Karl Kautsky

“ If, in spite of all, the Russian Government still attempts to create the belief that its three strong armies on the southern, eastern, and north-western boundaries of Georgia refrained from any share in the fight between the Communists and Menshevist Georgia, this is obviously because invasion by the Russian Armies would represent the most impudent and shameless mockery of the principles most sacred to every Socialist, which principles even the most hardened Bolshevists still had doubts about throwing on the scrap-heap. ”

“ Can any reasonable man hold it to be possible that Moscow would have offered its helpful mediation to a Menshevist Government which was threatened by Communists?
The later Russian telegrams about events in Georgia brand the first news as lies. They more closely approach the truth, but do not quite touch it. They admit that Tiflis was captured by Communists, and not by revolting Armenians. But they would have us believe that it was Georgian workers and peasants who rose against their own Government and captured Tiflis. ”

“ They enter into negotiations with capitalist England and America, but they have sworn mortal enmity to every proletarian organisation which accepts the principle that the emancipation of the working class must be the task of the workers themselves, and that it cannot be introduced by the involuntary submission of the workers to the commands of Moscow. ”