René Marchand

“ Moreover, ail around me, the force of the Bolsheviks generaly was not taken seriously! Everybody failed to observe that the Bolsheviks were begining to have the masses of the people behind them, seeing that their programme on the two most vital questions, the question of peace and the question of the land, gave expression, in precise and vigorous formulas, to the deepest aspirations of the people themselves. ”

“ The remarkable logic and rectitude of the line of conduct followed by the Workers and Peasants' Government of Russia is to be seen in startling relief: in spite of formidable obstacles, which it is constantly struggling with, it does not cease to keep a firm hand, a helm which steers invariably towards the World Proletarian Revolution,—the only means of salvation for Humanity, and the only possible solution for War! ”

“ Of noble ideas and elevated principles, in the name of which it formerly spoke to us, and for the sake of which we listened to it, soon nothing will have remained but feeble echos, and poor rubbish given to the people for the last time, as a bone at which to gnaw, and to calm their legimate impatience. On the other hand, truth has been coming to light with ever greater vigour and force and soon will have opened the eyes of the blindest amongst us. ”

“ In neutral countries where, as in belligerent countries, a handful of people had become immoderately and immorally rich, and where the masses were crying out from hunger, misery, exhaustion, as well as their imperious need for order and justice, everywhere it was the same painful outcry of sufferings,—an outcry mixed with imprecation and revolt which grew louder, as a final warning to those fools who continued their mad course towards the abyss and exterminated, in their insatiable greed of gain, millions and millions of people without end. ”

“ We are given tho possibility, through pain and tears, no doubt, to destroy for ever what still remains of the odious past, which still tries to break in upon us and bury us alive amidst the mountains of corpses accumulated during these years of nightmare,—and, afterwards, giving free course to all our energies, to all our creative forces and ideal aspirations,—to set to work ourselves upon the construction of a new world, a new world which we shall have the force, courage and will to mould to our idea by our own hand. ”

“ This calumny of alliance, of identification of „Bolshevism“ with „German Imperialism“, that they desperately endeavour to force upon the public opinion of the West, at all cost, has reached montrous poportions.
When one is witness of daily events in Russia it becomes particularly intolerable to read the foreign newspapers, and especially the French. It would be impossible to imagine a tissue of lies more shameless, more flagrantly contradictory, a more systematic and more hypocritical perversion of facts. ”

“ Thus, it had now become clear to me that peace could not be re-established, and that the realisation of principles which up till then had been proclaimed by the bourgeois governments only in order to delude and lull the masses of the people to sleep, could be proclaimed only when the time would come for collapse of this Imperialism and when the people would take the free command of their destinies into their own hands. ”

“ The press, with the modern printing plant, must be requisitioned by the people for the education of the people and not for its enthralment.
Faithful to the tactics that were being followed in Russia, the Governments of the Entente had nothing more urgent to do in Germany, than to cynically reconcile themselves with the late servants of Wilhelm and to declare Liebknecht an outlaw, the man whom during four and a half years, in the name of principles that they had held up to us, they had not ceased to call, for the sake of their propaganda, „the only honest German“! ”

“ Noulens: „I perceive the advantages for the bolsheviks, but I look in vain for any that the Allies might obtain!“ And so there did really exist an attempt on the part o the bolsheviks, these „German agents“, to come to an agreement with the allies against German Imperialism! It was, therefore, untrue that the bolsheviks had been resolutely hostile to any allied anti-German action in Russia! And this project, which our ambassador had not even consented to discuss or to examine but which must, undoubtedly, have offered some interest, a project which he had put aside a priori, deliberately! ”

“ This is the only form that can assure to exhausted, bleeding Europe peace, concord, justice, right and construction of a new life, in the place of the terrible nightmare, in the most frightful drama that History has ever known. ”

“ One day the truth will undoubtedhy come to light: the more it will have been sullied the more brilliant will be its revenge. But the perusal of the infamy published by the French press in regard to Russia is none the less profoundly instructive. It is a vivid illustration of the formidable power which the capitalist Governments and the large financial syndicates have in their hands in order „to form the opinion“ in accordance with their combinations. Never was the action of the press more cynically criminal; and never was its responsibility before the popular masses more heavy. ”

“ Universities opened to all desirous of taking up science and no longer reserved only to the holders of diplomas (valueless parchments bestowed only too often by a bureaucratic routine upon mediocrities) ,—popular courses and conferences in an, so to speak, unlimited number,—theatres, concerts, cinematographs placed at the disposal of the masses and requisitioned, in the broadest meaning of the word, for teaching aesthetics simultaneously with social truth and justice; Beethoven, Mozart, Glueck, Wagner and Scriabine are played to and understood by workers and peasants. ”

“ It is, in fact, marvellous that during one of the most violent revolutionary struggles by which Humanity has ever been convulsed, at a time when, surrounded on all sides and whilst struggling against internal revolts maintained by foreign gold, the Government of the Workers and Peasants of Russia succeeded in finding in itself sources of intellectual vitality and positive idealism, sufficient to give the impetus to one of the periods of highest artistic activity that Russia has ever known. ”

“ As though the defence and conservation of a social State which had made possible, and had continued for more than four years, a horrible massacre of humanity, for the sake of appetites and financial interests and which today appeared as the only, but also insurmountable obstacle towards the re-establishment of peace, fraternity and justice, could be compatible with any religion having the principles of Christ for its basis! ”

“ Although at that time I believed the revolution to be dead for ever,—I was brought back, by some kind of irresistible instinct, wich said to me that it was the Soviets alone which could be the basis of a new Russian life,—instead of understanding that this formula of the soviets was inseparable from bolshevism, or more exactly, that bolshevism whose existence I persisted in not seeing was nothing else than the practical realisation of the formula of the Soviets. ”

“ But never had the suspicion even entered my head that our representatives in Russia might have in view an intervention of a different kind, an intervention perhaps destined to overthrow the Bolsheviks and without hesitating, in order to achieve their end, to take measures such as must surely bring about frightful sufferings of the Russian people and which, to culminate matters, from the point of view of the war, could not, even indirectly, affect German Imperialism. ”

“ A self important and covetous diplomacy has called together and multiplied solemn commissions and sub-commissions around the green tables and tried in vain under the opaque mantle of secret conferences, to mask the complete vacuity of its ideas, the total absence of its principles, the sullen opposition of financial groups which it had been called upon to try to soothe. ”

“ It was evident that our ambassador, who had been guided by trivialities and by paltry, futile incidents connected with his journey to Russia, much more than by political considerations, had returned, not with the intention of studying events, of informnig himself of the situation, but with a definite line of conduct mapped out in advance. „Since the Signing of the Brest Treaty, the bolsheviks have become the open allies of the Germans: we must treat them as enemies“ Further the irritation of our ambassador did not limit itself to Bolshevism but applied to the whole of Russia. ”

“ Only with the aid of the people of these new democratic elements, which have just come to the front, our natural friends and allies, can we hope to maintain the eastern front, and drive back the German invasion of Russia“. And with what evident pleasure Gabriel Bertrand stayed behind in his Diplomatic box, now almost vacant (for since the appearance of the „candidate for dictatorship“, the Assembly „offered no further interest“) , to watch the voting take place, which was to give the moral authority to the Provisional Government to introduce a republican form of the new Russian regime! ”

“ The national form of Russian monarchy had the form of a popular government with the continuous and direct collaboration in public life, not of a Parliament but of the people directly, a form in which the sovereign was not above the people, but, on the contrary, came from the people. ”

“ Whatever may happen, whatever we may have still to suffer before our new life constructs itself, it is faith in her which, alone, can and must support us from now onwards, for behind us and around us there is nothing but ruins, death, and mourning. ”

“ To refrain from doing so is to give the cooperation of one's neutrality towards the restoration of the ruins of the old world, that is to say to resign oneself to continue to live, without hope of ever issuing enlightened from the black night in which we are plunged. ”

“ If we desire to liberate ourselves from the past, which has caused us and still causes us so many sufferings, then the lying press, in the pay of capital, is one of the first instruments of oppression that we must destroy. It is necessary to finish once for ail with this abominable poisoning bf ideas, of consciences and souls. ”

“ My investigations from the bolshevik side were pressed no further, so strong was my conviction that, with the exception of a few „fanatics“ and a few „inspired“, the bolsheviks (or at least the most prominent of them) were German agents, „traitors“, „the instigators of the Russian betrayal“ as they were daily stigmatized by the French press. ”

“ The most original artistic collections are brought together in the most varied branches of human genius, supplying the material for innumerable expositions,—competitions for decoration, music, poetry, theatre. Wide scope is offered for sculpture by the erection of monuments, some of which have been powerfully conceived, in honour of the greatest figures of History. The living thought of human and creative France finds abundent personification in Danton, Robespierre, Blanqui, Victor Hugo ”

“ During the few years that I had spent in Russia previous to the war, I had found sufficient opportunity of observing the Cadet Party at work in opposition in order not to be misled by the moderate hopes that were placed upon it on the eve of the Revolution.
The Cadet Party had been, in fact, nothing better than a party of professors; a party deprived of ail contact with the people, and which, under the Imperial Regime, had constantly aimed at power ”

“ I can recollect very well how Georges Weill on the evening of his departure, which took place only a few hours before the coup d'Etat, said to me in tones of profound conviction „The Bolsheviks will do nothing! I have just had a look at them! Trotzky I examined at leisure, whilst making my report before the Soviet in Smolny, on the Alsace Lorraine question. You have only to look at those people to be quite sure that they have no stomach and will never dare to budge“. ”

“ It seemed to be on the point of undergoing a complete revival on the basis of a return to its primitive form. The principle of re-election: introduced at the bottom of its hierarchy, its contact with the people, of which under the regime of the Czar it had been practically deprived of, all led one to cherish great hopes of it, so much the more so as its patriarch had not allowed himself to be monopolized by political parties, by the Kadet bourgeoisie which for its own paltry interests was now pretending to be religious. ”

“ To make things worse, this visit had not even the excuse of being provoked by a direct or indirect action on the part of the diplomatic representatives of Wilhelm. It was spontaneous, it bore the character of a supplication to Count Mirbach to have Moscow occupied by German troops, in return for which the latter might count with the cooperation of the commercial and industrial groups for the constitution of a government which would submit itself to Berlin. ”

“ Schools have been opened for popular painting, sculpture, singing and poetry, in many of the former palaces and most sumptuous private hotels. Colonies have been established for poor workers and peasants' children, who are thus taken away from a rude joyless existence life, without warmth or beauty to which Fate had condemned them. ”

“ It was not for one second admitted that they were a people who if it was uneducated was at ail events highly talented, fully conscious of its force, who, even in its moments of apparent inertia, nevertheless, thought aud lived, and whilst retired within itself in this tragical situation, always remained capable of the most admirable efforts. ”