Date: 1918
Source: ru:PSS/v36

The revolution, with astonishing consistency, drives every proposition to its logical conclusion, ruthlessly exposing the utter poverty and criminality of every misguided tactic.

The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, captivated by their own catchy slogans, have been shouting for months now: “Down with Brest! Long live the uprising against the Germans!”

We replied to them that, under the present conditions, in this particular historical period, the Russian people neither can nor wish to wage war.

Blind to reality, they stubbornly clung to their line, heedless of how far they were drifting away from the broad masses of the people—striving, at all costs, even by force, to impose upon those masses their own will, the will of the Central Committee, which was composed of criminal adventurers, hysterical intellectuals, and the like.

And as they distanced themselves from the people, they increasingly began to win the favor of the bourgeoisie, which hoped to use them as instruments to carry out its own sinister designs.

The criminal terrorist act and the rebellion utterly and completely opened the eyes of the broad masses to the abyss into which the criminal tactics of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary adventurists were dragging Soviet Russia.

Even I, along with many comrades, heard on the day of the rebellion the most vehement expressions of indignation directed at the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries—even from the darkest strata of the population.

A gray‑haired, illiterate old woman, filled with righteous anger, spoke about the murder of Mirbach:

“Look at them—those damned fools! They’ve pushed us right into war!”

All at once, it became glaringly obvious to everyone that, following the Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist act, Russia had come within a hair’s breadth of war. This was precisely how the popular masses assessed the actions of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.

We are being provoked into war with the Germans when we neither can nor wish to fight. The people will never forgive the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries for this blatant trampling on the popular will, for this forcible thrust into war.

And if there were those who rejoiced at the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries’ uprising and rubbed their hands with malicious glee, it was only the White Guards and the lackeys of the imperialist bourgeoisie. But the working class and the peasantry, in these very days, grew even closer, even more deeply united with the Communist Party of Bolsheviks—the true embodiment of the will of the popular masses.

“News of the All‑Russian Central Executive Committee,” No. 141, July 8, 1918

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “News of the All‑Russian Central Executive Committee.”