The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 7, 1925, Page 8

Page Two WO treaties, Brest-Litovsk and Lo- carno, depict the advance of the proletarian revolution the past eight years. The first, in the early days of the revolution, found the §é¥iet gov- ernment at a disadvantage, compelled to make a retreat and yield to the hu- miliating demands of General von Hoffmann, representing the imperial government of Germany. At that time Russia was unable to fight any country, even tho that country itself were in the midst of an imperialist war that finally culminated in defeat. The second treaty, that of Locarno, was called at a time when for nearly eight years Soviet Russia had defied the whole world of the bourgeoisie. From a wéak nation, scarcely able to maintain itself against one Huropean nation, it had grown to be the most formidable and most feared power the world has ever seen, At Brest-Litovsk Russia was a na- tion embracing millions of disillusion- ed and undisciplined workers, soldiers and peasants, whose one impelling mo- tive was peace, bread and land, who had been cemented together in one common mass of misery to make an end of czarist despotism and who later rallied to the leadership of the Bolsheviks and crushed the bourgeois aftermath of czarism. After the desolating years of war exhaustion and after fighting thru two revolutions in eight months the Rus- sian masses could not fight longer. There had to be a respite from the agony and bloodshed. A party that could not understand that fact could not consolidate the revolution. ** @ The First Step. IHE czar of all the Russians, dur- ing the tempest of war, had boast- ed that he would sacrifice every man and every ruble in order to win the war, Twelve million Russians were hurled into the abbatoir of the world war; sacrificed for the czar and the imperialist butchers who backed him. In the spring of 1917 the workers at the front and at home decided that they had been sacrificed long enuf. instead of being sacrficed by the , ¢zar they proclaimed that the time had come to sacrifice the czar. And they did so. When the various gov- ernments under the leadership of the bourgeoisie elements, culminating in the rule of Kerensky, endeavored to continue the war on the side of the entente, the workers, rallying to the clarion call of the Bolsheviks, deter- mined to sacrifice Kerensky. Brest-Litovsk came soon after the triumph of the Bolsheviks. It was im- possible to drive the Russian masses into further warfare, even to resigt the imperious demands of the German general staff. At Brest-Litovsk was revealed on a broad scale the prac tical application of the Marxian form- ula that the Communist Party is the vanguard of the working class; that it does not merely defend the immedi- ate interests, but the historical inter- ests of that class. The interests of the working class as a whole come first. And, altho some contended that it was an act of self-abasement to yield to the arrogance of Von Hoff- man, the old Bolshevik guard of the party considered that it was far bet- ter to accept temporary defeat and humiliation and misunderstanding on the part of the rest of the world, than |to make a futile but heroic gesture | and shatter the revolution, | Eight years pass and we consider Locarno, when the revolution had be- come so powerful as a world force that the European capitalist nations, | | both victors and vanquished, who par- | ticipated in the world war had come} together for the purpose of trying to create a “security pact” against Bol- shevism conquering the world. What happened in the interim to| produce this transformation? Hun-| dreds of volumes have already been written describing certain events of these eight yea and thousands more will be written before it is all | |recorded, Within the confines of one }article it is quite impossible to give {but the most fragmentary outline of| | the events, First and foremost we must deal |with the organized power of the So-| viet government. The victory goes) to those who have the power totake and hold it. | A Master Stroke. T Brest-Litovsk the Bolshevik dip- lomats were confronted with a situation where the enemy was pow- erful, relentless and astute. Behind| them was no army, only an undiscip- lined mass of workers just struggling out of an age long servitude, who knew only that they were weary of |fighting. The problem there con- | fronting the Bolshevik leaders was to gain time, to get a breathing space, so that the victory of the revolution could be consolidated. The humiliating peace was signed and the strategy proved @ master- stroke for the revolution because it enabled it to survive; to hold the sup- port of the peasantry and to begin to weld together an army out of the amorphus mass of humanity in Rus- sia. It gave the revolution the neces- sary time to expose -to thousands of German workers the predatory de- signs of the imperial government; it enabled the Bolsheviks to exploit the conflicts between the imperialist na- tions and to begin to train a Red Army based upon the indomitable Red Guard, that had gone thru the revolu- tionary upheavals, preparatory to the armed struggles against Kolchak, Denekin, Yudenich, and other white guardists. Tho the victory for the proletariat of Russia was realized thru the appli- cation of Lenin’s formula, “turn the imperialist war between nations into a civil war against capitalism,” the terrific impact of the war made the maintainance of an army sufficiently strong to defend the proletarian rule a gigantic ta8k. To firmly establish the dictatorship of the proletariat de- manded the building of an army that could defy the white guardist adven- turers within and the imperialist in- vaders from without. Never at any time did the Bolsheviks have any il- lusions regarding this necessity. They yielded to no soft, sentimental yearn- ings for peace. They faced the grim realities of the struggle. As Lenin, én those days, emphasized: “Dictatorship is an authority rest- Ing directly upon force, and not bound by any laws. . The revolution- ary dictatorship of the proletariat is an authority maintained by the proletariat by means of force over and against the bourgeoisie and not bound by any laws.”—The Proletar- On Guard Against the Imperialist Robbers From Saratov Izvestia. The Red Army Class of 1903 Comes to Take Up Guard Duty Against the World Imperialists Organized in the Robber Clique of Nations. jan Revolution and Kautsky the |remained in the war. When the im-| member of the army who was illit- Renegade, . perialist war came to a close the Red | erate, Army of the revolution was being Famine Stalks. Arm the Revolution. HE first task of any revolution is! to disarm the former ruling class and its supporters and arm the revo- lution. At the time of Brest-Litovsk the workers had not recovered from the shock of the war sufficiently to engage in a further struggle. When the question of defiance to the de- mands of the German imperialists came up, those who favored a con- tinued struggle said to Lenin who fa- vored making a strategic retreat to gain time: “How do you know the ‘workers will not rally to a further struggle? Can you answer that?” Lenin replied that he did not need to .answer, that the peasants in the army had already, answered “with their feet” as they ran away from the front. So at Brest-Litovsk the proletariat of the world learned from the Bolshe- viks that there are many sides to a revolutionary struggle. In this con- crete instance they learned that not only is a determined offensive neces- sary, but that it is, equally important to understand just when it is neces- sary to make a_ strategic retreat. They learned that retreat, no less than the offensive, is a part of the science of revolution. Lenin’s Strategy Wins, FTER Brest it was much easier to convince the workers of Germany and Austria-Hungary that they were fighting a war of imperialist conquest. A terrific propaganda of exposure, lay- ing bare the designs of the central powers flooded the armies of Germany and her allies, causing disintegration in the ranks, and doing far more to de- feat Germany than would have been possible even tho Russia could have EUROPE FEARS NEW LEAGUE of frightfulness being waged against the colonial peoples in nations bor- dering the Mediterranean sea, the s of the allied butchers ied the legend of a new league of eastern nations to chal- lenge the western league of Eu- ropean nations. The dark-shaded nations are supposed to Indicate the boundaries of the potential league, while the light shaded por- tions represent those nations sym- pathetic to the scheme, A fable is current in London to the effect that Dr. Tewfik Pasha, Turkish foreign minister, has ap- proached the powerful tains with the propo sounding out the Asiatic po Soviet Russia is reported to ha pressed its willingness to join such a league, This propaganda is for the pur- pose of detracting attention from the maneuvers of Great britain in endeavoring to create a “sanitary cordon” around Russia, with the ob- Ject of Isolating and trying to crush by force of arms the proletarian revolution, The recent seizure of power In Persia by Riza Khan has baffled Great Britain, as Khan is known to have been friendly toward Soviet Russia. If his friendship continues, and it is reasonable to ex- pect it will, he may set up a repub- lle and enter into closer relations with Russia. Britain fears that Teharan may become a strategic spot from which Bolshevist propa- ganda may more effectively perme- ate Iraq, Afghanistan and/India. It may also endanger British oll inter. ests in the south, as the Persian gulf s long been regarded as a British preserve, A league of nations against the European league may eventually be formed, but it will not come thru the initiative of the present rulers of Turkey or other nations under domination of the imperialist pow- ers. It will come when the colonial peoples rise in their might and scourge from the face of the earth holding them in subjection to im- perialistic nations. Then will be formed a great antl-imperialist bloc whose blows will shatter to its very foundations the European league of nations and the governments that Support it, and at the same time will send American capitalism reel- ing «mortally wounded out of the Near and Far East. At home the American proletar- iat will have to finish the job and give it a proper burial formed, preparatory to defending the triumph of the Russian proletariat against the world. No sonner had the echoes of the last guns died on the imperialist front. than the hire- ling of entente imperialism, Admiral] Kolchak, with a bandit gang, armed by France and Britain, started a drive against the revolution and boastfully announced that He would wear the crown of the czarg of Russia in a few weeks, : The first recruiting day for the Red Army was called and the streets of Moscow and Petrograd (now Lenin- grad) swarmed with workers and peasants anxious to defend the revo- lution. When Leon Trotsky looked upon the masses in the streets strug- gling to enter the ranks in defanse of their revolution he said “If Kolchak ever wears the crown of the czars he will wear it in a Siberian forest, but not in'Moscow.” These raw troops after a hasty pre- liminary train: army, the mu old revolutio: which was the w fighters of the Red Guard. Into,'the Urals marched a large part of the mew army and, un- der the comman Comrade Frunze, after months of r fighting, Kol- chak’s forces were cut to pieces, and Kolchak himself shot by one of his own men, Red Army Triumphant, ‘AFTER Kolchak’ Game Deniken. after Deniken came Yudenich. Wave after wave of invading hordes were beaten back and the Red Army was becoming ever more powerful. Then came the French-inspired drive of Poland against the revolution, and the troops of the Red Army thundered toward Warsaw and were only stop- ped by the throwing of French re- cruits onto Polish soil. The Polish white guards under Pilsudsky had in- vaded Russian territory, but this time, instead of a Brest peace, the Bolshe- viks retaliated by hurling them back across the border and driving thefn imto their own capital city with such terrific force that their sympathizers thruout the world held demonstrations against the “savagery” of the revolu- tionary forces. ‘i All the counter-revolutionary ven- tures were financed by France, England and the United States. Even after these lessons the imperialists were not convinced that the reyolu- tion was impregnable, They secured another “white hope” in the person of General Wrangel, who from the Crimea, in 1920, began operations against the revolution, He was soon removed from the scene of activity. The whole force of the victorious Red Army was hurled ‘against his mercen- aries with such fury that after two weeks’ steady retréating he found him- self bottled up near Sebastapol and in order to save his own neck ran away on a Fret¢h warship under cover of darkness, where he found refuge in Constantinople, American and Japanese troops that had been harassing the revolution in the east, aiding every adventurer from Kolchak te the ataman, Semi- noff, were finally forced to evacuate. The First on Earth, ORGED in the fire of civil war and revolution the Red Army had be- come a powerful, disciplined force, capable of defending its victory against the world, It was a new army, representing a new victorious class, fully conscious of its mission. For the first time in the history of the modern world the elass that made up the army realized the fruits of .vic- tory. It was the armed force upon which rested the authority of the rev- olution, Not merely was this army trained to fight, but campaign wi May 1, 1022, attached to the }, DDED to the throes of the civil war the revolution was faced with a devastating famine in 1921-22. Grim death stalked thru the Volga region and millions perished before relief could arrive. The recurring droughts that have frequently thruout written history depleted the population of this region caused the almost total failure of crops. Here was a néw enemy con- fronting the revolution. But the re- serve forces of the revolution, the pro- letariat of other lands, rallied to the famine relief work and helped make it possible for the Soviet government to survive even that calamity, Russta was faced with still another problem, the difficult task of reviving the economy of the nation. At the outbreak of the revolution it was hoped—and all signs indicated the probability of aid from other ¢otn- tries thru revolution—that the work- ers of other nations would be ‘able to furnish the machinery and techrii¢- 1 instruments necessary for the in- dustrial revival. But'the tempo of the movement slowed down, and in order to obtain necessary equipment an eco- nomic retreat, similar to the military retreat at Brest, was necessary. With the same superior statesmanship that motivated his stand on the question of Brest, Lenin boldly enunciated the new economic policy (N. E. P.) Some super-leftists, calling themselves Com- munists, charged that this retreat was a betrayal of the revolution, But the Bolsheviks pointed to the fact that it was possible to permit foreign capftal to enter and participate in the de- velopment of the country if the po- Utical power to determine the limits of this participation remained in the hands of the proletariat, It was a necessary retreat and altho it involved dangers, those dangers were not so great that the revolution was endangered. The power of the revolution embodied in the Red Army made unthinkable a return to the old conditions. The years since the enun- ciation of that policy have proved its correctness and vindicted again the diplomacy of the revolution. Try Other Methods, Bet the defeat of the allied aspira- tions to crush by force the power of the revolution, did not destroy their hope of-crushing it by other methods. The new economic policy and the famine were viewed as oppor- tunities for obtaining, thru the slimy diplomacy of Europe, the victory they could never hope to obtain by force of arms. Numerous efforts were made to in- volve Russia in a diplomatic net that would open wide the gates for capi- talist penetration, The most ambi- tious of these projects was the Genoa conference in 1922, Britain, France and Italy arranged the conference to which it invited So. viet Russia and the United States. Charles Evans Hughes, the bungling secretary of state of the Harding cabinet, proposed cutting down the Red Army before entering such a con- ference, This suggestion met with the contempt it richly deserved. Hughes and his supporters did not seem to realize that it was the existence of the Red Army that made necessary the Genoa conference. The endeavor to throttle Russia by military force had failed so under the guise of “re- constructing Europe” the allies hoped they could force wide open the door to the vast resources of Russia, al- ready slightly opened to admit the functioning of the N, B, P. ‘ When their motives were known, Lenin rudely slammed the door in their faces. On his first public ap- pearance on his return from a vaca- tion where he had gone to recuperate from a seige of illness, Lenin, in a speech before the Congress of Metal Workers in Moscow, said: “Soviet ‘(Special Eighth Soviet Anniversary Edition) From Brest-Litovsk to Locarno, 1917---1925 -' and will go no farther in its conces- sions to capitalism, If these capital- istic gentlemen think they can ob- tain more by, continuing to squeeze us, we will reply: ‘Enuf. You shall get nothing.’” Lenin Hurls Defy, ENIN, who was invited to the meeting at Genoa and would have gone had his health permitted, said that he hoped to talk to Lloyd George personally. “T shall tell him,” he said, “that he can’t scare us with trivialities, after cannon have failed to frighten us. It is no good to threaten us with little things, because in so doing the threat- eners might lose their prestige. At- tempts to put us in the position of a conquered country are nonsense. We, as merchants, know what we owe you and what you owe us, and also what should be your lawful profit.” The speech of Lenin cast gloom over Genoa as the giants of allied im- perialism opened their conference. It dispelled any hopes they had enter- tained of economically enslaving Rus- sia, thereby winning on the economic field the victory that was snatched from them by the Red Army on the sanguinary field of. civil war. Leon Trotsky, at that time war min- ister, in a public address asserted that if any attempt were made by those nations represented at Genoa to take from Russia by force what they could not achieve thru diplomacy “it might be necessary to tip the balance with blood.” The splendid batallions of the Red Army that had been built up in four years time from the shattered and un- disciplined: remnants of the fighters of the early revolutionary period were a guarantee against further military designs that might have been formu- lated at Genoa. Treaty of Rapallo. T Genoa the allied statesmen had the audacity during the first week to propose absurd demands: that, if accépted, would have reduced Russia to a state of vassalage comparable to that of China, with all the powers having a free hand to plunder to their heart’s content. To flaunt the open contempt of the revolution in the faces of Lloyd George, Poincaré, Bar- thou and company, the Soviet govern- ment met with Germany at Rapalio and concluded a treaty that wiped the slate of their mutual war obligations clean, while the allies were striving to force Russia to recognize the ab- surd debts of the Czar. The treaty of Brest-Litovsk was officially abrogated. by the two nations involved, though as @ gesture the treaty of Versailles had already declared for its abroga- tion. For more than a'month at Genoa the allied powers struggled to create @ basis for united action against Rus- sia, but their own irreconcilable con- tradictions defeated their purpose and it dissolved with no permanent results achieved, The S-R Trials. ‘CCOMPANYING the efforts of the allies at Genoa the social-demo- crats of the world tried to alienate the class conscious proletariat from Support of the revolution by publish- ing reams of hysterical documents ap- pealing to the “civilized world” to come to the aid of the social-revolu- tionaries who were then on trial in Russia, charged with every crime co mconcssere By H. M. Wicks from conspiracy against the revolu- tion to actual assassination and ac- cepting money from the French milit- ary mission. While in the throes of revoiuttur and civil war these reptiles, under the direction of the executive committee of the social revolutionary party, with Victor Tchernoff, a hireling of French imperialism at their head, committed a series of the most loathsome and repulsive crimes against the revolu- tion in order to open the gates to the allied armies so that the defenders of the revolution could be drowned in oceans of blood and the supremacy of capitalism restored. rf This malignant throng was decisive- ly silenced when the Soviet govern- ment, after proving, with unimpeach- able documentary evidence, that they were guilty of all the atrocious crimes charged, and many more, commuted the death sentences imposed upon them, Rather than execute them they were permitted to live and endure the execration of all sincere revolutionists thruout the earth, Locarno the Latest. THER efforts of the capitalist na- tions to devise a method of crush- ing the revolution; the arbitrary crea- tion of little ententes, the manouver- ing to gain advantages in one way or another over the revolution, finally culminated in Locarno, where the most ambitious plan for {solating Russia from the rest of the world and forming a bloc of nations to destroy the revolution by armed invasion came to naught. By exploiting the conflicts between the various imperialist nations, Russia has, thus far, been successful in pre venting an armed invasion, But, those sinister forces represented at Locarno are still at work, and as long as they exist they will menace the revolution. But Russia need have no fear of them, for there is a tremendous po- tential reserve force in India, Asia and Africa, where the exploited col-- onials, groaning under the burdens of imperialism are even now stirring restlessly. When the time for war be- tween the outpost of the world revo- lution and the capitalist mations of the earth comes,’ in addition to the iron battalions of the proletarian Red Army there will be the vast masses of colonial slaves ‘brought into the con- flict on the side of the revolution. Then the imperialist nations them- selves have still to reckon with the class conscious proletariat at home, under the leadership of the Commun- ist International, who will throw all their might into the scales on the side of the Union of Soviet Republics and tip the balance for the revolution. Revolution Defiant ET the imperialist nations hesitate before letting loose upon their heads certain annihilation, for such it will be if ever they dare step one foot of a hostile army on the soil of the revolution. From Brest-Litovsk to Locarno; from the first feeble steps on the path to revolution to the day when the im- perialist world stands appalled before the might of that revolution, After eight years Soviet Russia is still hold- ing aloft the torch of world revolution and every passing year it grows brighter; its rays penetrate ever dark- er recesses of the earth until all the exploited and oppressed are turning their eyes toward it as the beacon that will Hght the path to freedom. Baron Wrangel at the End ofrHis Bloody Adventure Against’ Trying to Sell His Soldiers to the Belgian Government: “The) * f Than the jacks, Your Honor,” He Says... BRITISH INTELLIGENCE CHIEF BOASTS HOW GERMAN ATROCITY STORIES WERE MANUFACTURED NEW YORK, Noy. 6.—General J. V. Charteris’ admission at'a’'New York | banquet that as chief of intelligence for the British army in war time and official propagandist he manufactured German atrocity stories has, aroused the indignation of many of his lsteners, They were particularly, aroused at Charteris’ naive boast that he switched captions on two photographs, one of dead bodies and another of dead horses going behind the German lines. The horse caption explained the bodies were going behind t! lines to be boiled down for fat, Charteris said he switched this caption to the dead men picture and then sent the photographs. to China to create anti- German sentiment. The stories of the pseudo fat rend- ering methods of the Germans were broadcasted during the war and ob+ tained a wide circulation in America, even Billy Sunday shouting them from his evangelistic pulpits. “The matter mogt certainly will be taken up in parliament,” declared two British labor members of pasifament, now visiting in America following the THE DAILY WORKER. ~~ Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING Co. 1118 W. Washington Blvd, Chicago, I, (Phone; Monroe 4712) SUBSCRIPTION RATES By Mail: Per Year s.$6,00 6 Poet 1a ry 00" bd (in Chicago only): : yaaa ahd 1118 W, Washi Bast ‘Address all mail and make out check € to THE DAILY WORKER ington Bivd. um