February 26th.
In the afternoon I got to the Executive Committee in time to
hear the end of a report by Rykov on the economic position.
He said there was hope for a satisfactory conclusion to the
negotiations for the building of the Obi-Kotlas railway,
and hoped that this would soon be followed by similar
negotiations and by other concessions. He explained
that they did not want capitalism in Russia but
that they did want the things that capital could give them in
exchange for what they could give capital. This was, of
course, referring to the opposition criticism that the Soviet
was prepared to sell Russia into the hands of the
"Anglo-American Imperialistic bandits." Rykov said that the main
condition of all concessions would be that they should not
effect the international structure of the Soviet Republic
and should not lead to the exploitation of the workmen.
They wanted railways, locomotives, and machines, and their
country was rich enough to pay for these things out of its
natural resources without sensible loss to the state or the
yielding of an inch in their programme of internal
reconstruction.
He was followed by Krestinsky, who pointed out that
whereas the commissariats were, in a sense, altered forms of
the old ministries, links with the past, the Council of Public
Economy, organizing the whole production and distribution
of the country, building the new socialist state, was an
entirely new organ and a link, not with the past, but with the
future.
The two next speeches illustrated one of the main difficulties
of the revolution. Krasin (see p. 153) criticized the council
for insufficient confidence in the security of the revolution.
He said they were still hampered by fears lest here or there
capitalism should creep in again. They were unnecessarily
afraid to make the fullest possible use of specialists of all
kinds who had taken a leading part in industry under the old
regime and who, now that the old regime, the old
system, had been definitely broken, could be made to serve
the new. He believed that unless the utmost use was made
of the resources of the country in technical knowledge, etc.,
they could not hope to organize the maximum productivity
which alone could save them from catastrophe.
The speaker who followed him, Glebov, defended precisely
the opposite point of view and represented the same attitude
with regard to the reorganization of industry as is held by
many who object to Trotsky's use of officers of the old army
in the reorganization of the new, believing that all who
worked in high places under the old regime must be and
remain enemies of the revolution, so that their employment
is a definite source of danger. Glebov is a trade union
representative, and his speech was a clear indication of the
non-political undercurrent towards the left which may shake
the Bolshevik position and will most certainly come into
violent conflict with any definitely bourgeois government
that may be brought in by counter-revolution.
In the resolution on the economic position which was
finally passed unanimously, one point reads as follows: "It is
necessary to strive for just economic relations with other
countries in the form of state regulated exchange of goods
and the bringing of the productive forces of other countries
to the working out of the untouched natural resources of
Soviet Russia." It is interesting to notice the curiously mixed
character of the opposition. Some call for "a real socialism,"
which shall make no concessions whatsoever to foreign
capital, others for the cessation of civil war and peace with
the little governments which have obtained Allied support.
In a single number of the Printers' Gazette, for example,
there was a threat to appeal against the Bolsheviks to the
delegation from Berne and an attack on Chicherin for being
ready to make terms with the Entente.
The next business on the programme was the attitude to be
adopted towards the repentant Social Revolutionaries of the
Right. Kamenev made the best speech I have ever heard
from him, for once in a way not letting himself be drawn
into agitational digressions, but going point by point through
what he had to say and saying it economically. The
S.R.'s had had three watchwords: "War and alliance with the
Allies," "Coalition with the bourgeoisie," and "The
Constituent Assembly." For over a year they had waged
open war with the Soviet Government over these three
points. They had been defeated in the field. But they had
suffered a far more serious moral defeat in having to confess
that their very watchwords had been unsound. "War and
Alliance with the Allies" had shown itself to mean the
occupation of Russian territory by foreign troops in no way
concerned to save the revolution, but ready, as they had
shown, to help every force that was working for its
suppression. "Coalition with the Bourgeoisie" had shown
itself to be a path the natural ending to which was the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie through military force. "The
Constituent Assembly" had been proved to be no more than
a useful mask behind which the enemies of the revolution
could prepare their forces and trick the masses to their own
undoing.
He read the declaration of the Right Social Revolutionaries,
admitting that the Soviet Government was the only force
working against a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and
calling upon their troops to overthrow the usurping
governments in Siberia, and elsewhere. This repentance,
however, had come rather late and there were those who did
not share it. He said finally that the Executive Committee
must remember that it was not a party considering its
relations with another party, but an organ of government
considering the attitude of the country towards a party which
in the most serious moment of Russian history had
admittedly made grave mistakes and helped Russia's
enemies. Now, in this difficult moment, every one who was
sincerely ready to help the working masses of Russia in their
struggle had the right to be given a place in the ranks of the
fighters. The Social Revolutionaries should be allowed to
prove in deeds the sincerity of their recantation. The
resolution which was passed recapitulated the recantations,
mentioned by name the members of the party with whom
discussions had been carried on, withdrew the decision of
June 14th (excluding the S.R.'s from the Executive
Committee on the ground of their counter-revolutionary
tendencies) with regard to all groups of the party
which held themselves bound by the recently published
declarations, gave them the right equally with other parties
to share in the work of the Soviets, and notified the
administrative and judicial organs of the Republic to free
the arrested S.R.'s who shared the point of view expressed
in the recantations. The resolution was passed without
enthusiasm but without opposition.
There followed the reading by Avanesov of the decree
concerning the Menshevik paper Vsegda Vpered ("Forever
Forward," but usually described by critics of the
Mensheviks as "Forever Backward"). The resolution
pointed out that in spite of the Mensheviks having agreed
on the need of supporting the Soviet Government they were
actually carrying on an agitation, the effect of which could
only be to weaken the army. An example was given of an
article, "Stop the Civil War," in which they had pointed out
that the war was costing a great deal, and that much of the
food supplies went to the army. On these grounds they had
demanded the cessation of the civil war. The Committee
pointed out that the Mensheviks were making
demagogic use of the difficulties of the food supply, due in
part to the long isolation from the Ukraine, the Volga
district and Siberia, for which those Mensheviks who had
worked with the White Guard were themselves partly
responsible. They pointed out that Russia was a camp
besieged from all sides, that Kolchak had seized the
important centre of Perm, that Petrograd was threatened
from Finland, that in the streets of Rostov and Novo
Tcherkassk gallows with the bodies of workmen were still
standing, that Denikin was making a destructive raid in the
northern Caucasus, that the Polish legionaries were
working for the seizure of Vilna and the suppression of
Lithuania and the White Russian proletariat, and that in the
ports of the Black Sea the least civilized colonial troops of
the Entente were supporting the White Guards. They
pointed out that the Soviet Government had offered
concessions in order to buy off the imperialistic countries
and had received no reply. Taking all this into
consideration the demand to end civil war amounted to a
demand for the disarming of the working class and the poor
peasantry in the face of bandits and executioners
advancing from all sides. In a word, it was the worst form
of state crime, namely, treason to a state of workers and
peasants. The Committee considered useful every kind of
practical criticism of the work of the Soviet Government in
all departments, but it could not allow that in the rear of the
Red Army of workers and peasants, under that army's
protection, should be carried on unrestrained an agitation
which could have only one result, the weakening of Soviet
Russia in the face of its many enemies. Therefore Vsegda
Vpered would be closed until the Mensheviks should show
in deed that they were ready to stand to the defence and
support of the revolution. At the same time, the Committee
reminded the Mensheviks that a continuation of their
counter-revolutionary work would force the Soviet
Government "to expel them to the territories of Kolchak's
democracy." This conclusion was greeted with laughter and
applause, and with that the meeting ended.