Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/460



A striking light is thrown on the cause of food difficulties which are experienced by Soviet Russia, by a letter written on September 4th, 1918, by M. Rene Marchand, the well known Figaro correspondent in Russia to President Poincare, the original of which was discovered during a search made in his house by the agents of the Extraordinary Commission for Fighting the Counter-Revolution, and which was published by the Moscow Isvestia. In the course of his letter, M. Marchand deplored the fact that—"Of late we have allowed ourselves to be drawn exclusively into a fight against Bolshevism thus engaging, without any advantage whatsoever to the interests of the Entente, in a policy which can have no other result than intensifying unnecessarily the sufferings and despair of the Russian people, to aggravate the existing anarchy and to accentuate the famine and civil war as well as the party feuds."

M. Marchand then reports a secret conference at the American Consulate-General at the end of August last, which was attended, in addition to the American Consul-General Poole, by all the other representatives of the Allied Governments and by himself.

"I then learned that the British Agent was preparing the destruction of the railway bridge over the river Volkhoff. A glance at the map will show that the destruction of this bridge would be equivalent to the delivery of Petrograd to death by starvation. The British agent added the information that he had already made an attempt to blow up the Tcherpoff Viaduct which would have had the same disastrous effect on the food supply of Petrograd. The conversation then turned on the subject of the destruction of the various railway lines. One of the agents mentioned that he had secured the valuable assistance of the railway employees, who, however, were opposed to destruction on a large scale; the corrupted employees were only prepared to assist in the blowing-up of trains carrying war materials. I do not want to dwell upon details but I am profoundly convinced that these were not isolated acts on the part of individual agents. But even if they were isolated acts their effect would be equally pernicious; they are calculated to draw Russia into an endless and even bloodier political fight and to deliver it to inhuman sufferings by death and starvation. Moreover, the sufferings would affect almost entirely the poor and the middle classes of the population, while the richer people and the bourgeoisie would always be able to find the means of escaping to the Ukraine or abroad."

M. Marchand notes that throughout the conference, not a single word was uttered about fighting Germany and expresses his profound conviction that the Soviet Government would not call in Germany to its assistance.

At the hour when Republicans of the whole world, celebrating the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, pay homage to the French Revolu-