JULIUS MARTOV

People are becoming more bestial on both sides – and the full weight of responsibility for this rests on that party, which in the name of socialism blasphemously sanctified the cold-blooded execution of unarmed prisoners, which hypocritically protests against whiteguard executions in Finland while Russian soil is being drenched in the blood of the victims of firing squads.

Human life has become cheap. It is cheaper than the paper on which the executioner writes the order to destroy it. It is cheaper than the increased bread rations, for which a hired murderer is ready to send a person to the next world on the orders of the first villain who seizes power. This bloody debauchery is being carried out in the name of socialism, in the name of that teaching which proclaimed the brotherhood of working people the highest goal of humanity.

The Bolshevik Smidovich gave a written promise to spare the lives of those Junkers who surrendered, and then allowed the prisoners to be beaten to death one by one. … General Dukhonin surrendered to Krylenko, who in turn offered Dukhonin no protection as he was torn limb from limb before his very eyes. The murderers remained unpunished.

It is not a court, when sentence is passed by judge-bureaucrats who are dependent upon the authorities. In the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal there are no jurors from the general public, there are only state officials, drawing their salaries from the state treasury, which is in the hands of Trotsky and other People’s Commissars. It is not a court, when the accused is not allowed to call witnesses in his defense. … This debauchery is being carried out in your name, Russian worker!

Our party is divided into those who sit and those who are sat upon.

People are becoming more bestial on both sides – and the full weight of responsibility for this rests on that party, which in the name of socialism blasphemously sanctified the cold-blooded execution of unarmed prisoners, which hypocritically protests against whiteguard executions in Finland while Russian soil is being drenched in the blood of the victims of firing squads.

Human life has become cheap. It is cheaper than the paper on which the executioner writes the order to destroy it. It is cheaper than the increased bread rations, for which a hired murderer is ready to send a person to the next world on the orders of the first villain who seizes power. This bloody debauchery is being carried out in the name of socialism, in the name of that teaching which proclaimed the brotherhood of working people the highest goal of humanity.

The Bolshevik Smidovich gave a written promise to spare the lives of those Junkers who surrendered, and then allowed the prisoners to be beaten to death one by one. … General Dukhonin surrendered to Krylenko, who in turn offered Dukhonin no protection as he was torn limb from limb before his very eyes. The murderers remained unpunished.

It is not a court, when sentence is passed by judge-bureaucrats who are dependent upon the authorities. In the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal there are no jurors from the general public, there are only state officials, drawing their salaries from the state treasury, which is in the hands of Trotsky and other People’s Commissars. It is not a court, when the accused is not allowed to call witnesses in his defense. … This debauchery is being carried out in your name, Russian worker!

Our party is divided into those who sit and those who are sat upon.