Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/225

 it be Otherwise, since Kerensky and Tseretelli are indissolubly bound up in the government with the party of Milyukov. As a matter of fact, the social-patriotic pacifism of the Dans, as well as the Quaker pacifism of the Bryans, are both operating in the service of Imperialism.

In view of this state of affairs, the chief task of Russian diplomacy is not to make allied diplomacy refrain from this act or that or to revise this thing or that, but to make allied diplomacy believe that the Russian Revolution is safe and sound and solvent. The Russian Ambassador, Bakhmetieff, in his speech before the Congress of the United States, delivered on June lo, characterized the Provisional Government chiefly from this point of view.

"All these circumstances." said the Ambassador, "point to the fact that the power and significance of the Provisional, Government are growing day by day, that with each passing moment the Provisional Government is becoming better able to cope with all those elements that mean disaster, whether they take the form of reactionary propaganda or that of an agitation by the members of the extreme left. At the present time the Provisional Government is determined to take the most drastic steps in this direction, resorting to force, if need be, in spite of its constant endeavors for a peaceful solution of all questions."

There is no doubt that the "national honor" of our "defenders" remains absolutely unruffled while the Ambassador of "revolutionary democracy" fervently persuades the parliament of the American plutocracy of the readiness of the Russian government to pour out the blood of the Russian proletariat in the name of "order," the chief ingredient of which is fidelity to allied Capitalism.

And at the very moment when Bakhmetieff stood hat in hand, a humiliating speech passing over his lips, in the presence of the representatives of Capitalism, Tseretelli and Kerensky were explaining to the "revolutionary democracy" how impossible it was to dispense with armed force in its fight with "the anarchy of the left," and threatening to disarm the workers of Petrograd and the regiment which made common cause with them. We know that these threats came just in the nick of time; they served as a strong argument in favor of the Russian Loan in Wall Street. You see Mr. Bakhmetieff was in a position to say: "our revolutionary pacifism differs in no respect from your own brand of pacifism, and if you put your faith in Bryan, there is no reason why you should distrust Tseretelli."