Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/84

 Among masses there was an impulsive reaction to the Russian Revolution's appeal, but their potential action was crushed by the Majority Socialists. Social-patriotic Socialists went to Stockholm bent upon intrigues to use the Revolution in the interests of German Imperialism, as Dr. Sudekum in the winter of 1914 went to Italy to cajole the Socialists to drag Italy into the war on the side of Germany. The German Majority Socialists' reactionary attitude was expressed by Scheidemann who said at a meeting of his party's Central Committee, in May, 1917: "To draw a comparison between German and Russian conditions is impossible. For the same reason it is out of the question to follow the Russian example." And Scheidemann bitterly criticized recent strikes of the German workers.

Nor was there any response among the majority Socialists of the allied countries, except in Italy and among minor groups of revolutionary Socialists, as in Germany.

The attitude of the majority Socialists of the Allies is revealed in the following letter addressed to the President of the Petrograd Soviet by the Secretarial Delegation for Foreign Affairs of the Organization Committee (Mensheviki) of the Social Democratic Workers' Party, which shows that the majority Socialists of Great Britain, France and Belgium were intriguing against the Revolution at a time when they did not have the alibi of the "pro-German" Bolsheviki:

"The so-called majority of the English and French Socialists have undertaken a systematic campaign for the purpose of exerting pressure on the Russian Socialist proletariat to discontinue all efforts for peace and waive any independent political policy based on international solidarity and the class struggle. Scores of telegrams have been sent for this purpose by individual representatives and by various groups. From this the Russian proletariat can clearly see the lack of real joy in view of the gigantic revolution accomplished by the Russian people and the complete willingness to sacrifice its freedom on the altar of narrow nationalist interests. They wish to force on the Russian workers a civil peace together with the imperialistic war aims of the bourgeois liberals, the same civil peace which demoralized the proletarian movement in England and France. And so incompatible is this with the task of bringing an actual and genuine democracy in Russia, that Jules Guesde demanded quite openly in his telegram: first victory, and only then the republic. In his own country, moreover, he practiced the same principle inasmuch as he betrayed the republic in favor of those who