EXTRACT FROM THE RESOLUTION OF THE FIFTH ALL-RUSSIAN CONGRESS OF SOVIETS ON THE ASSASSINATION OF THE GERMAN AMBASSADOR COUNT MIRBACH



9 July 1918
Kluchnikov & Sabanin, ii, p. 149

    Having heard the report of the representative of the Council of People's Commissars, the People's Commissar for War, Comrade Trotsky, on the assassination of the German Ambassador Count Mirbach by Blumkin, a member of the Left Social-Revolutionary Party ... the Congress declares:

I. The assassination of the German Ambassador is a crime all the more shameful since its organizers and executors took advantage of their position ... to undermine by treachery and stealth the firm determination of the Soviet Government to safeguard for the workers and peasants of Russia the peace bought at so high a price.

II. The assassination of the German Ambassador was a link in the conspiracy designed, by means of an armed rising, to transfer power from the workers' and peasants' Soviets to a party of adventurers which is trying by every means to involve Russia in war, acting in conjunction with the Russian counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie and the Anglo-French imperialists, who at this moment are attacking the Soviet Republic from the north....

III. While solemnly affirming that the main task of the Soviet Government in the field of foreign policy remains as before the safeguarding of peace for the exhausted country, the All-Russian Congress declares that, in the event of a foreign invasion, from whatever side it may come, the duty of all workers and peasants and, in general, of all honest citizens, is to defend the Soviet fatherland to the last against imperialism.






Documents on Soviet Foreign Policy

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