Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/92

 66 of the great Russian revolution. If they did mean so, they must understand that the struggle against the world's reactionaries must go hand in hand with the struggle for the principles of the Russian democracy.

''You denounce the blockade, the intervention and the counter-revolution. But you must also denounce the slavery that has been introduced into Russia by the Russian communist party. Only then will the Russian working classes consider you their real friends. …''

You have interfered in Russian domestic affairs by your struggle against the blockade, against support of the counter-revolution, and for the recognition of the soviet government. Your intervention was and is one-sided. You supported the soviet government, but you did not support the Russian proletariat and peasantry who fought against the despotism of the soviet government during all these terrible years. …

Some thirty days after this original appeal was issued the Social Democratic Party followed it up with a second appeal showing that the persecutions, instead of becoming milder, had become worse, especially under the Soviet Government set up by Moscow in the Ukraine under the leadership of Lenin's right bower, Rakovsky. This Ukraine persecution seems to have been aimed mainly and almost exclusively at the labor unions. The Social-Democratic Labor Party portrays it in the following convincing paragraphs:

With the object of the suppression of the social-democratic labor party, the bolsheviks have invented a new weapon, which was used for the first time by H. T. Rakovsky. The so-called Ukrainian government ordered the exile to the Georgian borders, without any trial, of seventeen of the most energetic leaders of the Russian social-democratic labor party in the Ukraine. Amongst