Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/225

 Rh letarian majority which condemns their action! It may be doubted if a more thinly veiled defense of sheer despotism was ever offered to the world.

In spite of the fact that the Russian people are allowed no voice whatever within that country, it must not be supposed that they have been successfully stifled. Innumerable representative individuals from all classes, including the trade unions, men and women whose integrity and credentials cannot be questioned, have escaped, to give voice to the opinions of the Russian people. Moreover, the largest labor organizations of Russia, that is the rank and file of the trade unions, without reference to the new leaders appointed by the Soviets or the new imaginary organizations created by them, have been in continued contact with European labor. The same is true of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, numerically the most important political organization in Russia. There is, moreover, no misunderstanding whatever of the Russian situation in neighboring countries, such as Germany and Scandinavia, where the contact with Russia has been close and continuous and pro-Bolshevist "intellectuals" can deceive nobody. But besides this testimony the labor delegations visiting Soviet Russia have secured reports from the trades unions and from the socialist parties as organizations. Some of these are published in the report of the British Labor Delegation. From the most important, the address to British labor by the Executive Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, signed by Chernoff, Gotz, and other leaders known to the entire labor and socialist movement of Europe, we quote the following characterization of the Bolshevist régime: