Briand1 left for Washington hoping for success in a diplomatic game resembling one he had played more than once in the French Parliament. To the proposal to limit land armies Briand replied in the negative. He pointed out that the Versailles Peace required not the reduction but the strengthening of French armaments. That is correct. France was maintaining with an armed hand the system of slavery and the conjunction of contradictions and ruthless hostility which over the last three years we have been in the habit of calling the Versailles Peace. When it came to the question of naval armaments and their possible limitation, the decomposition of the old Entente became clearly revealed even to the uninitiated.
France miscalculated, and she miscalculated in that Britain proved more realistic than she expected. Britain had also added up her gold balance, her Navy, shipyards and so on and compared them with the United States. She became only too clearly aware that the British pound sterling, which was accustomed to being the ruler of the world money market, had long ago been forced to make a big leap -downwards — to a quarter of its pre-war value by comparison with the American dollar. As a result of her calculations Britain agreed to accept the balancing of her Navy with that of the United States. Thus, after her struggle with Germany for world power and the rule of the universe, and after Versailles, we are now witnesses to Washington. The United States refused to join the so-called League of Nations, which is nothing other than a decorative cloak for Britain’s domination over Europe exercised through the intermediary of France’s military and political rule on the continent. The United States refused to sign the Versailles Peace or enter the League of Nations. Conscious’ of the preponderance of her industry and her gold reserve, America appeared at Washington to re-make or finish off what in her opinion had not been sufficiently well and sufficiently firmly finished at Versailles. The centre of gravity of the capitalist world edifice was moved from Versailles to Washington. Washington made first and foremost an attempt to calm and pacify the so-called Pacific Ocean, which however is fraught with major international storms. There an attempt was made to reach an international agreement based on progressive international disarmament. France, intoxicated with her supposedly unlimited power, was sure that at Washington she would be able to turn the world antagonism between Great Britain and the United States to her advantage and secure a majority for the solution for which she would vote and thus strengthen her domination.
After her struggle and her victory Britain was no longer the first naval power that she was before the war, and now does not even dare to contemplate her Navy equalling the navies of the two next largest naval powers. At present the United States Navy is not yet equal to the British but it will catch up in the near future.
Before the work had time to be finished a new location for the same work appeared. This place is beautiful Genoa and it is supposed that the equilibrium necessary to Europe will be found here. 2 We have ROSTA3 reported in full. He said in this speech: ‘France, by holding talks with Turkey in the person of Bouillon, is shaking the eastern robber by the hand; now she turns up her nose (I don’t know exactly what word Lloyd George used but the meaning was just that) and refuses to shake the northern robber by the hand.’ By ‘northern robbers’ Lloyd George means of course you and me. As we do not make a particular issue over etiquette, leaving that to the mandarins of the bourgeois delegations, we are prepared to accept his not very flattering definition. He also said: ‘When you go to international negotiations then be prepared for the worst and take a bar of disinfected soap with you, because you will have to shake all sorts of hands’. He meant the hands of the robbers of the North and East, but, let me add, every other sort too. We have always born this circumstance in mind in our international relations, and we too carry disinfected soap in our pockets on such occasions. How Lloyd George finally convinced Briand is hard to know, but the fact is that the Washington fiasco knocked a large part of France’s conceit away, and Briand, on returning to Paris, sensed that France’s international position had become much more difficult.
From a speech to the Moscow Soviet, 16th January been invited there and we may possibly take part in the work of the conference. However, here things are not quite so simple. The great disorder in inter-state relations will come to the surface. Some states will not be too ready to participate in a conference to which Soviet Russia has been invited. And we must state that it will be the hardest of all to turn France on to this new path. It has to be said that Lloyd George has taken up this problem as strenuously and energetically as he had formerly set the counter-revolutionaries against us. It took him a lot of trouble to bend Briand to accept participation in the negotiations, and in reply to Briand’s objections he delivered a speech which our 1922.
The international revolution has not come as soon as we wished; there remain, if not decades, then more than weeks. It is hard to say how long it will be before the world revolution comes. Therefore it cannot be said with any certainty that no one else will make an attempt to start a war with us. The place from where a new danger could threaten us is Batumi. 4 A year and a half ago negotiations were held with the British over the leasing of Batumi. It was not leased to her, but Britain could attempt to take it by force. If such an attempt proved successful Georgia would turn into a bridgehead where the remnants of Wrangel’s army could be thrown and we would thus have an ABCs in the Caucasus. With all our love of peace we must be prepared for war. Batumi is not important to us but the Caucasian Front is, and our diplomacy has stated this clearly; when in turn it inquired of Lord Curzon as to Britain’s intentions with regard to Batumi, he answered with the question whether we intended to occupy it. What does Curzon’s reply mean? The world bourgeoisie was amazed at Wrangel’s rapid rout, but after a brief respite found a new slogan for agitation and launched it by spreading rumours about an alleged new assault by us on Georgia.
In the Caucasus generally our position is not altogether favourable. Venizelos’ Greece was a tool of the Entente against Turkey; now at the elections Venizelos’5 party has received a minority and the Germanophile party has come forward; this is more advantageous to us as it will move — even if shyly and uncertainly — against the Entente. Britain and France cannot rely on Turkey in present conditions, but they can promise her Baku; that is, they can settle with her from our account. Thus it is clear that we have dangers ahead of us in the Caucasus. But we can prepare this front with a small concentration of forces and reinsure ourselves with regard to Batumi and Baku.
a speech to secretaries of Moscow party cells, 26th November 1920 (There are No More Fronts).
What however are the possible chances of intervention, and above all what are the possible forms that intervention might take? Independent military action by any of the major European powers is not counted on even by the Russian emigres. But they do expect of’ the capitalist governments, and the French especially, active assistance for Russia’s lesser adversaries on the one hand, and the presentation of definite demands with regard to aid for the famine on the other. 6
Let us begin with the latter idea. Its absurdity is quite apparent. Conditions, and in the form of an ultimatum at that, have already been put to us. They were rejected. Then followed the period of interventions and blockades. We stood firm. The capitalist states were compelled by the logic of the situation to open negotiations with us. We went to meet them. A trade agreement with Britain was signed by both sides, in which Lloyd George drew the conclusions from past experience and did not dream of presenting any conditions whatsoever relating to Russia’s internal regime. 7 One surely cannot believe that this same Lloyd George would decide to put forward political demands over the question of philanthropic aid? A crazy idea! Even if one were to allow for a moment the impossible, namely that a rabid supporter of Milyukov, Burtsev and Kuskova took over from Lloyd George and presented political conditions to us, it is quite obvious that this could only end in the greatest discomfiture for him. It is self-evident that we would turn down any talks on such a basis …
a speech to the Moscow Soviet, 30th August 1921 (The Famine and the World Situation).
The fact that in such a devastated, exhausted and deeply shaken country as Russia a famines’ which gripped tens of millions of people has not brought the Soviet apparatus to a state of complete helplessness; that Soviet power has from the very start begun to make vigorous efforts to ensure the winter sowing of the Volga lands, already achieving the first successes in this direction; that the apparatus continues to work even under such extremely arduous conditions -all this demonstrates to the bourgeoisie, part of which was beginning to realize this even before the famine, that Soviet power is not a passing or temporary phenomenon but a factor to be reckoned with for a definite number of years to come. The British bourgeoisie has evidently understood this fully enough. The British bourgeoisie is, broadly speaking, the most perceptive: it has been said long ago that it thinks in centuries and continents. The British bourgeoisie has forged its might over centuries and grown used to looking a long way ahead, and is led by politicians who concentrate the whole past experience of their class in their consciousness.
Lloyd George said: ‘It is not a matter of philanthropy but a matter of returning Russia to a state of economic equilibrium and this can be done by establishing a regular economic alliance with Soviet Russia’. Lloyd George hopes that regular economic commercial relations will lead us to restore our economy and believes that it is as little possible to bring us down by famine as it was by military intervention. Thus we have here a seeming paradox. the famine, a profoundly negative fact, has not weakened us internationally but rather strengthened us. The bourgeois newspapers write: ‘Yes, this power must have living roots, it has withstood the scourge of the famine, we will have to reckon with it, there is no one else who can replace it.’
a speech to the Zhitomir Soviet, 5th September 1921.
The European bourgeoisie has at once begun to weigh things up this way and that, in order to determine its orientation. Britain wondered whether she had made a mistake by entering economic relations with us, at a time when the famine could perhaps have laid bare our insolvency and approaching collapse.
Those elements in the ranks of the French bourgeoisie who have had enough of awaiting the long promised downfall of Soviet power have now obtained a preponderance and have started to insist upon the inevitability of our collapse more stubbornly, together with the need to assist this collapse by military intervention. It has finally emerged that the public opinion of the European bourgeoisie has split into two basic groupings. I do not want to talk about the feelings of the western proletariat and its pressing desire to help us (the proletariat of Europe and America has shown its sympathy as far as its strength permits, by raising money, agitation and so on) because from the standpoint of the international situation it is the policy of the ruling bourgeoisie that has an immediate significance for the moment. So the orientation of the bourgeoisie has followed two lines. On the one hand, the bourgeoisie — that of Britain for instance which Lloyd George represents — has come to realize what has come about and said to itself. ‘No, this regime is stronger than we thought. If it could endure such a terrible disaster as the famine which struck tens of millions of human beings in such a weakened and exhausted country, and if the state machine did not split at the seams — if Soviet power did not lose its head but concentrated its attention on the very vital tasks of sowing the Volga lands; if it managed in the very first days to gather millions of poods of seed so as to save the Volga peasant economy for the following year, then this regime must have firm roots.’ The British bourgeoisie is of course hostile to us, but it is perceptive and said to itself that there is in Soviet Russia no other force apart from the Communist Party and the working class organized into the state capable of maintaining law and order and assuming the functions of government.
a speech to the 4th All-Russian Congress of the Russian Communist League of Youth, 21st September 1921.
Today the telegraph has brought news that the British government has taken a decision not to give aid to our famine-stricken people. This telegram evidently strictly reflects reality: not because Lloyd George had reckoned seriously on the collapse of Soviet power, but because the decision itself was very symptomatic. It means that pre-Genoa hesitations are being experienced and Lloyd George, whose position has become somewhat less stable, in order to insure himself with that section of bourgeois public opinion which opposes an agreement with us, has tossed a bone to those irreconcilable capitalists by a decision which is in itself of course quite ‘legal’: one cannot force the British government to give relief to the Volga famine.
But on the other hand this decision when taken in conjunction with commentaries in several semi-official British newspapers, acquires a semi-demonstrative character. One of the papers, the Daily Chronicle says that, I quote, ‘the refusal of the British government to give relief is caused by the fact that Soviet power still maintains the Red Army ..’. So is the British government intending to propose at Genoa disarmament or the reduction of armies? As far as we are concerned, then of course no obstacles need be expected to any measures which will relieve the peoples of the military burden. While preparations go ahead all along the line for new blows against us in the spring and while the French general staff has presented the Petlyura-ites through its military mission such an ‘innocuous’ gift as a tank, the British government, to judge from the Daily Chronicle, is astonished that we are maintaining the Red Army! Yes, we shall maintain it simply because we well remember (and I started with this) the experience of the conference on the Prinkipo Islands: after the conference on the Prinkipo Islands which was never held, we lived through a dark and hard year.
a speech to the Moscow Soviet commemorating the fifth anniversary of the February Revolution, 12th March 1922.
Today the European bourgeoisie has no certainty as to how events will take shape tomorrow or the day after. It lives from one day to the next. The economic soil is exhausted while the crisis passes from convulsions to a temporary recovery which gives way to new convulsions. International relations are shaky. Yesterday’s allies and the chief ones, Britain and France, more and more oppose each other hostilely on all levels of capitalist relations, and that is why not a single European government is today capable of conducting a policy even to the extent that it could before the last imperialist war, calculated for 15, ten or even five years ahead. All the bourgeois governments live by the impulses of the given moment; they try to plug up and patch up the most crying contradictions, but that is all. And so — from contradiction to contradiction, from conflict to conflict and moving on from one diplomatic resort to another, they attempt to put off the most acute question. Hence their diplomatic impotence, akin to their previous military impotence. They have mighty armies — and yet they cannot smash us. They have a diplomacy with age-old experience — and yet they are incapable of carrying through to the end with us a single piece of business.
We talk about our retreats. Of course we have retreated a great deal, but compare our diplomatic platform in February and April of 1919 (I have just read it out to you) with the platform which we came to Genoa with and left there with. At Genoa we said: ‘Russia will not give herself up, nor sell herself off, Russia is not capitulating to the ultimatum of European world imperialism.’ And what then? A short time afterwards there turns to us Urquhart, a representative of the leading lights of the stock exchange of Great Britain, a representative of enterprises worth billions in different parts of the world (he used to own many undertakings both in the Urals and in Siberia), and signs a preliminary conditional agreement with Comrade Krasin for a period of 99 years. A long period! I think that few of the youngest comrades here now will see the end of this period.
You might say: if the bourgeoisie is at present unable to look even five or ten years ahead, how is it that Urquhart is looking 99 years ahead? Herein lies the fact that the bourgeoisie, ruling as a class, as a state, must have a plan — who to conclude an alliance with, who is the greater and who the lesser enemy, and it has to foresee how relations will shape in five, ten or 15 years’ time. But Urquhart is acting as an individual proprietor and nothing more and his calculations are very simple and very correct in their simplicity. He says: ‘If we, the Urquharts, i.e. capital, hold on in Britain, in France and throughout the world then sooner or later we shall stifle Soviet Russia.’ And he is right. But if — reasons Urquhart — we capitalists are overthrown both in Britain and in France we shall of course lose our property in the Urals and Siberia too, but the man who loses his head is not going to weep over his hairs; if capital is to be expropriated throughout the world then of course Mr. Urquhart’s concession will expire in a shorter period than 99 years. That is why his reckoning is entirely realistic and entirely correct. I do not know whether Comrade Krasin said this to him: ‘As long as you are a force throughout the world we will not of course expropriate you individually. But if the British worker expropriates you and takes your property into his hands then somehow or other we will come to an agreement with the British worker about this concession.’ [Laughter.] But you will say that nevertheless the Soviet government has renounced this agreement.
Yes, it has unconditionally. Britain’s policy does not provide a minimal guarantee for concluding a responsible and major agreement of a type which presupposes the possibility of normal relations between countries. Britain seeks to prevent Turkey establishing an opportunity for her existence within the natural frontiers of the Turkish state. Britain is in effect waging a war against France: Britain acts under the pseudonym of Greece while France in fact provides support for Turkey. The war has brought victory to Turkey with whom we have complete sympathy, for Turkey was fighting for her independence while Greece was carrying out Great Britain’s rapacious imperialist plans.
There arose the question of the Black Sea and the Straits. On the Black Sea exist states which form part of our federation, in addition Turkey, Bulgaria and Rumania. Yet Britain wants to settle the question of the Black Sea jointly with France and Italy but without the participation of the countries for whom the Black Sea forms an internal sea and its shores the doorstep of their house. In these conditions, where Britain tramples on the elementary rights and interests of the peoples of our federation, the Soviet government did not consider it possible to sign an agreement with a British citizen: fulfilling an agreement, let me repeat, presupposes a minimum of loyal relations between countries and governments.
a speech to the 5th All-Russian Congress of the Russian Communist League of Youth, 11th October 1922 (The Position of the Republic and the Tasks of Young Workers).
So far as concessions are concerned today, Comrade Lenin has here remarked: ‘Discussions are plentiful, concessions are scarce.’ [Laughter.] How to explain this? Precisely by the fact that there is not and there will not be any capitulation to capitalism on our part. To be sure, those who favour the resumption of relations with Soviet Russia have more than once contended and written that world capitalism, in the throes of its greatest crisis, is in need of Soviet Russia; Britain needs an outlet for her goods in Russia, Germany needs Russian grain, and so forth and so on. This seems perfectly true, if one surveys the world through pacifist spectacles, that is, from the standpoint of ‘plain horse sense’ which is invariably quite pacifist. [Laughter.] And that is why it is invariably bamboozled. One would then imagine that the British capitalist s would try with might and main to invest their funds in Russia; one would then imagine that the French bourgeoisie would orient German technology in this same direction so as to create new sources whereby German reparations could be paid. But we see nothing of the sort. Why not? Because we are living in an epoch when the capitalist equilibrium has been completely upset; because we live in an epoch when economic, political and military crises instantly criss-cross; an epoch of instability, uncertainty and unremitting alarm. This militates against the bourgeoisie conducting any long range policy, because such a policy immediately becomes transformed into an equation with too many unknowns. We finally succeeded in concluding a trade agreement with Britain. But this happened a year and half ago; in reality, all our transactions with Britain are still on a cash-and-carry basis; we pay with gold; and the question of concessions is still in the phase of discussion.
If the European bourgeoisie and above all the British bourgeoisie believed that large-scale collaboration with Russia would bring about immediately a serious improvement in Europe’s economic situation, then Lloyd George and Co. would undoubtedly have brought matters in Genoa to a different conclusion. But they are aware that collaboration with Russia cannot immediately bring any major and drastic changes. The Russian market will not eliminate British unemployment within a few weeks or even months. Russia can be integrated only gradually, as a constantly increasing factor, into Europe’s and the world’s economic life. Because of her vast extent, her natural resources, her large population and especially because of the stimulus imparted by her Revolution, Russia can become the most important economic force in Europe and in the world, but not instantaneously, not overnight, but only over a period of years. Russia could become a major buyer and supplier provided she were given credits today and, consequently, enabled to accelerate her economic growth. Within five or ten years she could become a major market for Britain. But in the latter event, the British government would have to believe that it could last ten years and that British capitalism would be strong enough ten years hence to retain the Russian market. In other words, a policy of genuine economic collaboration with Russia can only be a policy based on very broad foundations. But the whole point is that the post-war bourgeoisie is no longer capable of conducting long-range policies. It doesn’t know what the next day will bring and, still less, what will happen on the day after tomorrow. This is one of the symptoms of the bourgeoisie’s historical demise.
To be sure, this seems to be in contradiction with Leslie Urquhart’s attempt to conclude an agreement with us for not less than 99 years. But this contradiction is truly only an apparent one. Urquhart’s motivation is quite simple and, in its own way, unassailable; should capitalism survive in Britain and throughout the world for the next 99 years then Urquhart will keep his concessions in Russia, too! But what if the proletarian revolution erupts not 99 years or even 9 years from now but much earlier? What then? In that case, naturally, Russia would be the last place where the expropriated proprietors of the world could retain their property. But a man who is about to lose his head, has little cause to shed tears over his mop of hair
the report to the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International on the New Economic Policy and the Perspectives for World Revolution, 14th November 1922.
Take a look at Britain. The conservative wing of capital is triumphant there. Having suppressed Ireland and stained her with blood while pursuing her age-old oppression in India, Britain is at this moment in Lausanne, attempting for a second time to bend and bring our friend Turkey to her knees. 8 Under the pretext of a bogus freedom of the seas, Britain is demanding access to the shores of the Black Sea so as to keep them under the threat of her long-range artillery. What is more, Britain is busy fishing off our shores but depicts our attempt to protect our country’s vital economic interests as an assault on her interests. If that were not enough, Britain is also attempting to interfere in our internal life. She has the audacity to dictate to us on whom we should pass judgement and whom we should pardon. But let us who are gathered here on this May Day with our ranks closed say to everyone: hands off! we workers and peasants, and working and peasant women, are the masters here and we well know on whom to pass judgement and whom to pardon.
a speech at the Red Square Parade, Moscow, 1st May 1923.
At the Hague, several weeks after Genoa, respect towards our diplomacy had already diminished somewhat. 9 After Genoa (which as you remember finished with nothing) our international situation (I am speaking all the while about the official situation, that is, about relations with bourgeois governments) began increasingly to deteriorate. Lord Curzon was by this time already counting on a new period of economic growth in Britain and throughout the world. By the laws of natural development, an economic crisis is usually succeeded by economic growth. At present economic advance in Europe has by no means reached pre-war levels, but the number of unemployed in Britain has nevertheless dropped sharply. In France it had not been great in the first place, while in America after an enormous crisis we can observe a general boom. During the past year very many major American trusts have on their own initiative raised wages so as to paralyse any strike movement in advance.
You will probably ask how our gracious correspondence with Lord Curzon will end. 10 Comrades, I must admit in all conscience that I do not know and I am greatly afraid that at this moment Lord Curzon does not know either. He began at a time when. as I have said, it seemed that one push would be enough to bring us down. Seven weeks passed and nothing came down. He gave us a ten-day time limit then he added a few more days until Wednesday and finally by the Wednesday on the 13th or 14th day he wrote a new note, and in this latter note he asked us to reply as soon as possible and once and for all, but this time he did not set a time limit. It is to be hoped that our diplomacy will not abuse the patience of the very good Lord Curzon and reply at the first opportunity. But what will Lord Curzon answer to that? He was a minister in the Bonar Law government and the attempts to topple the Soviet government began under Bonar Law, but Bonar Law himself toppled first: between the two notes a change of government took place. It is said that the new one has a more conciliatory attitude towards us — I cannot take any responsibility for this report — that is what they say. 11 So that the situation is that we are, as it were, sitting in a lottery and the number to be drawn is unknown: this best typifies the international situation and diplomatic activity and also the policy of the bourgeoisie, for it can pursue no consistent line and cannot predict the next day as it does not follow logically from the present. If we presume the worst, then a break in relations would of course be a serious blow to us, yet a blow we could survive.
a report to the Moscow Provincial Congress of Metalworkers, 5th June 1923.
The ultimatum of ten days (by Lord Curzon’s calendar) is an ultimatum which was presented on 8th May: today is the 16th of June, I believe; that is, the same amount of time has passed that the flood lasted according to the Bible, and the matter has still not been finally settled.
What, however, is the explanation for this ultimatum — which is a little imprecise with its time-limits — and what explains the great compliance shown by us in our reply to this ultimatum?
Here is has to be said clearly and distinctly: Britain, and, of course, I am speaking of ruling, bourgeois Britain, is remaining true to her traditional policy in this ultimatum. She regards her present struggle against us as in a certain sense the continuation of an overall struggle against Russia as a whole.
But what forms the fundamental line of British policy today? One should not forget that leading Great Britain is the most experienced bourgeoisie. Not that every one of its Curzons is a Solomon — that cannot be said at all — but all the Curzons have together accumulated over the centuries the collective wisdom, the collective experience and the collective treachery of the British ruling classes. The essence of Britain’s policy has always consisted of setting one stronger state against another weaker one and then staying on one side, and offering up prayers to the Lord of imperialism. This has been Britain’s traditional policy over a period of centuries.
Britain was likewise deeply hostile to Tsarist Russia. Britain is an ocean of water while Russia is an ocean of land which joins Europe to Asia. Britain strove to encircle every continent with the necklace of its ocean, but in Asia she always came into conflict with the rapacious imperialist ambitions of Russian Tsarism. During the Crimean War in 1855 Britain rallied to the side of Russia’s enemies. During the Russo-Turkish War in 1878 Britain was again on the side of Russia’s enemies. During the Russo-Japanese War Britain was on Japan’s side. Only in 1907 after the first Russian revolution did Britain’s policy change. Considering Russia to have been sufficiently weakened by her unsuccessful war with Japan, by the revolution and by internal disorder and so on, Britain concluded the Anglo-Russian agreement on the Persian question which formed the prelude to an Anglo-Russian alliance.
On the eve of the imperialist war Britain hesitated, Comrades, when the British proletariat opens all the steel archives of British diplomacy (if those sly devils don’t destroy them) it will find conclusive proof that Great Britain wanted the imperialist war more than all the other states. If on 1st August Britain had said that she would go to war then neither Germany nor Austria-Hungary would have been dragged into the war but would have given way. If Britain had said that she would not go to war then neither Russia nor France would have begun to fight but would have come to an agreement. On the eve of the war Britain took a provocative stance and thus brought the war down on to the European continent. The same thing in relation to the Ruhr. 12 If Britain had not wanted France to get bogged down in the Ruhr thereby weakening herself and exhausting Germany, then there would not have been a Ruhr story. Britain provoked it, Britain wanted it and now she stands on the side and watches, awaiting the moment for her intervention. Remaining aside and having the fire banked with the hands of others, that is the essence of the policy of the British bourgeoisie, the most treacherous in the world.
Remember the policy of Britain during the period of the interventions and blockades. All these facts are so fresh in our memories that I shall not enumerate them, although I will not conceal from you that as soon as I received the ultimatum, I instructed our war department here to compile a short list of what official Britain did to us during the first three years of interventions and blockades. In particular let me recall that during the imperialist war Russia lost 3,080,000 men but Britain lost 455,000: that is, six times less than Russia. In order that Lord Curzon might at the present moment consider himself powerful enough to present us with a ten-day ultimatum, the blood of over three million Russian workers and peasants had to be spilt for the glory of British imperialism. We shall present this account one day to the British bourgeoisie. After Britain’s victory had been assured by the death of over three million Russian peasants and workers, Britain inaugurated an era of interventions and blockades. The same policy both on a large and a small scale. Britain was not at war with us, but she did have her expeditionary units at Archangel and Murmansk. For what purpose? To mobilize Russian peasants and workers there in support of the White Guards, and to force them to fight the Red peasants and workers. In the North, in the Archangel-Murmansk region during the occupation Britain lost no more than ten to fifteen men, but she shot hundreds. British counter-intelligence there had its own favourite method: those whom it had any suspicion of being unsympathetic to the Russian bourgeoisie it simply dropped through the ice.
Now Britain is demanding compensation from us for two British citizens — a male and a female. They were occupied here on the most innocent matters: engaging in espionage, helping to blow up railways, assassinate Soviet public figures and so on. One of them suffered for it — he was shot (but this is a spy’s occupational hazard) while the other was put in prison. Now we have to pay out 30,000 [roubles] in gold for the lady and 70,000 as a pension to the dependents of the worthy gentleman. We must acknowledge Lord Curzon’s extreme moderation, for he is not demanding pensions in the case of the fifteen or thirty British who died in our north.
Two words about Britain’s role in the Caucasus. We still remember the story of the shooting down at a remote station of the 26 Bolsheviks who had been brought from Baku (they have gone down in history as the 26 Baku, Commissars): this was carried out in accordance with the instructions of the British officer Teague-Jones and with the agreement of the British General Thompson. One day we shall demand pensions and damages for our 26 Baku comrades, of whom Comrade Shaumyan was an old revolutionary and a member of the Central Committee of our party.
There you have a schematic picture of Great Britain’s role in the imperialist and civil wars. Then a turn followed and we had a trade agreement with them. Why? Under the pressure of a most severe crisis and the search for a solution to it. Three million unemployed put a colossal burden on the British budget and Lloyd George had hoped first to aid the unemployed, and secondly to be the first to go into Russia and reorganize her with the aid of British capital; that is, economically shackle her and convert her into a colony. About two years of this trading policy have passed. What have they revealed? Above all that, economically speaking, we are developing more slowly than the impatient profiteers of the City would have liked and not along the line they had imagined. They had reckoned that the NEP was a capitulation by the Russian proletariat in the field of economic construction, but in actual fact it was not. On the other hand Britain’s economic situation has improved and Anglo-Russian economic relations are at the present moment not such a major factor in Great Britain’s general balance of trade, . . .
Nor have the Conservatives in Britain been elected for all time -the Labour Party, that is British Menshevism, the British Liberals, and the Independents, in short everything needed to produce a British Kerenskyism or Milyukovism, all this has to replace the Conservatives whose right wing is formed by Lord Curzon’s group. This will be in a year or two. There can be no doubt that a victory of the Left Bloc13 in France will automatically bring about a strengthening of the reformist, Menshevik position in Britain.
In the year that remains before such changes, the extreme Conservative wing of the bourgeoisie will make an attempt to exploit a fascist war against Soviet Russia, which even today presents of course a fundamental danger in the eyes of the world bourgeoisie — and especially that of Britain. What did Lord Curzon’s task consist of when he presented us with an ultimatum? He hoped that in reply we would make a move which could be interpreted as a slap in the eye for the British government, and which would offend the public opinion of all the British philistines and narrow-minded petty-bourgeois., including both the philistines and the narrow-minded people of the British Labour Party — and their proportion is said to be pretty high. But we spotted this artless trap.
We had to force the philistines to understand how we saw things here and because their skulls are made of a material which takes a long time to penetrate, the ten-day time limit which Lord Curzon gave us was insufficient. That, comrades, is the explanation of our policy. Our job was to say: Lord Curzon is displaying magnanimity but we will display even more magnanimity; Lord Curzon is peaceably disposed but we are disposed even more peaceably; he does not want war but we trebly do not want it. That is the meaning of our reply.
Thus we engaged in diplomatic preparation, explained our position and managed to hammer something into them. The first formal result lies in the fact there will apparently be no rupture of relations; but I regard this result as minor because, given the nature of Lord Curzon — and his nature merely reflects the nature of the ruling groups of the British bourgeoisie — there can be no stability in our relations with Great Britain. judge for yourself: during the intervention we shot a British spy and forgot about it long ago. The trade agreement was signed after this. Now they declare to us: pay up the cash or we shall break off trade relations with you. Well, comrades, this is monstrous evidence of the fact that this clever, experienced British bourgeoisie has bad nerves, threatening us now with every kind of extortion and demand: it will go on doing so in the future. Therefore the current situation for us does not contain any great guarantees as regards stability.
The caution which we manifested on this question had good educational effects. It thwarted the schemes of the bourgeoisie for the present. But in no event can we have a complete peace, primarily because, as I have said, there remains an unstable situation in Europe and moreover a gigantic revolutionary process in the East which worries Britain particularly.
Of course the main point of the ultimatum was, in Curzon’s own definition, the so-called propaganda in the East. Curzon’s demand for ending propaganda in the East is, according to analyses by the more perceptive bourgeois journalists, an empty demand by its very nature, for it is not a question of this or that Soviet citizen turning up there or even occupying an official position and in this or that statement violating Britain’s right to exploit and plunder the peoples of the East, but of our country, as long as it behaves correctly on the national question, presenting the greatest mortal threat to any colonial might and especially the British.
There’s why Britain most of all is disturbed by the resolutions of our 12th Party Congress on the national question. We developed and refined our national policy and are adopting serious measures to implement all aspects of it and especially in such countries of the Soviet Union as Turkestan and Azerbaijan where it has a great demonstrative importance for the East. . .
a report to the 6th All-Russian Congress of Metalworkers, 16th June 1923.
1 The French Foreign Minister at that time. Renegade Socialist.
2 The Economic and Financial Conference was held in Genoa from 10th April to 11th May 1922, and was attended by all European countries with the object of regularising economic and political relations between Europe and Soviet Russia and working out a plan for international economic and political relations between Europe and Soviet Russia and working out a plan for international economic reconstruction. It had little practical result since the attempts by France with other capitalist powers to penetrate the Soviet economy and obtain repayment of debts incurred under Tsarism were unsuccessful.
3 Russian Telegraph Agency
4 The principal Black Sea port of Georgia which was occupied by a British force from November 1918 to June 1920, during which time Britain had sought to lease it on a long-term basis from Georgia. The British had withdrawn from the rest of Transcaucasia (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) by the end of 1919 and Soviet power was established in Baku and Azerbaijan in April 1920, Armenia in November 1920 and in Georgia in February 192l.
5 Greek Prime Minister, 1910-1915 and 1917-1920; leader of the pro-Entente and anti-German section of the Greek bourgeoisie, who led Greece into the First World War in 1917, having already set up a rival government and forced the King to abdicate.
6 The famine struck in the spring of 1921 as a result of two successive years of drought, aggravated by the devastation wrought by the Civil War. It centred on the important grain-producing Volga region, and inflicted hardship and starvation on some twenty million peasants and workers, as well as severely disrupting the economy.
7 The Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement had been signed on 16th March 1921 by Krasin and Horne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It established official commercial relations between the two countries for the first time.
8 The Turkish Provisional Government, established at Ankara in 1920 under the leadership of Mustapha Kernal, refused to accept the Svres peace treaty between Ottoman Turkey and the Entente, and negotiated the less harsh Lausanne Treaty of July 1923 which allowed Kernal’s Turkish Republic to retain Eastern Thrace (European Turkey), Izmir and Armenia, which were to be surrendered under the terms of Svres. Nevertheless Britain still secured the ‘demilitarization’ of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles as stipulated by the Svres Treaty.
9 The Hague Conference continued the work of the Genoa Conference.
10 On 8th May 1923 the British Foreign Secretary, Curzon, sent an ultimatum to the Soviet government threatening to break off economic and diplomatic relations unless the Soviet Union relinquished its twelve-mile fishing limit, ceased anti-imperialist propaganda in Persia, Afghanistan and India and paid compensation for two British agents captured in Russia sometime previously.
11 Bonar Law had resigned through ill-health on 20th May 1923, and was succeeded by Baldwin rather than Curzon who led the extreme right anti-Soviet wing of the Conservative Party.
12 On 11th January 1923 French and Belgian troops marched into Germany’s Ruhr industrial region when the latter failed to maintain her reparation payments to France. No other Entente country supported this action.
13 The Left Bloc or Cartel des Gauches was an electoral alliance between the French Radical Socialists (liberals) under Herriot and the Socialists under Blum. It came to power at the 1924 elections and formed a coalition government.