Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1920, Volume III
760c.61/403
Mr. L. Martens to the Secretary of State
[Received October 5.]
Sir: I have the honor to transmit to you herewith copy of a statement which I am instructed by the People’s Commissary for Foreign Affairs of my Government to address to the Ambassador of Italy in answer to your note on the Polish situation, dated August 10, 1920.
I am [etc.]
Representative in the United States of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic
Mr. L. Martens to the Italian Ambassador (Avezzana)
Excellency: I am instructed by the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of my Government to transmit to you his despatch in reply to the note of the Secretary of State, Bainbridge Colby, addressed to you under date of August 10, 1920. The despatch of the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, George Chicherin, follows:
“Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby’s note to the Italian Ambassador contains an attack upon Soviet Russia’s policy and her political system. Soviet Russia cannot leave unheeded these false and malicious accusations of a character quite unusual in diplomacy, and desires to bring them before the bar of public opinion.
“The American Government bases its objections to the policy of the British and Italian Governments on the principle of the territorial integrity of the former Russian Empire and would enter into friendly relations and intercourse only with such a Russian Government as would not be a Soviet Government. The only exceptions made by Mr. Colby from the principle of the territorial inviolability of the former Russian Empire are Poland, Finland and Armenia. The demand for independence of those nations is considered by him as legal, inasmuch as they were annexed to Russia by force, wherefore their secession does not infringe Russia’s territorial sovereignty. Mr. Colby imagines that the other oppressed nationalities of Tsarist Russia were not annexed by force and that the aspirations of the Georgian, Azerbeidjan, Lithuanian, Latvian, Esthonian and Ukrainian peoples for independence in the form of either secession or state sovereignty and federation with Russia are illegal. The discrimination on the part of the American Government in favor of some of these nationalities as against the others is unintelligible, being probably due to lack of information concerning national conditions in [Page 475] Eastern Europe. The condition precedent for Mr. Colby’s friendship towards Russia is that her Government should not be a Soviet Government. As a matter of fact any other Government at present would be a bourgeois or capitalist government, which in view of the present economic unity of the world, would mean a government identified with the interests of the world’s dominating financial groups. The most powerful among the latter, as a consequence of the world war, are the North American financial groups. The condition upon which Mr. Colby would extend American friendship to Russia is therefore that her regime should be such as to permit of the domination of the American financial groups in Russia. Mr. Colby displays in his note a strong friendly feeling towards the Russia Government of 1917, i.e. towards that Russian Government which coerced Russia’s working masses to bleed in the world war on the side of the allied and associated powers, which was fought for the interests of financial capital; of that Russian Government which under the cloak of a pretended democratic regime supported the domination of the bourgeoisie in Russia, i.e. of the capitalist system, and in the last resort the domination of the world’s leading financial interests over Russia. As far back as 1905, when the weakness of Tsarist Russia and her dependence on the western financial interests for the first time became clear, Maximilian Harden wrote that Russia was in fact a colonial land which must be governed in a business-like manner by commercial agents and clerks of business firms. This idea, so cynically avowed by Harden, in reality underlay all those plans which were elaborated by the Entente during the period of the intervention against Russia’s Soviet system, and likewise explains the hostility towards Soviet Russia of the interests Mr. Colby speaks for. At the same time it must be noted that Mr. Colby, in his desire to maintain the integrity of the Tsarist territory, not merely dissents from Britain’s policy, but is actually engaged in a struggle against her policy. Obviously the groups he represents perceive that other, viz., British, interests have established themselves in the new states separated from Russia, and Mr. Colby sees no other way of combating those interests than to abolish the independence of these states. Quite different from this policy of maintaining the integrity of the Tsarist territory with the object of establishing on this territory the domination of foreign financial interests and quite different on the other hand from the more successful policy of establishing the domination of those interests in the new bourgeois border states, quite different from both is Soviet Russia’s policy,—the policy of complete abolition of the exploitation of the workers by the former owners of the means of production, which is the basis of the Soviet system. The Soviet Government unwaveringly upholds the right of national self-determination of the working people of every nationality, including the right of secession and of forming separate states. This is the cornerstone on which it wishes to establish friendly relations with the new border states. This system, represented by the Soviet Government, under which the working masses govern themselves and determine their own fate is the only present day challenge to the domination of the exploiting interests of the leading groups of world’s capital, foremost of all the American groups; [Page 476] this is why Mr. Colby displays such an implacable hostility to the Soviet regime and hurls his false charges at it, which are the exact opposite of actual facts. Mr. Colby asserts that the Soviet system is based, not upon the representation of the popular masses, but upon brutal force, notwithstanding the fact that this system is at present the only one under which the working masses are free from exploitation by the privileged few and from the domination of the exploiting financial capital, a domination really based on brutal force. The latter dominates in all countries where the parliamentary regime is in force, and yet this regime is held by Mr. Colby to be the only one deserving recognition. The substance of the parliamentary regime is that the working masses being in an unorganized condition are under the absolute domination of strongly organized political parties which are completely subservient to the leading financial groups. This organization has its ramifications throughout the country, which are connected with innumerable local interests; it subjugates the minds of the masses through a subservient press, through inspired literature, through the pulpit, etc. Under the so-called democracy the semblance of freedom of the press, of freedom of assemblage, and of association, and of free speech is in reality a mise en scène of the domination of the leading financial groups acting through a venal press, venal politicians, tribunals, writers, clergymen, etc. The Soviet system alone is a permanent organization of the working masses under which the real sovereignty and the executive power in every locality are vested in the local Soviet, this permanent organization of the working masses on the spot. The structure of the Soviet regime invests the working masses with such power and draws them to such an extent into the workaday functions of government that the mere suggestion of the central power being able, under the Soviet system, to rule against the will of the masses, is sheer absurdity. It is the masses themselves, who, in this fight for liberty, amidst a sanguinary civil war which threatens all their conquests, have come to realize the necessity of a firm centralized revolutionary power for crushing the last resistance of the exploiting classes at home and for carrying on the unprecedented struggle against the capitalist governments of the whole world, which stand united against the Revolution whenever the working masses attain power in a particular country. At the time when all the capitalist governments of the world are united against the workers’ and peasants’ rule in Russia in an attempt to crush her resistance by the force of arms, by the hunger blockade, by fostering perennial conspiracies of the exploiting classes against the working masses in power,—at this time the working masses have become fully conscious of the fact that only a relentless proletarian dictatorship can defend their revolutionary conquests against the attacks of capital and of all its agents from within and from without. The Communist Party, which directs this implacable struggle against the exploiters of the whole world, rules in Soviet Russia for the only reason that the masses themselves consider its rule as the only effective means of successful warfare against the deadly danger threatening them from world capital.
“But the Communist Party arouses Mr. Colby’s ire also for another reason, viz., because the Communist Party is at the head of [Page 477] the revolutionary movement of the working masses in all countries, and also in the United States. Its world-wide struggle is rooted in the actual conditions of all countries, but Mr. Colby attempts to account for it by alleged propaganda of Russian Soviet agents. It is not for the first time that we witness attempts on the part of American financial groups to discredit Soviet Russia by calumnies. We have not forgotten the publication by the United States Public Information Division of the absurd Sisson documents charging the Bolsheviks with being German agents.18 The forgery was so crude that the least examination was sufficient to disclose that fraud. Owing to the subserviency of the press to the financial interests, which is almost complete in the parliamentary countries, calumny against Soviet Russia is one of the principal means of combating the movement of the working masses in every country including the United States. Mr. Colby, too, in his note to the Italian Ambassador, has resorted to coarse slander against Soviet Russia. We most emphatically protest against his false allegation that the Soviet Government violates its promises and concludes agreements with a mental reservation to transgress them. Not one single fact can be quoted in support of this calumny. Even the Brest-Litovsk Treaty which was imposed upon Russia by violence was faithfully observed by the Soviet Government. Whenever it was accused of violating its diplomatic obligations, a frame-up by enemies of the Russian Soviet Government was shown to be at the bottom of the charges. If the Russian Government binds itself to abstain from spreading Communist literature, all its representatives abroad are enjoined scrupulously to observe this pledge. The Soviet Government clearly understands that the revolutionary movement of the working masses in every country is their own affair. It holds to the principle that communism cannot be imposed by force but that the fight for communism in every country must be carried on by its working masses themselves. Seeing that in America and in many other countries the workers have not conquered the powers of government and are not even convinced of the necessity of their conquest, the Russian Soviet Government deems it necessary to establish and faithfully to maintain peaceable and friendly relations with the existing governments of those countries. That the elementary economic needs of the peoples of Russia and of other countries demand normal relations and an exchange of goods between them, is quite clear to the Russian Government, and the first condition of such relations is mutual good faith and non-intervention on both parts. Mr. Colby is profoundly mistaken when he thinks that normal relations between Russia and the United States of America are possible only if capitalism prevails in Russia. On the contrary we deem it necessary in the interests of both nations and despite the differences of their political and social structure, to establish proper, peaceful and friendly relations between them. The Russian Soviet Government is convinced that not only the working masses, but likewise the farsighted business men of the United States of America will repudiate the policy which is expressed in Mr. Colby’s note and is [Page 478] harmful to American interests and that in the near future normal relations will be established between Russia and the United States.
(Signed) Chicherin.”
Accept [etc.]
Representative in the United States of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic