your support from us, because, if you do, the Allied governments will ruin Germany and reduce you to slavery“. They were able to point to the secret treaties, published by the Soviet government, which showed that the Allies had been fighting to annex Germany up to the left bank of the Rhine, and that their governments had not repudiated, these treaties. They were able to point to the fact that, although the workers and peasants government of Russia had invited the Allies to take part in the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, had waited in fact a fortnight for them to make up their minds, the Allied governments had refused. Thus the Prussian warlords were able to tell their people that the Allies would not hear of peace and that therefore a strike at this time would be treachery to their country. It was only when the Soviet government saw that the Russian Revolution was deserted by the Allied democracies and betrayed by the German proletariate that they reluctantly were compelled to sign the cruel Brest-Litovsk peace. And the very fact that the Kaiser and his hirelings imposed such onerous conditions shows how much he feared the Russian workers and peasants revolution and how abominable is the slander that the bolshevike are the agents of the German government. It was not the Russian peasants and workers that deserted the Allies but the Allies, yes, and I fear the working classes in the Allied countries, who deserted the Russian peasants and workers in the hour of their distress.

Now, what was the policy of the Soviet government of Russia alter the Brest-Litovsk treaty. I submit that it was a policy which aimed at maintaining the strictest neutrality between the two great fighting camps. Yet the governments of Germany and the Allies did everything to make the maintainance of neutrality impossible, because they looked upon the Russian workers and peasants either as objects for economic exploitation or as cannon fodder to be used by them. The Soviet government was forced to give up the Black Sea fleet to Germany (as a matter of fact a great part of the fleet was blown up to prevent it falling into German hands) and was forced to accept the principle of individual exchange of war prisoners, whereby hundreds of thousands of Russian workers and peasants were left to work in Germany in slavery under the Kaiser. And why had the ultimatums, which were showered upon the Soviet government from Berlin, to be accepted? They had to be accepted because the Russian army had been ruined. And why was it ruined? Because the Allies had tried all through the spring and summer of 1917 to force the Russian workers and peasants to fight for the objects, which were disclosed by the bolsheviks in the secret treaties. Whenever the Russian people either through the Soviet or through the more progressive members of the Provisional Government asked the Allies to define their war aims, they were met by platitudes about liberty and justice. Meanwhile the peasants and workers were starving and no prospect before them but endless war for the undefined aims of foreign goverments. Was it likely that a 12 million army could be kept together under those conditions? Was it possible for the bolshevilk government deserted by the Allies, to do any thing else but sign the Brest Litovsk peace and bow to every ultimatum which the tyrants in Berlin chose to send them. The Allied governments all through last winter acted as if they feared the Soviet government of the Russian Workers and Peasants a greay deal more than they feared the Imperialist Government of Germany.

But in spite of its isolation the Soviet government in the spring this year commenced a programme of social reconstruction. In order to succeed in this sphere it was necessary to receive help from economically more advanced countries. The railways were in a state of collapse; technical appliances were needed to repair the locomotives and waggons. The mines were flood and broken down. Instructors and engineers were required to undertake the difficult task of restoring their working capacity. Agricultural machinery was required to help the peasant to till the soil, which as a result of the war had in large areas fallen out of cultivation. The Soviet government asked the governments of Europe to help it in this great task. To each of the countries of the great alliances an offer was made to treat with Russia, to supply her with these material and technical needs, in return for which the Soviet government offered certain raw materials of export and certain railway and mining concessions. These concessions of course were to be kept under strict public control, so as to ensure that, while the foreign capitalists should have a fair return for their undertakings, the workers and peasants should not be subjected to the exploitation, which they had experienced under Tsarism. The offer was made to Germany and negotiations preceeded all the simmer in Berlin.

It was also made to the United States through the medium of one of the most sympathic American representaives in Moscow, who personally took the proposals with him to America. But what was the attitude of the official diplomatic representatives of the Allies. They buried themselves in the provincial town of Vologda, refused to come to Moscow and one of their number last April made a cynical statement to the press that the governments of the Allies could not recognise a government, which was not either in fact or in law a representative of the „true“ Russia. More than this; the Allied ambassadors became in Vologda the centre of every counter-revolutionary intrigue in the country and when the Soviet government, seeing what was going on, courteously requested them to come to Moscow, the seat of the government, to which they were supposed to be accredited, otherwise it could not be held responsible for their safety, they left the territories of the Republic on the grounds that they had been insulted!! The Soviet Government insisted in putting control on them, if they remained in Vologda, in order to prevent counter-revolutionary elements in the country from getting at them. To what extent this action was justified may be seen from the following facts. On the basis of documents discovered on the premises of the Czecho-Slovak National Council in Moscow in July, the fact was established that at the end of February this year an agreement was reached between certain British and French military agents in Russia and the Czecho-Slovak National Council. This Council had taken under its control the Czecho-Slovak prisoners and deserters from the Austrian army and had formed them into a seperate legion to fight against Austria. This had already been done during Tsarism and after Brest-Litovsk the question was raised of sending them to the French front. To this the Soviet Government agreed, But it appears that the British and French governments had other work for the Czecho-Slovak soldiers to perform and were by no means anxious that they should go to France. For between March and May 1918 the French Consul in Moscov paid to two persons on the Czecho-Slovak National Council the sum of nine million roubles and the British Consul in Moscow paid eighty five thousand pounds to the same people. Directly after these payments the Czecho-Slovak forces, which were scattered all along the Siberian and Eastern railways, rose in rebellion, occupied most important strategic posts in East Russia, thus cutting off central and Northern Russia from the corn producing districts and condemning the workers and peasants of Muscovy to famine and the industries to destruction. The legend circulated in Western Europe that the Soviet government was preparing to hand the Czecho-Slovaks to the Austrian government is false, for the former had only too readily accepted the proposal, the Czecho-Slovaks themselves made, before the interference by the Allied Governments, that they should be sent to France.

But even after the seizure of the Siberian railway and the opening of the road to Vladivostock the commanders of the Czecho-Slovaks not only made no attempt to move their troops out of Russia but began to advance west towards Moscow, clearly showing they were carrying out the pre-arranged plan, for which they had received these payments.

At every town Where they arrived they united with counter revolutionary forces, organised by the local landlords and bosses, and began to break up the Soviets, shoot the leading revolutionary leaders and reestablish a military dictatorship of the propertied classes. Up to this time every counter-revolutionary rebellion, which had been raised against the Soviet government, had been suppressed by the Red army, thus showing that the Soviet government had sufficient authority and support among the masses to put it down. It was only when hired bands of foreign Imperialists raised rebellion and supported the local counter-revolutionary forces, which had been defeated in square fight, that the position of the Soviet government began to be in danger. Thus the Allied Governments in East Russia like the German government in the Ukraine endeavoured by financing counter-revolution and anarchy to make the work of social reconstruction and the feeding of the starving people impossible for the Soviet government.

The governments of England and France in order to recoup themseves for the losses of the London and Paris bankers, incurred by the Russian revolution, are now trying to overthrow the Soviet government and reestablish a government with the aid of armed hirelings, which will impose again the milliard tribute of the loans of Tsarism upon the backs of the Russian workers and peasants. They are also trying to force the Russian people to fight in the war against Germany against their will, to use them as cannon fodder, although one of the main motives of the workers and peasants revolution was to free themselves from the war, which was ruining them and condemning them to starvation. To impose fresh tribute upon the Russian people, to force them to fight against their will, to still further increase their misery, indescribable as it is at present, that is the task, which the British government asks the British soldier to perform, when he fights on the Murman; that is the object for which the British munition worker is toiling, when he makes shells, which are to be fired upon his Russian comrades.

As one who has lived for four years in Russia, has seen the sufferings of her people and their heroic efforts to free themselves, I categorically assert that the anarchy and famine now raging in Russia is the deliberate work of the Imperialist governments of Europe, and in this respect the governments of the Allies and of Germany behave like vultures of the same brood. For what Germany has done in the Ukraine, the Allied governments have done in Siberia and the territories east of the Volga.

And yet the British working man is told that in Russia there is chaos and anarchy and that the British goverment out of sympathy for the Russian people is sending expeditions to help them, and to bring a rule of law and order. Where is the law which finances rebellion against a government of the workers and poorest peasantry, in order to force it to pay an intolerable tribute and reduce it to industrial slavery? Where is the order which brings war to a land that is already exhausted by the three years slaughter of the European Imperial butchers? The Soviet government of Russia asked peace and the governments of England, and France are trying to give it a sword: it asked for help in its work of social reconstruction and it has been given the serpent of anarchy. It is just because the workers and peasants of Russia are trying to establish a new order in their country that the governments of Europe are trembling and are trying by their treacherous attacks on Russia to destroy this new order and in its place to establish the old. For, if the Soviet government succeeds, it will for ever put an end to exploitation by social parasites and will sweep away the profiteers that fatten out of war.

The „financial capital“ of London and Paris is trying to save the „real“ Russia but it is really forging for it new chains. By a Judas kiss it is trying to hide the shekels of silver, for which it has sold the Russian people. But let the workers of England know the truth about this great crime; let them say to the British government, „Hands off; let none dare to touch the Russian revolution, the noblest product of these four years of blood and tears“.

I know how firm in the memory of British working men is the tradition of freedom with which they have for generations been associated. When the ruling classes of England acted as suppressors of movements for freedom in America, when they interfered to bolster up priviledge and reaction on the continent of Europe, the British workers raised their voices in protest. At the end of the eighteenth century the landlords of England declined to treat with the ambassadors of the free French republic and declared war upon a people who had cast off a feudal tyrranny. To day the banking oligarchies in London try to strangle by isolation and spread of famine the great movement for freedom that has sprung up in Eastern Europe. They will not succeed now, just as they did not succeed then, and the conquests of the Russian revolution will endure, as did the conquests of the French revolution last century. But to bring this about the workers of England must know the truth and knowing it must dare to act.

 

Moscow, August 1918.

 

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