An official French dispatch received in Washington on May 16 asserted
that the opposition to the Soviet régime was growing stronger. On
June 2 a Russian wireless message announced the discovery of a vast
counter-revolutionary conspiracy, with ramifications throughout the
country. Moscow was declared in a state of siege, a large number
of persons were arrested, and stringent measures were taken to
restrain the press. Boris Savinkov, Chief of the War Department under
Kerensky, and Prince Kropotkin, the famous revolutionist and writer,
were reported to have taken part in the conspiracy. A week later a
Moscow dispatch reported that factory workers were boycotting Soviet
delegates, that some provincial towns elected anti-Bolshevist Deputies
to the Soviets, and that a general political strike appeared imminent.
In the middle of May the Central Committee of the Russian Social
Revolutionary Party addressed to the National Council of the French
Socialist Party and to the Parliamentary Socialist group the following
message:
The Bolshevist Government, which exists but by the grace of
our German masters, assumes, under the pressure of Germany's
Ambassador, a provoking attitude toward the allied powers,
and particularly toward France, addressing to them insulting
ultimatums which are in striking contrast with the servile
docility they manifest in executing the orders of German
imperialism. The Russian Social Revolutionary Party sends
its socialist greetings to the French section of the Labor
International, and protests against the spirit of the foreign
policy of the present dictators of Russia.
The Social Revolutionary Party declares at the same time that the
newly formed Communist group, formerly Bolsheviki, must on all
accounts be excluded from the International for having called
upon the most elementary principles of democracy to resuscitate
forms of despotism and violence. They have betrayed the cause of
international socialism by an infamous separate peace with the
crowned despots of Central Europe, transforming Russia, disarmed,
humiliated, and crushed, into an administrative supply house
destined to sustain the German offensive in the west.
The Social Revolutionary Party expresses the hope that all the
national sections of the Labor International will determine
their attitude as regards the Bolshevist usurpers, taking into
consideration this declaration of our party, which itself has the
right to speak for all Russian labor, having held an absolute
majority in the Constitutional Convention, whose powers will
be resuscitated in spite of the sanguinary repressions made by
the usurpers of power. We beg our French comrades to send this
declaration to the Socialist parties of the allied countries.