V. I.

Lenin

The Question of the Bolshevik Leaders Appearing in Court [1]

Judging by private conversations, there are two opinions on this
question.

Comrades succumbing to the “Soviet atmosphere” often incline towards appearing in court.

Those closer to the workers apparently incline towards not
appearing.

In principle, the question chiefly boils down to an estimation
of what is usually called constitutional illusions.

Anyone who thinks that a regular government and a regular court
exist or can exist in Russia, that a Constituent Assembly is
likely to be called, may arrive at a conclusion in favour of
appearing.

That idea is completely erroneous, however. It is the latest
events, after July 4, that have most vividly shown that a
Constituent Assembly is unlikely to be called (with out a new
revolution), that neither a regular government nor a regular
court exists or can exist in Russia (at present).

The court is an organ of power. The liberals sometimes forget
this, but it is a sin for a Marxist to do so.

Where, then, is the power? Who constitutes the power?

There is no government. it changes daily. It is inactive.

The power that is active is the military dictatorship. Under these conditions, it is ridiculous even to
speak of “the courts”. It is not a question of “courts”, but of an episode in the civil war. This is what those in favour of appearing in court
unfortunately do not want to understand.

Pereverzev and Alexinsky as initiators of the “case"!!
Isn’t it ridiculous to speak of courts in such circumstances?

Isn’t it naive to think that, in such conditions, any court can
examine, investigate and establish anything??

Power is in the hands of a military dictatorship. Without a new
revolution, this power can only become stronger for a certain
time, primarily for the duration of the war.

“ I’ve done nothing against the law. The courts are just. They will sort things out. The trial will be public. The
people will understand. I shall appear.”

This reasoning is childishly naïve. The authorities need not a trial but a persecution campaign against the
internationalists. What Kerensky and Co. need is to put them in
gaol and keep them there. So it was (in Britain and France), and
so it will be (in Russia).

Let the internationalists work illegally as much as they can,
but let them not commit the folly of appearing in court of their
own free will!

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Notes:
[1]
Reference is to the summons for Lenin to appear before the court
of the bourgeois Provisional Government to answer the slanderous
charge of espionage in favour of Germany.

The Bolsheviks, who were fighting to transform the imperialist
war into a civil war and advocating the tsarist government s defeat
in the war, were first charged with high treason in favour of
Germany by the tsar’s secret police in the early days of the war.

After the February bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1917,
when the Party set course for a socialist revolution in Russia, the
bourgeois, Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik press carried
slanderous reports in view of the passage through Germany of
a Bolshevik group led by Lenin. The Seventh (April) Conference
exposed that lie in its resolution “On the War”.