1917 AND ALL THAT: THE UNTAUGHT SYLLABUS.
In Their Own Words: A Political History Of The Cold War 1917-1983.
By Brian Mitchell.

Chapters 8-12 of 50.

Chapter 8

AGAINST THE REVOLUTION.
However, capitalism did not intend socialism to coexist. And communists knew it.

The Bolsheviks and the Soviet people knew that after coming to power they could
expect the greatest universal hatred and fear from the whole world's capitalist
class.

"The nation which first achieves socialism will see all the frenzied powers of
reaction hurled against it at the same time. It will be lost if it is not
prepared to seize a sword, to answer bullet with bullet, so that the working
class of other countries may have time to organise and rise in its turn."

(Jean Jaures.)

"When power passes to the Soviets the capitalists will come out against us.
Japan, France, Britain - the governments of all countries will be against us.
The capitalists will be against, but the workers will be for us. That will be
the end of the war which the capitalists have started. There you have the answer
to the question of how to end the war."

(Lenin, April 1917.)

"We never imagined that with the fighting over and the advent of peace, the
capitalist wolf would lie down with the socialist lamb."

(Lenin.)

Not only would the existence of socialism be an example to the working classes
of other nations and therefore a political threat, as was noted by the frantic
politicians and media at the time, which screamed about "civilisation facing a
danger even more terrible than German militarism" or:

"a danger as grave as was the invasion of Gengis Khan or Tamerlane"

(Daily Chronicle Dec 18 1918.)

"A condition of barbarism worse than the Stone Age."

(Winston Churchill.)

"The remedy for Bolshevism is bullets."

(The Times, Nov 1917.)

"The Bolshevik baby should have been strangled in its cradle."

(Winston Churchill.)

"Bolshevism is worse than war."

(Herbert Hoover, Chairman of the American Relief Administration.)

"Of all the tyrannies in history the Bolshevik tyranny is the worst, the most
destructive, the most degrading."

(Winston Churchill, April 1919.)

"Like the vampire which sucks the blood from its victim."

(Winston Churchill.)

"No one could tell what would emerge from the immense, horrible catastrophe of
Russia, except that it would probably be something very menacing to civilisation
and very dangerous to the peace of Europe and Asia...

...the avowed enemies of civilisation."

(Winston Churchill, Jan 3 1920.)

"An infected Russia, a plague-bearing Russia... the soldiers are incited to
mutiny and kill their officers, the mobs are raised against the middle classes
to murder them, to plunder their houses, to steal their belongings, to debauch
their wives."

(Winston Churchill, July 28 1920.)

"The filthy butchers of Moscow."

(Winston Churchill, Oct 27 1924.)

"Diabolical machinery all over the world."

(Winston Churchill, June 19 1926.)

"The dark conspirators in the Kremlin."

(Winston Churchill, June 22 1926.)

"His Majesty's Government does not recognise the Petrograd Administration as a
de jure or de facto Government."

(British Foreign Secretary Balfour, to Parliament, Jan 16 1918.)

"The liquidation of the Bolsheviks is only a matter of days or even hours."

(Daily Chronicle, Nov 12 1917.)

Churchill even approved the use of gas warfare for the "liquidation of the
Bolsheviks":

"I would very much like the Bolsheviks to have it."

(Winston Churchill, April 1919,, approving General Sir William Ironside's plan
to use poisonous gas against the Soviets.) (1)

And just as at the end of the Second World War in 1945, where he made similar
statements:

"Peace with the German people, war on the Bolshevik tyranny."

(Winston Churchill, 1920.)

But a Socialist Russia would also be a tremendous economic loss to the
capitalists as was noted in financial and business journals at the time:

"Russia is a great country. You all know, because you are intimately connected
with it in your business, what the potentialities of Russia are, whether it be
from the point of view of manufacture or the point of view of mineral wealth, or
any other thing, because Russia has everything."

(Sir Francis Baker, European manager of Vickers, Chairman of the Russo-British
Chamber of Commerce.) (2)

"Siberia, the most gigantic prize offered to the civilised world since the
discovery of the Americas."

(British Federation of Industries Bulletin.) (3)

"In oil Baku is incomparable... Baku is greater than any other oil city in the
world. If oil is king, Baku is its throne."

(From the British journal "The Near East".) (4)

#(1)See: Martin Gilbert "Winston S.Churchill Vol IV 1917-1922."

(2)See:Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn "The Great Conspiracy - Against Soviet
Russia." Boni and Gaer. NY 1946 and Red Star Press. London 1975.

(3)Ibid.

(4)Ibid

"Russia, with her 180,000,000 of people, with her fertile soil stretching from
Central Europe across Asia to the shores of the Pacific and from the Arctic down
to the Persian Gulf and the Black Sea... market possibilities such as even the
most optimistic dared not dream of... Russia, potentially and actually - the
granary, the fishery, the lumber-yard, the coal, gold, silver and platinum mine
of the world."

(From the Business journal "Japan Salesman".) (1)

The American Herbert Hoover had investments in eleven Russian oil companies and
many other banking and business interests with a value of one thousand million
dollars before the revolution. He became US Food Relief Administrator after the
First World War and directed supplies to the reactionary White armies and
withheld them from the Soviets with the result that hundreds of thousands of
workers and peasants starved to death while the rich Kulaks were hoarding and
destroying grain.

"As one who has lived for four years in Russia, has seen the sufferings of her
people and their heroic efforts to free themselves, I categorically assert that
the anarchy and famine now raging in Russia is the deliberate work of the
Imperialist governments of Europe."

(Manchester Guardian correspondent in Russia Morgan Philips Price, 1918.)(2)

Finance capital's exploitation of other nations is evident when you consider
that by 1918 Russia's national debt to imperialism was already 80,000,000,000
gold roubles - two thirds of Russia's total national wealth at the time. Russia
was bankrupted and exhausted by an imperialist war. Also the damage wrought by
the undeclared war of intervention and foreign backed civil war was estimated at
$60,000,000,000. The Soviets received no reparations from any of the invading
countries.

"The capitalist gentlemen think that they can dally, and the longer they dally
the more concessions they will get, but we must say, 'Enough! Tomorrow you will
get nothing!' If they have not learned anything from the history of Soviet power
and its victories, they can do as they please."

(From Lenin's instructions to Soviet representatives regarding Soviet 'Debts' at
the Genoa Conference, 1922.)

However, this foreign 'debt' was stamped "CANCELLED" by the Bolsheviks:

Were the Soviet workers supposed to work to export thousands of millions of
currency for many years to repay the debts of Tsarism to French and British
banks?

"No people is bound to pay the cost of the chains which it has worn for
centuries."

(Soviet Government's reply to British, French, US, Italians and Japanese at the
Brussels Conference, Oct 28 1921.)

Despite this, the British government decided to send the Russian people some
"assistance" - to the White Tsarist armies.

The British Government spent vast sums of British taxpayers' money in trying to
disrupt and destroy the new Soviet Government.

(1)See:Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn "The Great Conspiracy - Against Soviet
Russia." Boni and Gaer. NY 1946 and Red Star Press. London 1975.

(2)See:M.Philips Price "The Truth About the Allied Intervention in Russia."
Pensioners for Peace International.

"Nearly £100,000,000 has been spent or sanctioned by the United Kingdom on
account of assistance sent to Russia."

(Lloyd George, House of Commons, Nov 13 1919.)

Many devices were used in trying to destroy the Soviets. False copies of Pravda,
the Bolshevik newspaper, were printed by a branch of the British police services
with the aid of White Tsarist emigres. The British Treasury attempted to destroy
the Soviet economy by flooding Russia with counterfeit currency printed in
London.

The British began to support counter-revolutionary opposition:

#"...assistance should be forthcoming ... to support any responsible body in
Russia willing to oppose actively the Maximalist [a word wrongly used by the
British to describe the Bolsheviks. B.M.] movement."

(From a secret War Cabinet meeting in London, Dec 3 1917.) (1)

On instructions from this War Cabinet meeting, Lord Robert Cecil informed the
British Ambassador in Petrograd Sir George Buchanan that:

"The policy of the Government is to support any responsible body in Russia which
would actively oppose the Maximalists [a word wrongly used by the British to
describe the Bolsheviks. B.M.], and that H.M. Government would give money freely
to those who proved ready to support the Allied cause."

(F.O.371, Vol. 3290, and War Cabinet Minute 289/2.) (2)

Early in 1918 the British Government sent former Consular General in Moscow
Bruce Lockhart back into Russia, assisted by Sidney Rielly, to make contact with
these "responsible bodies" to organise espionage, counter-revolution and
sabotage. Lockhart later became head of the British Foreign Office's Department
of Political Warfare. (3)

"It seems important at this stage for the allies to foster the creation of a
loyal Russian force composed of Russian officials and subjects in Allied
countries... A considerable number of men selected individually from the Russian
troops in France might, I am informed, be released."

(Winston Churchill.) (4)

Admiral Kolchak was one of the "responsible bodies" proposed by Churchill to
lead these forces _ "loyal" only to foreign capital.

Revolutions produce counter-revolutionaries, representing only a privileged few,
who fight to retain their positions of wealth and power. They mislead and
confuse others into joining them. But the majority refuse to continue to accept
that they are the willing workers for the enrichment of the New York, London and
Paris Stock Exchanges.

The counter-revolution in Soviet Russia was led by Russia's then equivalent of
Reagan's Contras in Nicaragua; Right Wing Tsarist Generals such as Wrangel,
Denikin, Yudenich and Admiral Kolchak whos "White" armies launched what became
known as the "White terror", countered by the Soviets' "Red terror."

(1)Public Records Office: Cabinet 24/36 Vol 31.

Quoted in:Fyodor Volkov "Secrets of Whitehall and Downing Street." Progress.
Moscow 1986.

(2)See:Andrew Rothstein "When Britain Invaded Soviet Russia: The Consul Who
Rebelled." The Journeyman Press. London 1979.

(3)See:Bruce Lockhart "Memories of a British Agent." Penguin. London 1950.

(4)Public Records Office: War Cabinet Vol 30.

Quoted in:Fyodor Volkov "Secrets of Whitehall and Downing Street." Progress.
Moscow 1986.

"To the White terror of the enemies of the workers' and peasants' government,
the workers and peasants will reply with mass 'Red terror' against the
bourgeoisie and its agents."

(Resolution of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, Sept 2 1918.)

Like in other countries more recently such as Vietnam, Nicaragua and
Afghanistan, these counter-revolutionaries have no mass popular support. The
capitalist governments' financing of counter-revolution made the work of feeding
the starving people and social reconstruction as difficult as possible.

As in modern times in other countries; the counter-revolutionary civil war in
Russia ran out of what little support it had from within and failed. And as with
modern times; the imperialsts are then obliged to intervene themselves.



Chapter 9

AGAINST THE REVOLUTION FROM WITHOUT:
INTERVENTION - THE SECRET WARS.
"In order, however, to assure the full blessings of peace and prosperity to
Europe, it is essential that not only peace but normal conditions of economic
life should be restored in Eastern Europe and in Russia. So long as these vast
regions withhold their full contribution to the stock of commodities available
for general consumption, the cost of living can hardly be reduced nor general
prosperity restored to the world."

(King George V of England, opening Parliament on Feb 10 1920.)

Not a great economist - King George V of England. In other words: we won't make
war on Russia so long as we can continue to plunder her wealth.

Capitalist rulers becoming afraid of the spread of Bolshevism, feared the
survival and prosperity of a state run by the working class without capitalists;
in case workers in their own countries should also dare to want to run their
countries without capitalists.

Just as today in Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan, Grenada, and Nicaragua, where the
big capitalist powers eventually were forced to intervene militarily because
counter-revolutionaries in those countries did not have popular support, the
counter-revolutionaries in the USSR did not have any mass popular support, and
the capitalists were eventually faced with the choice of either 'losing' another
country to 'the communists' _ i.e: to its own people, or of direct military
intervention from outside. And in 1917-1922 the same pretext was given as today
in connection with Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan, Grenada, and Nicaragua: that the
West was 'protecting democracy', 'liberating the Russian people from anarchy and
Bolshevik tyranny', and that the US was 'not pursuing any selfish aims'.

A secret treaty signed in Paris in December 1917 by the Allied representatives
of Britain, France, and other Western powers, which included Under Secretary for
Foreign Affairs Lord Robert Cecil and Secretary for War Lord Milner for Britain,
was for joint intervention and the division of Russia into spheres of influence.
Britain was to have Transcaucasia, North Caucasus, Central Asia and Northern
Russia; France was to have control of the Ukraine, Crimea and Bessarabia; and
Siberian and Far Eastern regions were to be American and Japanese spheres of
influence.

In 1918 the new socialist state was invaded by the armies of fourteen capitalist
nations led by Britain, France, Germany, Japan and the USA, and included
Finland, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

The 1918-1921 Wars of Intervention were the first acts of the continuing Cold
War which led step by step, as this book will trace, to the Second World War and
beyond - to this day, and the current arms race. This, historical chapter of
this book will chronicle in detail the important political and economic aspects
of military operations which led straight to World War Two and the Cold War and
are summarised as follows:

In 1918 Romanian armies occupied Soviet Bessarabia (returned to the Soviet Union
in 1940). Germany captured Estonia and overthrew Soviet power there (returned
1940). Britain, France and the US took the Northern regions including Murmansk
and Archangel. Austro-German armies invaded the Ukraine and overthrew Soviet
power. The British army overthrew Soviet power in the Caspian and Soviet S.W.
Central Asia. American, Japanese, British and French forces took Vladivostok and
the East. By the end of 1918 three quarters of Soviet territory, including the
whole of the Soviet Far East and a large part of Siberia was under foreign
occupation. Those who supported the revolution were put into a concentration
camp on the island of Mudyug, where many communists and the workers and peasants
who supported them died.

In 1919 Germany and Poland overthrew Soviet power in Lithuania (restored in
1940). German and Polish armies and the British Navy occupied Soviet Latvia and
overthrew Soviet power (returned in 1940). And in 1920 the Polish army took Kiev
in the Ukraine.

Four years later Adolf Hitler wrote in his Mein Kampf:

"We turn our eyes, first of all, to Russia... This huge state in the East is
ripe for perdition."

(Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf." 1924.)

Nine years later, Adolf Hitler came to power. Two years later, in 1935, Germany
annexed the Saar region. Britain did nothing. In 1936 Germany occupied the Rhine
region, which, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, was a demilitarised
zone. Again, Britain did nothing. And in the same year the newly elected Spanish
Republic was crushed by Spanish, German and Italian fascists with the approval
and complicity of Britain and other Western nations. In 1937 Germany was making
the political preparations for its expansion in Europe:

"The war in the East may begin with a sudden German operation against
Czechoslovakia. The necessary political and international prerequisites for that
should be created beforehand... The German political leadership will try with
all available means to secure Britain's neutrality."

(German Imperial Minister of War and Director for Unified War Preparations
Werner von Blomberg, June 24 1937.) (1)

The Germans did not have to try very hard to secure Britain's neutrality. In
1938 Japan attacked China and threatened the USSR. In the same year, supported,
encouraged and financed by British and US capital, Hitler marched into
Czech-Sudetenland, occupied Austria and Alsace Lorraine. Britain showed its full
approval by doing nothing. In 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland and the rest of
Europe. Two years after that, with the full complicity of Britain and the US,
Hitler invaded the USSR.

As is revealed in US secret memorandum JCS 121 Strategy and Policy, presented at
the Quebec Conference of August 1943, detailed later in this chapter, the
American OSS plan was not only to not launch a second front in the war, but to
rearm, supply and support the German army while it was still relatively strong,
direct it back into the USSR, and when the two armies had sufficiently weakened
each other, for the Americans with the British to follow up and occupy the
European part of the USSR at least as far as the Urals Mountains.

Even before Hitler was defeated the West was already planning nuclear war
against their Soviet wartime allies. These plans for nuclear war on the Soviet
Union in the 1940s and 1950s, detailed in a later chapter, had exactly the same
purpose as the wars of intervention in 1917-1922.

On December 3 1919 US Secretary of State Robert Lansing had sent a memorandum to
US President Wilson saying that Soviet power must be overthrown by all available
means and a "suitable" Russian government be installed in its place and that
this was the right and the duty of the US and other "enlightened" nations.

Similarly, secret US National Security Council report NSC 20/1 of August 1948
planned a nuclear attack on the USSR and the overthrow of Soviet power and the
installation of a government comprised of Soviet emigres and dissidents.

Thus is summarised the chronicle of the Cold War and the arms race.

By the end of 1920 counter-revolution and civil war had run out of what little
internal support it had. But hostilities by foreign interventionist armies
continued for another two years. The last of the US occupational forces finally
withdrew from the East of the USSR in 1922.

Most British school and other history books completely omit the Wars of
Intervention against Soviet Russia.

(1)See:International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1947-1949.

The British led the wars of intervention. And being most experienced at getting
others to do their dirty work for them, they involved a diversity of other
countries such as Poland and Japan.

Poland was brought into the interventionist wars. If they didn't have the
resources; that would be no problem:

"It would be of course necessary for the Allies to supply the arms and the
transport and probably also the clothing for these troops... This army should be
utilised for an advance into Russia up to the line Vilno-Minsk."

(Public Record Office: War Cabinet, 24,76, p206.)

"Poland must be regarded as the left wing of Denikin's army as against the
Bolsheviks."

(Churchill.) (1)

"International capital... was the chief force driving the Poles into a war with
us."

(Lenin, Oct 1920.)

British interests in civil war and intervention had been not well disguised:

"People may sneer at Denikin and Koltchak in their defeats, but it is a fact
that by their struggles they have helped to keep the peace on the borders of
Russia... If there had been no civil war in Russia, we might have had war for
interests recognised as unquestionably British."

(The Times Jan 5 1920.)

Britain's position was that if it did not have some control of intervention in
the East, where Japanese forces invaded, Britain might arrive:

#"...too late to collect a fair share of the best of the commercial undertakings
which will be open for development."

(US Consulate General in Russia General Poole.) (2)

"It is Japan who should take action on behalf of the Allies. Japan certainly
will intervene whether the other Allies like it or not."

(Member of the War Cabinet Lord Milner, in a note to Balfour, Jan 1918.)(3)

The British Foreign Office sent a memorandum to the British Government that
Japan should :

#"occupy the whole length of the Siberian railway from Vladivostok to the
borders of European Russia."

(Public Record Office: Vol. 35, p90.)

"If Japanese intervention were undertaken, the solest course would be that it
should be undertaken with the assent or mandate of the Allies and America."

(British Ambassador in USA R.D.Reading, 1918.) (4)

British capitalists were trembling in their boots. They were frightened that
communist ideas would spread to British workers and their leaders:

#(1)Documents on British Foreign Policy. 1919-1939, First Series, Vol.11, 1919.

#(2)Public Record Office: War Cabinet, Vol. 41, p113.)

#(3)Public Record Office: Vol. 35, p89.

(4)Public Record Office: Vol. 46, pp6-7.

"There was throughout the Allied countries, especially among the propertied
classes, an implacable hatred, born of real fear, of Bolshevism."

(Lloyd George "The Truth About the Peace Treaties." 1938.)

#"...the policy of intervention in Russia was adopted by His Majesty's
government...

The first, is to create a ring of States all round Bolshevik Russia, the object
being to prevent Bolshevism from spreading. The second alternative is to grasp
the nettle firmly, by taking active military measures with a view to crushing
Bolshevism definitely at the earliest date."

(Chief of Imperial General Staff Henry Hughes Wilson, in a memorandum to the War
Cabinet, Nov 1918.) (1)

"The British and French capitalists want to restore the power of the landowners
and capitalists in Russia in order to share with them the booty captured in the
war; they want to shackle the Russian workers and peasants to British and French
capital, to squeeze out of them interest on the billions advanced in loans, and
to extinguish the fire of socialist revolution which has broken out in our
country and which is threatening to spread across the world."

(Lenin.)

Similar to the unofficial or mercenary wars of the US and their puppets against
Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea, Angola, Afghanistan and Nicaragua today; British plans
to attack Russia in 1917 solely because the working class had taken power, had
to be kept from public opinion:

"We do not propose to interfere with the internal relations of Russia... She
must manage her own affairs."

(Arthur Balfour, British Foreign Secretary, Aug 1918.) (2)

"We should represent to the Bolsheviks that we have no desire to take part in
any way in the internal politics of Russia, and that any idea that we favour a
counter-revolution is a profound mistake.

...money to reorganise the Ukraine, to pay the Cossacks and the Caucasian
forces, and to subsidise the Persians...

Besides finance, it is important to have agents and officers to advise and
support the provincial governments and their armies. It is essential that this
should be done as quietly as possible, so as to avoid the imputation - as far as
we can - that we are preparing to make war on the Bolsheviks."

(From the secret Balfour Memorandum, adopted by the War Cabinet on Dec 21 1917.
(My Italics B.M.)) (3)

"Were they [the capitalist countries B.M.] at war with Soviet Russia? Certainly
not; but they shot Soviet Russians at sight."

(Churchill.) (4)

(1)Public Record Office: Cabinet, Vol.64, p22.

(2)See:Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn "The Great Conspiracy - Against Soviet
Russia." Boni and Gaer. NY 1946 and Red Star Press. London 1975.

(3)See:Koni Zilliacus "Can the Tories Win the Peace? And How They Lost the Last
One." Victor Gollancz. London 1945.

And:Andrew Rothstein "When Britain Invaded Soviet Russia: The Consul Who
Rebelled." The Journeyman Press. London 1979.

(4)See:Winston Churchill "The World Crisis: The Aftermath." Thornton
Butterworth. London 1929.)

"Mr. President, we are not at war with Russia; Congress had not declared war
against the Russian government or the Russian people. The people of the United
States do not desire to be at war with Russia... Yet, while we are not at war
with Russia, while Congress has not declared war, we are carrying on war with
the Russian people. We have an army in Russia..."

(Senator Borah, to US Senate, Sept 5 1919.) (1)

"Of course we are at war with Soviet Russia, but as far as the press and public
are concerned we are not."

(Written reply given to a journalist at the War Office in Nov 1919.) (2)

Just as they do today, the British Government and its media had to conduct a
campaign of lies and disinformation against the Soviets in order to influence
public opinion against them:

"It is necessary to take steps to put the Bolsheviks in the wrong, not only
before public opinion, but before those who hold the view that Bolshevism is
democracy gone astray with large elements of good in it."

(British Foreign Secretary Balfour. 1919.) (3)

"It would be absolutely fatal to the success on military operations to allow
freedom of speech and propaganda to the Bolsheviks... Here amongst the working
classes Bolshevism has many devoted adherants."

(General Poole, British interventionist armies, Sept 15 1918.) (4)

"In persuance of the cabinet instructions I saw Sir George Riddell about the
anti-Bolshevist campaign. He told me... to get together all the facts on the
subject... and he would arrange for the facts to be distributed to the more
important popular papers." (My italics. B.M.)

r(Note from Lord Robert Cecil to LLoyd George, Nov 20 1918.)

"So little of this appeared in print that not only was the newspaper reader at
the time kept in ignorance of the role his countrymen were playing in the
intervention, but the student of today can find little reference to it in his
country's history books."

B(Phillip Knightly "The first Casualty: The War Correspondent As Hero,
Propagandist, and Myth Maker.")

The British Government and its press flooded the British public with propaganda
implying that since the Soviets had pulled out of the war and signed a separate
peace treaty with the Germans then it was 'obvious' that the Soviets had sided
with the Germans. The cover of this false propaganda was used to send British,
French and other allied troops into all parts of Russia to be "fighting Germans"
in order to "defend" Russia. This, despite the fact that these interventionist
armies were sent to parts of Russia thousands of miles away from any Germans.
These armies were fighting not Germans but Russians. British propaganda began to
apply all sorts of misleading terms to the Bolsheviks, such as "German" or
"Maximalists" in order to try to confuse the public.

(1)See:Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn "The Great Conspiracy." Boni and Gaer,
NY 1946, and Red Star Press. London 1975.

(2)See:Pat and Zelda Coates "A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations." Lawrence and
Wishart. London 1944.

(3)See:Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn "The Great Conspiracy - Against Soviet
Russia." Boni and Gaer. NY 1946 and Red Star Press. London 1975.

(4)See:Andrew Rothstein "When Britain Invaded Soviet Russia: The Consul Who
Rebelled." The Journeyman Press. London 1979.

"Meanwhile, on Jan 16. 1919. the Foreign Office in a circular to the British
Ambassadors in Paris, Rome, Washington and Tokyo informed them that Col. Joshia
Wedgewood was being sent to Siberia, "to make clean the whole of Siberia," the
anti-German purposes of the allies, and their readiness to support, encourage
and assist elements "which continue to resist with all means in their power
German tendencies and German power."

This was the propaganda aspect, as it were, of putting into effect the Balfour
Memorandum _ since by now it was generally accepted that "German" in official
British terminology meant "Bolshevik," especially in Siberia where there were no
Germans within thousands of miles..."

(British journalist Andrew Rothstein.) (1)

Some honest journalists for capitalist papers who were more interested in truth
than retaining their jobs got to realise that the Bolshevik Revolution was
popular and that intervention was wrong, and spoke out against it, losing their
jobs. One such journalist was Morgan Philips Price, correspondent in Russia of
the Manchester Guardian. His daughter said of him:

"My father went to Russia in December 1914...

At first he was inclined to dismiss the Bolsheviks as "anarcho-syndicalists" but
in the months following the October Revolution he came to support them
wholeheartedly. From the early spring of 1918 his despatches were increasingly
heavily censored in Britain and after July 1918 they were stopped altogether."

(Tania Rose, daughter of Manchester Guardian correspondent in Russia Morgan
Philips Price.) (2)

Morgan Philips Price decided to publish his own pamphlet in 1918, from which I
quote extensively:

"One of the most deadly weapons wielded by the ruling classes of all countries
is their power to censor the press; for thereby they are able to create under
the pretext of military necessity an artificial public opinion with the object
of hiding their fell designs. Never was this fact more clearly demonstrated than
at the present moment; never was it more obvious that the governments of the
Central Powers and the Allies, in order to suppress the workers and peasants
revolution in Russia, must hide from their own people the truth about this
revolution, must represent it to the proletariat of the West as the work of a
gang of robbers...

The governments of England, France and Germany, should through the official
agencies and their press censors endeavour to blacken the work of the Russian
Revolution... I am in a position to see more clearly than those outside this
iron ring the power possessed by the ruling classes... For this is what I have
to face day after day. Telegrams to my newspaper are suppressed or if passed by
the British censor are decapitated, so that no sense is left in them...
provocative rumours about what is happening here are spread in London and Paris
and my attempts to deny them are frustrated. All the technical apparatus of the
capitalist states of Western Europe is set in motion against those whose duty it
is to tell the truth."

(Manchester Guardian correspondent in Russia Morgan Philips Price, 1918.)(3)

(1)See:Andrew Rothstein "When Britain Invaded Soviet Russia: The Consul Who
Rebelled." The Journeyman Press. London 1979.

(2)See:M.Philips Price "The Truth About the Allied Intervention in Russia."
Pensioners for Peace International.

(3)See:M.Philips Price "The Truth About the Allied Intervention in Russia."
Pensioners for Peace International.

"In London the question whether the pamphlet constituted a treasonable act under
the Defence of the Realm Act Regulations was considered by the Director of
Public Prosecutions but it was decided that a charge could not be sustained.

My father was however advised not to come home and he stayed in Berlin."

(Tania Rose, daughter of Manchester Guardian correspondent in Russia Morgan
Philips Price.) (1)

Douglas Young, the British Consul at Archangel, a sea port in the Northern USSR
where invading British troops were landed, exposed these plans:

"During my eleven years' service under the Foreign Office... I have seen how the
direction of foreign affairs is the class preserve of an exclusive class
bureaucracy; ...The plea of 'State Secrecy' is used by this bureaucracy to
conceal their blunders, which often involves the lives of thousands of people...

This British Government played a dirty, double game with the Soviet Government
in Russia...

The British Government, having completely failed to understand the cause and
significance of the Russian Revolution and the ideals and aims of the Soviet
Government, proceeded to suppress any news or any expression of opinion which
did not coincide with their preconceived ideas, and was therefore calculated to
expose that blunder; and, further, they proceeded to misrepresent and blacken
every action of the Soviet Government, giving either deliberately untrue or
evasive replies to the independent members of all parties who have tried by
questions in Parliament to extract the truth; though there is, of course, always
the possibility that Ministers have not been allowed by their officials to know
what was going on."

(Douglas Young, "Britain and Russia", Daily Herald, December 14 1918.) (2)

Young was removed from office and recalled. His dismissal was even considered:

"The only point that occurs to me is whether he (Young) would not be rather
dangerous if dismissed from the Service. He can make out a rather plausible
pro-Bolshevist case... and it would be extremely inconvenient to have him at
large countering such anti-Bolshevist propaganda as we are able to conduct."

(J.D.Gregory, British Foreign Office Chief, April 3 1918.) (3)

"The unfortunate thing is that in substance he (Young) has been proved right."

(Lord Curzon, on the question of Douglas Young.) (4)

Invading foreign armies eventually surrounded a small area of central Russia and
threatened to crush the revolution. The Soviet people had to fight or be
exterminated.

(1)See:M.Philips Price "The Truth About the Allied Intervention in Russia."
Pensioners for Peace International.

(2)See:Andrew Rothstein "When Britain Invaded Soviet Russia: The Consul Who
Rebelled." The Journeyman Press. London 1979.

(3)See:Andrew Rothstein "When Britain Invaded Soviet Russia: The Consul Who
Rebelled." The Journeyman Press. London 1979.

(4)See:Andrew Rothstein "When Britain Invaded Soviet Russia: The Consul Who
Rebelled." The Journeyman Press. London 1979.



Chapter 10

WHY INTERVENTION FAILED.
As we have seen in Nicaragua with the US backed Contras, Angola with the South
African backed UNITA forces, Reagan's Dushmans and Mujaheddin in Afghanistan,
and in other countries of revolutionary struggle; in Russia, counter-revolution
and intervention had no significant support among the great majority of the
population.

The only thing keeping counter-revolution alive was the support from the
capitalist countries:

#"...the withdrawal of Allied support from anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia would
entail their collapse."

#(Public Record Office: War Cabinet, 24,76, p220.)

#US General Graves, commander of the US forces in Siberia admitted that without
Allied support Kolchak's counter-revolutionary forces could not have lasted a
month. (1)

"At the present time the military situation, taken as a whole, is such that it
would be prudent to count upon the collapse and destruction of the Bolshevik
power."

(Churchill, in a note to the Cabinet, Oct 1919.) (2)

"All across South Russia Denikin has been smashed despite of his British
materiel and equipment."

(J.L.Garvin, in the Observer, 1920.) (3)

The Soviets appealed to the world's working people:

"It is none other than your rulers who are keeping civil war alive among us by
giving help to Counter-revolutionaries and creating hunger and unemployment by
the criminal blockade of Soviet Russia."

(Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgi Chicherin in an appeal to
the world's workers, April 18 1919.) (4)

#Many British workers and their leaders were far more class conscious and
politically aware than today's so-called "socialists". There was revolt, mutiny
and strikes in the British army and among the working class. (5)

"Organised labour viewed the rule of the proletariat in Russia with a certain
measure of sympathy, and some hankering after a change everywhere in the
particular class that exercised dominion...

...if demobilisation had stopped in order to divert the troops from France to
Odessa or Archangel, there would have been a mutiny. The attempt to raise a
force of volunteers for the purpose of waging war on the Bolsheviks was a
miserable failure."

(Lloyd George, in "The Truth About the Peace Treaties.")

#(1) See:William S. Graves "America's Siberian Adventure. 1918-1920." Jonathan
Cape and Harrison Smith. New York 1931.

(2) Public Record Office: Cabinet, 24/90, p1.

(3) See:W.P. and Zelda K.Coates "Armed Intervention in Russia. 1918-1922."
Gollancz. London 1935.

(4) See:Hewlett Johnson "The Socialist Sixth of the World." Victor Gollancz.
London 1947.

(5)See:"Note on Allied Policy in Russia from the Military Point of View.":
Public Record Office: War Cabinet, 24,76, pp200-225.

British dockers refused to load ships with arms for Poland, to be used for
killing Russian workers. The working class organised the "Hands off Russia"
campaign in 1920.

"You have been told that Russia is in the grip of a gang of despots. The fact is
that Lenin and his supporters have no individual power other than that delegated
to them by the Soviets. They are the heads of the largest population in Europe,
but they feed, dress and live like the humblest workers."

(George Lansbury, Daily Herald March 23 1920.)

"Russia is attacked solely because our class, the working class, is in power,
...fit to govern. Fellow trade unionists, don't allow this fearful crime to go
on. Russia wants peace, the working classes of Poland want peace, the masses of
Europe and of the world want peace.

The inhuman imperialists and militarists want war. You can give the British
Government the word which will bring peace to suffering humanity in eastern
Europe. Mere pious resolutions won't force the hands of the government but
resolutions backed by industrial action will. We appeal to you on behalf of our
fellow workers in Poland and Russia, to pass the following resolution and send
it to the Polish Legation and to the Parliamentary Committee of the TUC.

RESOLUTION: That this ... emphatically protests against Poland's wanton attack
on Russia and calls upon the Parliamentary Committee of the TUC to declare a
national strike to force the British Government to insist on Poland's making
peace with Russia and further calls on the Polish masses to take drastic action
to frustrate the Imperialist designs of their Government."

(From a "Hands off Russia" campaign circular to every branch and executive
committee of every trade union, constituency Labour Party and Trades Council in
Britain.)

This was before television and the CIA and mass media's poisoning of British
workers' minds against the Russian revolution and socialism.

But British solidarity with Soviet workers has never been forgotten by their
Soviet comrades who, struggling themselves, donated £1,250,000 to the British
miners during the 1926 General Strike.

After mass protest from the working classes of Europe and other countries; and
because of the lack of any large support from the Soviet people; foreign armies
were forced to withdraw. And the Soviet people and their new Red Army proved
well able to defend socialism from intervention and counter-revolution by
anybody who had any hopes of restoring the rule of the capitalists and
land-owners.

At a meeting of the Moscow Soviet held in the Bolshoi Theatre in May 1923
delegates to the Soviet declared their attitude to defence of their new Soviet
State:

"The reactionaries of the world... seek to strike a blow against the Soviet
republics which the republics will meet with their united strength."

(Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgi Chicherin, Moscow Soviet, May
1923.)

The story was told of an old woman gathering wood in the forest. Before the
revolution she would have been arrested by the Tsar's soldiers. She told how Red
Army soldiers now helped old women gather wood in the forest.

"I will give my heart to be made into bullets for the defence of Soviet power."

(A peasant woman named Victorova, at the Moscow Soviet, May 1923.)

The capitalists tried to engender public opinion favourable to their aims by
lavishing their praise on the right-wing "White" Russian armies of Tsarist
Generals Wrangel, Denikin, Yudenich, and Admiral Kolchak, saying that they had
the support of the Russian people. But some Western statesmen, in their strange
and odd moments of honesty, occasionally revealed the truth about the Soviet
people's attitudes to the Bolsheviks and the Red Army:

"The evidence that came home from our most trusted and best informed agents in
Russia convinced me they although the majority of the people were not
Communists, they preferred Bolshevik rule to that of the supporters of the old
regime, and that they were certainly not prepared to join in any military
enterprises designed to restore the old conditions...

The peasants distrusted the Whites for two reasons. The first was that they had
had enough of war. They were not prepared to do any more fighting alongside or
against any foreigners as long as they did not invade Russia. The Bolsheviks to
them seemed to represent that attitude of mind. They placed peace in the
forefront of their aims, and the Brest-Litovsk Treaty demonstrated that they
were prepared to pay any price for it short of their own extinction. The second
reason was equally - perhaps more - potent in its influence on present
impassivity. They did not want the landowners back. The revolution had given
them control if not ownership of the land they imperfectly cultivated, and they
did not like the idea of foreigners coming with arms into their country to
restore the old order of landlord domination and exaction."

(Lloyd George, in "The Truth About the Peace Treaties.")

Further documentary evidence of this was revealed in the Eichelberger report,
written by US intelligence officer Lieutenant Colonel Eichelberger on November 7
1919, and not declassified until 55 years later:

"...The support that has been given the Kolchak government on the part... of the
United States, has been given... to support a government which might be used
successfully in combating Bolshevism. It is my belief that no such vehicle as
the Kolchak government can ever successfully combat Bolshevism...

The world has recieved reports that the Kolchak government is made up of a band
of patriots defending the world against the advance of Bolshevism. It may seem
strange to many, that the Omsk government, backed strongly by England and... the
other Allies, with access to the outside world and in possession of a large gold
reserve, has not been able to withstand the advances of the Red Army.

...the great majority of officers and politicians connected with the Omsk
government are of monarchist and reactionary principles...

The greatest weakness of the Omsk government lies in the fact that the majority
of the population are opposed to it... probably 97 per cent of the people of
Siberia today are anti-Kolchak.

The attitude taken by the reactionary group... the so-called Omsk government was
as follows: all opposed were collectively termed Bolsheviki... They would refer
to the atrocities committed by the Bolsheviki in Russia and would state then
that all Bolsheviki should be killed.

R/WTThe Russian peasant, after a year of the Kolchak government, can only point
to his son forcible mobilised into the Kolchak army; his villages burned; his
goods stolen; and little or no market for his farm products...

endsJust, as in the past, the Tsar's government treated the masses so that the
world was finally presented with Bolshevism... the Kolchak government is
incresaing Bolshevism and is making the masses more and more bitter towards the
Omsk government and the Allied governments supporting it... Today, I believe
there are ten Bolsheviki in Siberia, to one a year ago.

MedMany of the reports which have reached the world concerning the merits of the
Kolchak government, have emanated from the British Government and these reports
have, in most cases, orginated with General Knox...

endsThe Kolchak government is referred to by many in Siberia as the "Knox
government."...

In conclusion, I desire to state that it is my belief that the Omsk government
has been engaged in fighting democracy. A government in Russia which will
successfully combat Bolshevism, must attract a large percentage of the people
away from the Soviet cause. There seems no prospect that the Kolchak
government... will ever do more than drive recruits into the ranks of the
Bolsheviki.

R.L. Eichelberger, Lt. Col., G.S., U.S.A."

(Secret US report of Nov 7 1919, declassified in 1974. Hoover Institution on
War, Revolution and Peace.)

"A further indication of popular opinion in Russia is provided with a
circumstance which readers of Mr. Churchill's military communiques must have
noted. I refer to the fact that when the White Generals seem to be most
successful and were in possession of large tracts of Russian territory, thereby,
as it was said freeing the people from the Bolshevist tyranny, popular risings
took place in their rear."

(Sir Hubert Gough, in The Times, March 5 1920.) (1)

"We had failed to create a reliable Russian Army... now there was nothing to be
gained by British forces remaining at Archangel a day longer than necessary."

(British War Office Document 33.950.) (2)

"Situation is becoming more and more hopeless. Bolsheviks are masters of the
situation."

(British Ambassador George Buchanan, in a report to London, Sept 18 1917.)

And the British capitalists failed to influence public opinion strongly enough
for continued intervention:

"The difficulties of the Entente in formulating a Russian policy have indeed
proved insurmountable, since in no allied country has there been a sufficient
weight of public opinion to justify armed intervention against the Bolsheviks on
a decisive scale, with the inevitable result that military operations have
lacked cohesion and purpose."

(Sir Henry Wilson, British Chief of Staff, Dec 1 1919.) (3)

"The Soviet government is firmly established and the Communist Party is strong
politically and morally... it is my conviction that the Soviet government is the
only constructive force in Russia today... No government save a socialist
government can be set up in Russia today except by foreign bayonets, and any
government so set up will fall the moment such support is withdrawn."

(William Bullitt, American agent on a mission to Soviet Russia, in a telegram to
US President Woodrow Wilson, 1919.) (4)

Intervention and counter-revolution by those from without and those from within
who had improperly and impudently hoped to restore the rule of capital had
failed.

(1)See:Pat and Zelda Coates "A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations." Lawrence and
Wishart. London 1944.

(2)See:Andrew Rothstein "When Britain Invaded Soviet Russia: The Consul Who
Rebelled." The Journeyman Press. London 1979.

(3)Denis and Cynthia Roberts "Europe - First Continent of Lasting Peace." Harney
and Jones. London 1983.

(4)Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919, Russia, p81,83.

Quoted in:Fyodor Volkov "Secrets of Whitehall and Downing Street." Progress.
Moscow 1986.

"Not one government declared war on Soviet Russia, but fourteen governments sent
armies to make war on her, to destroy her administration, to re-establish the
landlords in possession of the land and the capitalists in possession of the
factories, the mills, the mines, and the State.

They failed. But they left behind a legacy of immeasurable destruction."

(British historian J.T.Murphy, in his biography of Stalin.) (1)

"We have failed to restore Russia to sanity by force, I believe we can save her
by trade."

(Lloyd George, to Parliament, Feb 10 1920.)

"The capitalist world's canniest politicians (I mean the English) have long
since understood that they will never succeed in destroying us by force of arms.
So now they are hoping to tame us, using trade."

(Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgi Chicherin, in the French newspaper
L'Humanite, July 24 1921.)

But what the British were not saying was that the capitalist economy was in
tatters; which trade with the USSR could alleviate:

"Europe... is impoverished... Our customers are impoverished, bankrupt... Europe
is in rags and wants to buy. But its pockets are full of paper; it cannot buy."

(Lloyd George, The Times Dec 1 1920.)

"The failure of intervention and the desire of capitalist groups competing in
the world arena to enlarge their profits by exploiting the natural wealth of
Russia is forcing a number of capitalist states to move towards concluding
agreements with the Soviet republic."

(Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, March 1921.)

At the first negotiations conducted by Lloyd George with the Soviet Government
representative Leonid Krassin in London the British were trying to stall for
time so that they could continue with more military aid to Wrangel. But the
Soviet Government saw right away the falsity and dishonesty of the British:

"That scoundrel Lloyd George is fooling you in the most vile and shameless
manner, don't believe a word."

(Lenin, in a note to Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgi Chicherin, June
1920.)

The British capitalists thought they could fool the Soviets just like the way
they try to fool their own working class, with deals that would weaken their
position in the future. But the Soviet leaders were fully aware of the ways of
the British capitalists:

"The art of government has been brought to its most subtle flower on the banks
of the Thames... The British tradition of governing consists in preserving
historical continuity, in dealing with new historical phenomena through
compromise. The British art of government triumphs when it enters into an
agreement with a new historical force so as to render it harmless."

(Georgi Chicherin, to the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, Jan 1922.)

And the capitalists were forced to recognise working class power in the world
and that peaceful co-operation was the only realistic way of conducting
relations with Soviet power if Britain wanted to receive any of the vast
resources of the USSR.

(1)See:J.T.Murphy "Stalin." The Bodley Head. London 1945.

The contradictions of capital are also such that it is also forced to trade with
the socialist world:

"The road we are on is absolutely clearly and well defined, and has ensured us
success in face of all the countries of the world, although some of them are
still prepared to declare that they refuse to sit at one table with us.
Nevertheless, economic relations, followed by diplomatic relations, are
improving, must improve, and certainly will improve. Every country which resists
this risks being late.

There is a force more powerful than the wishes, the will and the decisions of
any of the governments or classes that are hostile to us... That force is world
general economic relations."

(Lenin, Nov 20 1922.)

"The Bolshevists will soon be in effective possession of four-fifths of the
former Russian Empire, including the vast bulk of all its agricultural and
mineral resources. We must desire peace with the Bolshevists, if possible as
with all the world."

(J.L.Garvin, editor of the Observer, 1920.) (1)

Counter-revolution from within and intervention from without forced the Soviets
to build a workers' Red Army in order to counter the "White" terror and further
maintain strong defences against capital, which they knew would never leave them
in peace. Even British spy Captain Francis McCullough admitted that:

"It may not be known to some of my readers and may seem hardly credible to such
of them as read the news from Russia and Poland today (July 22, 1920), but the
abolition of war and militarism is one of the great objectives of the
Communists, and was in fact, the cry which enabled them to overthrow the
Kerensky Government in 1917... They have written whole books on the subject, and
there is hardly an issue of their newspapers which does not refer to it... To
point out to the Bolsheviks that their practice belies their theory is futile
and even unfair for they answer it was the attacks made on them by Denikin,
Kolchak, the Czechs, the British, the French, the Americans and others which
made them take up arms to defend their existence... Had it not been for the
intervention... there would have been no Red Army in Russia. The Bolsheviks are
pacifists and anti-militarists. Their military helplessness in 1918 was
ludicrous."

(Captain Francis McCullough, "A Prisoner of the Reds." 1920.) (2)

(1)See:Ernie Trory "Imperialist War." Crabtree Press. Brighton 1977.

(2)See:Denis and Cynthia Roberts "How to Secure Peace in Europe." Harney and
Jones. London 1985.



Chapter 11

BUILDING SOCIALISM
The Wars of Intervention, which forced the Bolsheviks to concentrate most of
their resources and attention, and the Great Famine which resulted, caused
twenty million dead; a number which has been convenient for anti-Soviet
historians to attribute solely to the purges of the Stalin era.

Now began a long and arduous task of building a modern industrial Socialist
State in a backward land covering one sixth of the earth, under a complete
economic blockade. with a national "debt" to imperialism of 80,000,000,000 gold
roubles, and with material losses from a war of $60,000,000,000 for which the
invading nations paid not a penny of reparations, and with a nation of
uneducated workers and peasants 80% of whom were illiterate.

Millions starved. Workers froze to death on construction sites and camps
building completely new towns and cities in the middle of nowhere. Soviet people
suffered indescribable hardships in those difficult early years of the
revolution.

Why do we suppose they did this? They did it so that their children should never
again experience the burden of exploitation by capital and its inevitable
consequences of wars, despair, social decay, illiteracy, inferior education, ill
health, poverty and unemployment.

In order to catch up with the industrialised world from their centuries of
backwardness, from the middle ages to the 20th Century, they had to advance two
whole centuries in twenty years. No other country has ever industrialised on
such a vast scale and so rapidly. No other socio-economic system is capable of
such steady and ever increasing advance. Capitalism took two centuries to get to
where it is now. And at what cost! Capitalism can never satisfy the aspirations
of the majority of its people. It cannot tackle the problems of the world, not
even in two centuries has it solved a single problem facing mankind - poverty,
starvation, homelessness, education, medicine, health, unemployment, wars,
economic security and stability. In two centuries capitalism has not been able
to solve any of these problems, which the Soviet Union solved in the first
twenty years of building socialism.

"This year, 1932, in the Soviet union... the sole masters of the country - the
working class - has boldly tackled problems of vast economic importance: it is
linking seas by canals, diverting the waters of rivers to irrigate arid steppes,
enriching the whole country with electric power, laying miles and miles of
roads, and erecting scores of huge mills and factories. The magnitude of the
work done in these fifteen years is truly fabulous. And this is anarchy,
according to ...men who are determined to be blind because they fear a truth
which is to their disadvantage, but which is quite obvious, namely, that the
working class can be a more efficient manager than the capitalists."

(Maxim Gorky "To the Delegation of the Anti-War Congress.")

"Our aim now is to obtain a trade agreement with Britain so as to start more
regular trade and be able to buy as soon as possible the machinery necessary for
our extensive plan to rehabilitate the national economy. The sooner we do this,
the greater will be the basis ensuring our economic independence of the
capitalist countries."

(Lenin, at the Eighth Congress of Soviets, 1921.)

"De jure recognition is indispensible for the development of our trading
techniques. Trade between Britain and the union republics is indispensible for
Britain, and for us... Our markets and our raw materials are indispensible for
Britain."

#(Georgi Chicherin, Jan 7 1924.)

Economic and political independence and peace were the fundamental necessities
for building a socialist state. But the Soviet people were not to be left to
build Socialism in peace for very long, and they knew it:

"The future will almost certainly bring many further attempts by the Entente at
intervention and possibly a rebirth of the previous predatory alliance between
international and Russian capitalists, to overthrow Soviet rule in Russia, in
short, an alliance pursuing the old aim of extinguishing the centre of the world
socialist conflagration - the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic."

(Lenin, 1919.)



Chapter 12

CAPITALIST CRISIS AND ANTI-SOVIET PLOTS: THE STORM GATHERS.
After the 1929 financial crisis and the crash of Wall Street, which set off
further international financial crisis, Stalin was able to say:

"What is the picture today?

Today: an economic crisis in nearly all the industrial countries of
capitalism... Instead of prosperity, poverty of the masses and colossal growth
of unemployment. The collapse of illusions about the omnipotence of capitalism
generally,... And the universal voice about the "inevitable destruction" of the
USSR is being replaced by universal malevolent hissing, about the necessity of
punishing this country, which dares to develop economically while crisis reigns
around."

(Stalin, addressing the 16th Party Congress, 1930.)

While the Soviet people; surrounded by a hostile capitalist world which, as we
will see, was already plotting their destruction; built the heavy industry
necessary for their massive agricultural, health, education, housing and
industrial programmes of the 1920s and 30s, including massive dams and
electrification of the whole country - a project no country in the West could
undertake in the 1980s let alone in the 1920s and 30s; the capitalist world was
already heading for deeper crisis, fascism and another war:

"Unless drastic measures are taken to save it, the capitalist system throughout
the civilised world will be wrecked within a year."

(Governor of the Bank of England Montague Norman in a letter to the Governor of
the Banque de France M.Monet in 1931.) (1)

The social, political and economic situation in the 1930s build up to the Second
World War is almost an exact parallel to that of the 1980s.

In Britain, as in the rest of Europe and the USA the crisis was thrown onto the
backs of the working class. There was mass poverty and unemployment and an all
out attempt by capital to crush the resistance of the working class. There was
the General Strike in 1924, in which the British miners were betrayed and
deserted by many of their so-called 'socialist' leaders and fellow workers and
were forced to go it alone in the strike.

Despite the crisis in the capitalist world the British Government tried to break
off the limited trading relations the Soviets had managed to establish with
Britain:

"The British Government is again leading the capitalist offensive against the
workers' Republic of Russia... They are sending a provocative Note to Russia
with a view to breaking off trade relations and setting the dogs of reaction
loose in Europe to provoke war on Russia... Once we stopped war on Russia by a
united movement in the Council of Action. Once again the time has come to
prevent war... Get ready for action!... Make peace with Russia!... Up with the
Councils of Action! Down with war on the Workers' Republic!"

(British Communist Party "Worker's Weekly" leaflet, May 12 1923.)

Even Labour leader Ramsey MacDonald, who was as anti-Soviet as any, said that:

"If the trade agreement is torn up, there is not the least doubt that a state of
incipient war will have been created."

(Ramsey MacDonald, May 15 1923.) (2)

(1)See:Charles Higham "Trading With the Enemy." Robert Hale. London 1983.

(2)Parliamentary Debates. Official Report, Fifth Series, Vol.164, col.346.

See:Pat and Zelda Coates "A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations." Lawrence and
Wishart. London 1944.

Another Labour leader, a Captain O'Grady, returning from a trip to Soviet Russia
in 1923 said that he had seen locomotives with placards saying:

"Made for the Russian Soviet Republican Government by Krupp and Company. Essen."

(Placard on Russian locomotives in Riga.) (1)

He said:

"I want this kind of work for my own people in Leeds."

(British Labour MP O'Grady, 1923.) (2)

While other countries traded with the Soviets, Britain, even with massive
unemployment, wanted only to punish them.

But the tearing up of the trade agreement would not do much harm to the Soviet
Union:

"The powers of the Entente must understand that they have not been able to
destroy Soviet Russia in years of armed intervention, and... Soviet Russia will
not perish if the trade agreement is torn up."

(Soviet Commissar for Foreign Trade Leonid Krassin, in an interview with
businessmen and journalists, 1923.) (3)

The ones who feared Bolshevik power the most was of course the British Tories:

"It was possible to assert that probably no other state, no other European
Cabinet had tried to cause so much harm and worked so systematically to oppose
the interests of the Soviet Union, as had the British Conservative cabinet."

(Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Mikhail Kalinin,
1926.)

But the MacDonald Labour Government was just as much a willing tool of the
British Foreign Office and carried out their imperialist foreign policy in order
to finance reforms and welfare programs at home. The British bourgeoisie called
the Labour party "the party of sweet reason". Lenin called it:

"The Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although made up of
workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at
that, who act quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. It is an organisation of
the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers with the aid of
the British Noskes and Scheidemanns."

(Lenin, at the Second Congress of the Communist International.)

To the Communists, the British Labour Party was effectively no different from
the Liberal social democrats either, such as Lloyd George, who Lenin described
as:

"...a first-class bourgeois manipulator, an astute politician, a popular orator
who will deliver any speeches you like, even 'revolutionary' ones... Lloyd
George serves the bourgeoisie splendidly, and serves it precisely among the
workers, brings its influence precisely to the proletariat."

(Lenin "Imperialism and the Split in Socialism.")

The British Labour Party was often accused by the Tory press of being a tool of
the Soviet communists. But the Labour Party right from the start was going to
carry out the imperialist foreign policy of the British Foreign Office:

"We would be a Labour Government putting into operation the very principles that
have become historical in the operations of our Foreign Office."

(Labour Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald, The Times Jan 9 1924.)

(1)Parliamentary Debates. Official Report, Fifth Series, Vol.164, col.791, 793.

(2)Parliamentary Debates. Official Report, Fifth Series, Vol.164, col.791, 793.

(3)See:Fyodor Volkov "Secrets of Whitehall and Downing Street." Progress. Moscow
1986.

In their attempts to split and discredit the working class and to break off
diplomatic relations with the newly recognised Soviet Government; two plots were
devised by the Tories. These were the "Zinoviev letter" of 1924 and the 1927
Arcos raid; both for which the reader might be forgiven if his history books
failed to mention.

The Tory Government had been forced to resign over issues of recognition of the
Soviet Government and Anglo-Soviet trade and diplomatic relations. And in
October 1924 the Labour Party called for a General Election. On the Friday
before the election the Daily Mail published the "Zinoviev letter" - purported
to be from a Mr. Zinoviev of the Communist International to the British Labour
movement ordering an armed insurrection in Britain.

No original letter was ever seen, and the copies in possession of the Daily Mail
were such an obvious forgery that government departments did not even take the
matter seriously.

The writer of the letter obviously knew nothing about Communist nomenclature or
terminology. The letter was addressed to "The British Communist Party"; but the
correct title would have been The Communist Party of Great Britain. The letter
was headed "Executive Committee, Third Communist International". But the First
and Second workers' Internationals were not Communist Internationals. Only the
Third International was a Communist International. If the letter had been
genuine it would have been addressed to the Third International, or the
Communist International, or the Comintern; but never the "Third Communist
International". The signatory title was "President of the Presidium of the
I.K.K.I. Zinoviev". Zinoviev was not the president of the "Presidium" of the
I.K.K.I., but the President of the I.K.K.I. And in an English letter the
Anglicised Russian initials I.K.K.I. would not have been used; but the English
initials _ E.C.C.I. _ Executive Committee of the Communist International.

However, the controversy had the desired effect and Labour lost the election and
the Tories resumed power.

The original "Zinoviev letter" later turned up in the vaults of Harvard
University in the US and was admitted to have been the work of British spy
Sidney Reilly and a Soviet emigre. Reilly's plan was that Britain and France
would denounce the Soviet Government and recognise Boris Savinkov, a Tsarist
White counter-revolutionary. This plan was supported by millionaire financier
Sir Henry Deterding's Royal Dutch Shell, who wanted Soviet Russia's oil, helped
by Torgprom, an organisation of Tsarist millionaires. (1)

Further devices and plots were devised by the British Government in order to
influence public minds in a hostile and war-like attitude towards the Soviet
Union.

#"...enquire into the subject and report upon the best way of meeting an ever
threatening menace to civilisation."

(Churchill, to a secret meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence, July 22
1926.) (2)

In 1927 an excuse was wanted to break off diplomatic relations with the Soviet
Government. The London offices of the Soviet Trade Delegation, which was
separately housed at the Soviet Arcos building at 49 Moorgate EC2, and which,
like an embassy, had diplomatic immunity and was Soviet territory, was illegally
raided by police on the pretext of looking for 'stolen secret documents'.

(1)For a full account of the Zinoviev letter affair,

See:Pat and Zelda Coates "A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations." Lawrence and
Wishart. London 1944.

AlsoStanley Harrison "Poor Men's Guardians." Lawrence and Wishart. London 1974.

And:Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn "The Great Conspiracy - Against Soviet
Russia." Boni and Gaer. NY 1946, and Red Star Press. London 1975.

And:The Sunday Times Feb 15 1970.

(2)Public Records Office: Cabinet, 24/181, p1.

The police neither had a warrant nor the required official notice for entry to
the building. They immediately disconnected all telephone lines, occupied all
offices, rooms and entrances, violently forcing all staff into the corridors,
brought in safe-brealers to break opoen the safes, and opened all arriving mail
and removed all private trade documents.

The British Foreign Office told the Chairman of the Trade Delegation that they
were ignorant of the raid.

No such documents of course were ever found. But the press had a field day,
stating that the police were searching for "an important missing British State
document" which had been lost a few months before and that this must mean a
break in relations with the Soviet Union.

The British Government admitted that the "lost" document had not been found and
when asked about steps taken to deal with the person responsible for the loss of
the document the Home Secretary replied: "At present I am not in a position to
make a statement regarding that."

Such is the brain saturating power of the British mass media that the press was
soon alive with headlines, articles and letters from otherwise quite intelligent
people saying such as: "Turn the robbers out." and "Russians trying to sell us
stolen petrol." and, after the British miners received donations from the Soviet
miners, that media myth _ "growing public feeling" _ was used: "There is a
growing public feeling that the Government should clear out the Bolshevik
organisations here in England through whom this money is paid... These funds are
largely the proceeds of murder and loot." and letters such as: "I have long
believed that England will never be prosperous while we permit the Bolsheviks to
remain in our midst."; "Expulsion of Russian officialdom here will bring about
the cessation of foreign agitation among the working classes and end
revolutionary tendencies here."; "...what a folly Mr. Lloyd George committed
when he brought these Russian intriguers into our midst."; "...thousands of our
children being taught by Bolsheviks in proletarian schools to deny the very
existence of God and His Christ with every sort of blasphemy and immorality.";
"Why do we still nurse this viper in our midst, thereby giving encouragement and
the opportunity to the extremists in this country to retard our return to
prosperity?"; "We should refuse to continue relations with the Soviets until we
have guarantees that it will mend its barbarous and uncivilised ways."; "The
next war would see the United States and Great Britain lined up against Soviet
Russia."; "Mr. Cook (shouts of 'Shoot him!' 'Lynch him!') has declared that he
is a Bolshevik and is proud to be a humble disciple of Lenin... I want to warn
you that, the Government of Russia is making war on our country day by day."; "I
sometimes wonder what the object of Russia may be in keeping an Embassy Trade
Delegation in this country. Is it camouflage to try to make us believe that they
are not hostile? The whole world knows that in every part where the British
Empire impinges on another country there you will find Muscovite emissaries
trying to stir up mischief and quite openly as a nation pledging themselves to
destroy the power of our country." and "The time has now come to request the
withdrawal of persons who are using their specially privileged position in our
midst to plot our ruin." (1)

Very few papers took a different line to the government.

"The rupture [in Anglo-Soviet relations B.M.] is now defended on the grounds
that there has been a discovery of a system of espionage practised by the
Russians... All governments practise it. Espionage has never been used as a
pretext for breaking off relations."

(Sunday Express May 29 1927.) (2)

(1)See:George Bilainkin "Maisky. Ten Years Ambassador." George Allen and Unwin.
London 1944.

(2)Pat and Zelda Coates "A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations." Lawrence and
Wishart. London 1944.

Espionage has to be proved and the culprits punished or deported. It has not
been proved in this case and was no excuse for breaking off relations.

The terms of the trade agreement required six months' notice of termination from
either side; but the British Government gave ten days notice for the Soviets to
leave the country and declared itself free from the terms of the agreement.

Diplomatic relations were broken off and the Soviet Ambassador and his wife were
sent back to the USSR.

The Soviets left London early in June among a huge crowd of friends and
well-wishers, Labour and trade union leaders. (1)

The break in Anglo-Soviet relations lost Britain an agreement with the Midland
Bank and millions of pounds in British orders from the Soviets during a time of
high unemployment:

"As it is, we have over a million unemployed in the middle of the Conservative
Government's third year of office. And we have thrown away £10,000,000 worth of
orders for British manufacturers."

(The Observer May 29 1927.)

It should be noticed that business and diplomatic relations were and are carried
out by the British Government with all the despotic governments of the world so
long as they were not socialist. Support for the US in its criminal war against
Vietnam, support for Pol Pot who murdered a third of the population of Kampuchea
while refusing any relations with the Kampuchean people, its relations with
South Africa and Chile are typical examples of the foreign policy carried out on
behalf of the British people by their governments.

Further attempts by the Daily Mail and others to wreck Soviet timber and oil
imports in Britain were a complete disaster and blew straight back into the
faces of those who tried to instigate them.

While the Soviet Union was growing economically and politically stronger, the
capitalist countries began to form anti-Communist organisations such as "The
International Entente to Create a United Front Against Bolshevism, which was
represented in Britain by the Economic League.

British and other capitalist governments began to plan alliances against the
USSR, especially with Germany.

"It is further asserted that no 'political discussions', to say nothing of
negotiations, took place between Lord Birkenhead and German official personages
during his stay there, (Berlin) although it is admitted that in his private
conversations he repeatedly expressed the opinion that Germany would do wisely
to make common cause with the Western Powers against Russia."

(Daily Telegraph April 27 1928.)

Anti-Sovietism and actions against the working class and its organisations
intensified as capitalism's crisis deepened.

Britain resumed diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1929 since it belatedly
realised the advantages of certain trade deals, especially in timber and grain
in exchange for machine tools, with the USSR, which continued to grow
economically.

Meanwhile in the US:

"The industrial situation of the United States is absolutely sound and our
credit situation is in no sense critical."

(Charles E. Mitchell, President of the US National City Bank, whos personal
share in the bank was $6,950,539 and whos income that year was $4,000,000,
August 1929.)

(1)A full account of the Arcos incident is given in:

Pat and Zelda Coates "A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations." Lawrence and
Wishart. London 1944.

In that same year _ 1929, the same year that the USSR closed down its last
unemployment office, those "absolutely sound" US shareholders and bankers jumped
out of skyscraper windows when the "in no sense critical" financial crash of
Wall Street signalled a world capitalist economic crisis, depression and mass
unemployment.



School and college history, economics and business studies teaching and books do
not contain any of this information.



All the material and information I have presented here is readily available to
historians, writers, journalists, teachers, educators and syllabus publishers.
Although I have spent many hundreds of hours gathering it all together, I did
not have to look very far to find any of it.



When as a trainee history lecturer, it was suggested I take the class on a trip
to the Tower of London and then set them an essay on what life was like for a
soldier in King Charles' Army centuries ago. Very useful knowledge that! A
sociology of the past perhaps? But certainly not history in its most important
sense; unless history is to mean anything old or 'interesting' that you can do
in evening classes, like antiques, flower arranging or basket weaving. When
instead I taught real history, learning from the past in order to change the
future, the collective life-experience of humanity, I was got rid of. The head
of the history department complained that the students had remarked that I made
them think; which the head of history had probably never done in a lifetime of
teaching. I ended up washing and cleaning and emptying human surgical waste in a
hospital.



Unless teachers learn to be brave and intellectually honest (difficult when they
have a mortgage and bills to pay), future historical, social and economic
education and popular 'knowledge' will also not refer to the US or British
history and continuing complicity in global plunder, exploitation, domination
and control, wars of aggrandisement and acquisition, causing the deaths and
devastation of the homes and lands of millions of people - the thousands of
children under the age of two who will die tonight through simple lack of food,
clean water, medicine and education - the untold millions of unnecessary deaths
among the overwhelming majority of humanity on this incredibly rich and abundant
and ultimately sustainable earth.



From Brian Mitchell. Evolution.



Responses and criticisms welcomed. Reply to my personal e-mail if you prefer. My
replies to criticisms will be posted.






"How long will they steal our profits while we stand around and look?" (Bob
Marley, Redemption song.)

"The most remarkable thing about the world is that you can understand it."
(Einstein.)

"If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him
vile names." (US writer Elbert Hubbard.)

"The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world. The thing is,
however, to change it." (Karl Marx.)

"And if we were all capable of unity to make our blows stronger and infallible
and so increase the effectiveness of all kinds of support given to the
struggling people - how great and close would the future be." (Che Guevara.)



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