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Among the Socialist leaders who took this position was Vladimir Ulyanov, the great propagandist whom the world knows to-day as Nikolai Lenine, Bolshevik Prime Minister and Dictator. Lenine urged the workers to boycott the Duma and to refuse to participate in the elections in any manner whatever.
Lenine and Trotzky stating that they would sign the peace treaty on the German terms, which included all the territory claimed by Germany along the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, comprising the western part of Esthonia, Courland with the Moon Islands in the Gulf of Riga, most of the provinces of Kovno and Grodno, and nearly all of Vilna, with a huge indemnity.
What, one wonders, do these American Bolsheviki worshipers think of the teaching of these paragraphs from an article by Lenine? Disarmament is a Socialistic ideal. In Socialist society there will be no more wars, which means that disarmament will have been realized.
"Dabbling in all manner of infamy, from financing a thieves' fence to organizing an association of common criminals to bring it business; from maintaining a corps of agitators to foment social discontent to fostering this last, most imbecile scheme of all, which comes to naught to-night, an attempt to overthrow the British Empire and set up in its stead a Soviet England, with Victor Vassilyevski in the dual rôle of Trotsky and Lenine!"
Such, in brief outline, is the history of the man Trotzky. It is a typical Russian history: the story of a persistent, courageous, and exceedingly able fighter for an ideal believed in with fanatical devotion. Lenine, in one of his many disputes with Trotzky, called him "a man who blinds himself with revolutionary phrases," and the description is very apt.
As I copy these words from Lenine's book my memory recalls the days, more than twenty years ago, when as a workman in England and as shop steward of my union I joined with my comrades in breaking down the very things Lenine here proposes to set up in the name of Socialism. "Absolute submission to the will of one person" is not a state toward which free men will strive.
There was then, and has been ever since, every indication that the Provisional Government and the big majority of the members of the council accepted this declaration as being in harmony with their own sentiments. Nevertheless, it became the object of a very noisy attack by those extreme elements known as the Maximalists, best represented by Lenine and his type.
The Spartacists in Germany, the Radical Socialists in Austria, and the Communists in Hungary were the best organized and most vigorous of the political groups in those countries and were conducting an active and seemingly successful propaganda among the starving and hopeless masses, while the Russian duumvirs, Lenine and Trotsky, were with funds and emissaries aiding these movements against established authority and social order.
"Your Lenine offered peace, bread, and work for the overthrow of Kerensky. What you have given murder and famine and idleness. Can there be common good that is based upon the blood of innocents? Did Ivan ever harm a soul? Have I?" "You!" Karlov trembled. "You with your damned green stones!
It is clear from this criticism that Lenine does not believe that a genuine Socialist party and, presumably, therefore, the same must apply to a Socialist government can represent "fairly prosperous peasants and working-men." We now know how to appraise the Soviet government. The constitution of Russia under the rule of the Bolsheviki is required by law to be posted in all public places in Russia.
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