Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/466

 name of humanity, we respectfully call their attention to the fact that they were not sent to Russia to defend the principles of humanity, but to preserve the interests of the capitalist State; we would advise them further not to threaten us with the indignant horror of the civilized world, but to tremble before the jury of the masses who are arising against a civilization that has thrust humanity into the unspeakable misery of endless slaughter.

In the entire capitalist world the White Terror rules over the working-class. In Russia the working-class destroyed that Czarism whose bloody regime brought no protests from the neutral nations. The working-class of Russia put an end to the rule of the bourgeoisie who, under the flag of the Revolution, again amidst the deep silence of the neutral powers, slaughtered soldiers who refused to shed their blood in the interests of war speculators, killed peasants because they claimed the land they had cultivated for centuries in the sweat of their brow.

The majority of the Russian people, in the person of the second Congress of the Workmen's, Peasants', Cossacks' and Soldiers' Council, placed the power into the hands of the Workmen's and Peasants' Government. A small handful of capitalists who desired to regain the factories and the banks that were taken from them in the interests of the people, a small handful of landowners who wished to take back the land that had been given to the peasants, a small handful of generals who wished again to teach the workmen and the soldiers obedience with the whiplash, refused to recognize the decision of the Russian people. With the money of foreign capital they mobilized counter-revolutionary hordes with whose assistance they tried to cut off Russia from its food supply in order to choke the Russian Revolution with the bony hand of hunger. After they became convinced of the futility of their attempts to overthrow the working-class republic that enjoyed the unbounded confidence and support of the working-class, they arranged counter-revolutionary uprisings in the attempt to crowd the Workmen's and Peasants' Government from its positive work, to hinder it in its task of ridding the country of anarchy that had taken hold of the country in consequence of the criminal policies of former governments. They betrayed Russia on the South, North and East into the hands of foreign imperialistic states, they called foreign bayonets, wherever they could muster them, into Russia. Hidden behind a forest of foreign bayonets they are sending hired murderers to kill the leaders of the working-class, in whom not only the proletariat of Russia but all the massacred humanity sees the personification of its hopes. The Russian working-class will crush without mercy this counter-revolutionary clique, that is trying to lay the noose around the neck of the Russian working-class with the help of foreign capital and the Russian bourgeoisie.

In the face of the proletariat of the whole world we declare that neither hypocritical protests nor pleas will protect those who lake up arms against the workers and the poorest farmers, who would starve them and embroil them in new wars in the interests of the capitalist class. We assure equal rights and equal liberties to all who loyally do their duty as citizens of the Socialist Workmen's and Peasants' Government. To them we bring peace, but to our enemies we bring war with-