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Updated: June 22, 2025
We must go down in history meriting the epitaph on our tombstones, 'They died, but they were never slaves." From the Petrograd Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies came I.G. Tseretelli, who had just returned from ten years' Siberian exile. A native of Georgia, a prince, nearly half of his forty-two years had been spent either in Socialist service or in exile brought about by such service.
Among the Petrograd workingmen the displeasure with the official leaders was intensified also by the fact that Tseretelli, Dan and Cheidze misrepresented the general views of the proletariat in their endeavor to prevent the Petrograd Soviet from becoming the mouthpiece of the new tendencies of the toilers.
The speech of Chernov president and member of a detested party had above all the honor of such a greeting. As for Tseretelli, he was at first greeted by an inconceivable din, but was able afterward his speech was so full of profound sense to capture the attention of the Bolsheviki themselves. A general impression that was extremely distressing came from this historic session.
At a secret conference of the Executive Committee of the Council, in which representatives of the minority participated, Tseretelli, then minister of the coalition government, with all the arrogance of a narrow-minded middle-class doctrinaire, said that the only danger threatening the revolution was the Bolsheviki and the Petrograd proletariat armed by them.
Among those who attacked him and accused him of being an agent-provocateur were Tseretelli, the Socialist-Revolutionist, and Miliukov, the leader of the Cadets. Some years later, at the time of the uprisings in connection with the Young Turk movement, "Parvus" turned up in Constantinople, where he was presumably engaged in work for the German Government.
Again and again Tseretelli was interrupted with cheers as he read this Appeal to the Army. He was cheered, too, when he explained that the Soviet had decided to support the reconstructed Provisional Government and called upon the soldiers to do likewise.
Afterwards, when the Petrograd Soviet, by a dwindling majority, passed the resolution for the transfering of all power into the hands of the Soviet, our party put forth the demand to establish a coalition Executive Committee formed on a proportional basis. The old presiding body, the members of which were Cheidze, Tseretelli, Kerensky, Skobeloff, Chernoff, flatly refused this demand.
Tseretelli made the only reply it was possible for a sane man to make: "It is proposed that we speak to the Allies with ultimatums, but did those who made this silly proposal think that this road might lead to the breaking of diplomatic relations with the Allies, and to that very separate peace which is condemned by all factions among us?
Yet the majority was with Kerensky, Tseretelli, and Plechanov, as the following resolutions adopted by the convention prove: The first convention of the Delegates from the Front, having heard reports on current problems from the representatives of the Provisional Government, members of the Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, and from representatives of the Socialist parties, and having considered the situation, hereby resolves: That the disorganization of the food-supply system and the weakening of the army's fighting capacity, due to a distrust of a majority of the military authorities, to lack of inner organization, and to other temporary causes, have reached such a degree that the freedom won by the Revolution is seriously endangered.
Further, they were actively obstructing the work of the government. Thus Tseretelli, Kerensky, Skobelev, and many others whose efforts might have saved the Revolution, were thwarted by men wholly without a sense of responsibility.
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