Julius Martov

A contradiction


Source: British Labour Delegation to Russia, 1920: Report, July 1920.
Transcribed and marked up by: Adam Buick.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2016). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit "Marxists Internet Archive" as your source.


Seeing that M. Xenophontoff, of the secret police (“Extraordinary Commission”), made an assertion to-day to our British comrades that the "Union of the Renaissance of Russia" and the so-called "tactical centre" were organised by all the anti-Bolshevist parties from the Monarchists to the Social Democrats and Social-Revolutionaries, I feel myself obliged categorically to contradict this statement of the said police official as being a deliberate lie.

Far from taking part in the foundation of the "Union of the Renaissance of Russia," the Social Democratic Party (Menshevist) has frequently published its decisions in the Soviet papers (the first in the autumn of 1918 and the last in July, 1919), according to which any Social Democrat who personally takes part in the "Union" or in any similar organisation is thereby excluded from the Party.

The cynical lie of M. Xenophontoff is only a further proof of the complete demoralisation of the Bolshevist police, whose bloody dictatorship dishonours revolutionary Russia.

(Signed) L. Martoff,

The President of the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party,

July 27, 1920.