Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/62

 36 recent events in Russia the whole world knows what is the true state of mind of the Russian masses and what kind of electoral freedom exists in the free Socialistic Soviet Republic of Russia. This freedom is as follows:

A complete suppression of all freedom of press and assemblage for all inhabitants except Communists.

The absolute prohibition of all other parties to conduct any kind of an electoral campaign.

The illegal Social Revolutionists are not permitted to go to the polls at all, so that this strong party cannot possess a single Soviet delegate (among tens of thousands) in all Russia.

The Socialist Democratic party is formally legal but in fact illegal since regularly before each election there are mass arrests, the victims of which are only allowed their liberty again after the elections.

Public voting by the reason of hands in the election of all officials.

Election geometry as follows: of 1100 delegates in Moscow, 600 were assigned to the army, moreover 200 were appointed by the executive staffs of the red labor unions. [We shall show below that these executives were in turn generally appointed by the choice of the Communist party.]

The above facts are taken from the official declaration of the electoral regulations.

In Bolshevist Russia, then, we do not have a democracy or a Soviet régime but a so-called "proletarian dictatorship." Is it a Labor State? Arguing against Trotzky at a meeting called to discuss the trade unions at the end of 1920, Lenin said:

If we in 1917 [before the Bolshevists seized power] wrote about a Labor State that was quite clear. But at present, if we say: "Why and against whom is the labor class to be protected, as there is no bourgeoisie,