Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Twelve Days in Germany (1921).pdf/40

 arguments of Crispien, the speaker of the Right Independents, was pure Menshevism. We remember very well when our Russian Mensheviks pretended to be a "purely workmen's" party, which did not wish to make the slightest concession to the peasantry, and also when they professed to be the "people's" party, and started to defend the peasants against us at a time when the working class was forced even by compulsory means to make the rich peasants give up their corn.

We see the same here. So long as the working class is not yet in power the German Mensheviks prefer to cover themselves with the cloak of a "genuine” working class party, which demands that no concessions be made to the small peasantry. The Right Independents referred in this question to Seratti, who, it is averred, is also opposed to any concessions to the small peasantry. We had no difficulty in refuting this statement by pointing out that revolutionary events in Italy during the last few weeks have justified our views, not those of Seratti. When in the course of the last few weeks the Italian workers started to seize the works and factories, the small peasantry of Italy started to take possession of the land. And of course only a stupid reformist could deny that such seizure of land was a help to the revolution.

We put this question to Crispien and Co.: "If you do not desire a union with the small peasants at a certain stage of the workers' revolution, what is your attitude to the idea of the necessity of peasants' soviets in time of revolution?" Crispien and Co. answered that in their opinion no peasants' soviets were necessary, and by this statement they once more laid bare their reformist, souls.

The Right Independents seek no allies for the successful carrying out of the proletarian revolution, for the simple reason that they do not for a moment believe in that revolution. This was proved by the objections which the Right Independents made to the theses on the agrarian question.

A specially interesting discussion was raised on the national question. The Enver Pasha affair was made much of. The Right Independents, with a truly Menshevik propensity for slander and insinuation, for several weeks past have been