Accounts in the Press. July 7, 1918
The following two accounts published in Izvestiia represent the SR and Bolshevik views on the assassination of the German ambassador, Count Mirbach, by the Left SRs, and subsequent weak attack on the Bolsheviks. The SRs did not consider their actions counter-revolutionary, but rather an attempt to force a review of policies; but the Bolsheviks consider their actions a betrayal, and had soon removed SRs, their last coalition partners, from all organs of Soviet power.
Original Source: Izvestiia, 8 July 1918.
“Thou shalt gain thy rights by fighting.”
The executioner of the laboring Russian people, the friend and agent of Wilhelm, Count Mirbach, has been assassinated by the avenging hand of a revolutionary, by order of the Central Committee of the party of Left SRs. The executioner, Mirbach, has been killed just on the day and at the hour when the death sentence of the laboring masses was being finally signed, when the land, the gold, the forests and all the wealth of the laboring people were being surrendered to the German landowners and capitalists by agreement, and when the noose was being finally tightened round the neck of the proletariat and laboring peasantry. The German spies and provocateurs, who have filled Moscow and are partly armed, demand the death of the Left SRs, while the ruling section of the Bolsheviks, frightened at the possible consequences, are carrying out, as hitherto, the orders of the German hangmen. All must come out for the defense of the Revolution! All must come out to fight the international Imperialist robbers! All must come out for the defense of those who fight the German despots! Come forward, you working men and working women and Red Army men, for the defense of the laboring people against the hangmen, spies and provocateur Imperialists! Forward for the overthrow of German Imperialism which is starving us! Death to all hangmen and brutes of Imperialism! Shame on those who, together with the German spies, are proceeding to suppress the rising of the workers and peasants! Long live the rising against the hangmen! Death to the Imperialists! Long live the world’s Socialist Revolution!
Bolshevik Account of the Events
The insane rising of the so-called Left SRs has been suppressed. The judicial authorities will in the next few days elucidate the exact facts concerning this unparalleled adventure, and will establish the responsibility falling upon the individuals who took part in it. But the political meaning of the events of July 6 and 7 in Moscow is perfectly clear at the present moment. Yielding to the pressure of the bourgeois classes of society, the Left SRs had made during the last few weeks more and more persistent efforts to draw Russia into a war with Germany. These endeavors manifested themselves, not only in the practice of constantly pointing out the exceptionally harsh terms of the Brest Treaty, but also in the invention and spreading of monstrous rumors and suspicions calculated to excite the popular imagination. The intelligent workers and peasants realize, of course, quite clearly the harsh character of the Brest terms. But they realize not less clearly the consequences which would follow if exhausted and white-bled Russia were to be drawn into the Imperialist slaughter. It is for this reason that the overwhelming majority of workers and peasants have repeatedly repudiated the idea of annulling the Brest Treaty, as vehemently demanded by the Cadets, Right SRs, Mensheviks and Left SRs. The failure of their demagogic agitation in favor of war drove the Left SRs on to the path of a senseless and dishonest adventure. They decided to draw Russia into a war against the will of the workers and peasants by means of a terrorist act. After the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets had emphatically approved the foreign policy of the Council of People’s Commissars, a certain Bliumkin assassinated the German Ambassador, Count Mirbach, by order of the Central Committee of the Party of Left SRs. In carrying out this act of provocation the Left SRs relied, not so much on their party machinery, as on the official position they occupied as a Soviet Party. With the help of his party, Bliumkin had become a member of the Special Committee for Fighting Counter-Revolution, used his official position to appropriate certain documents, forged some others, and having, through his official position, gained admission to the residence of the German Ambassador, carried out the assassination, which he had been charged by the Central Committee of his Party to execute. Simultaneously the Left SRs publicly opened seditious operations, having for their object to transfer by force the State authority from the All-Russian Congress of Soviets to the hands of the Party which had found itself in a minority at that congress. Members of the Central Committee of the Left SRs attempted to raise a rebellion, relying on the operation of a detachment standing under the orders of the Committee for Fighting Counter-Revolution. This detachment was commanded by the Left S.R., Popov. The section of Popov’s detachment, which had been drawn into the conspiracy and reinforced by certain demoralized elements recruited from among the crews of the Black Sea Fleet posted street sentries and patrols, arrested individual representatives of the Soviet Government and disarmed and fired on individual sections of the Red Army. The rebels had at their disposal machine-guns, cannon, and armored-cars. Such was the course of the revolt of a Soviet Party, which was in a minority, against the authority of the Soviets on July 7. The success of the revolt, if the adventure could have succeeded, would have meant an immediate war with Germany, and the immediate collapse of the Soviet regime, since no sane man can suppose that the Left SRs would have been able, even for the space of 24 hours, to retain in their hands the power wrested from the hands of the workers, peasants and Red Army soldiers. In substance, the Left SRs acted on July 6 and 7 as a fighting organization in the service of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, for which they were preparing the way. In these circumstances the Council of People’s Commissars could only take one course, namely, within the shortest time possible to suppress the rising in which levity, treachery, and provocation combined in one repulsive whole. The energetic measures taken yielded results within a few hours. The Left SRs were cleared out from the telegraph and other offices, where they had been busying themselves for two hours. Popov’s detachment, after the first shots fired at it by the Soviet troops, became demoralized, and a considerable section of it indignantly repudiated the adventure, and went over wholeheartedly to the side of the representatives of the Soviet authority: Comrades Dzerzhinskii, Latsis, and Smidovich, who had been taken prisoners by the rebels. It was only owing to this circumstance that their lives were saved from danger. The end of the rising was quite worthy of its beginning and of the whole course of this disgraceful adventure. Their military staff completely lost their heads, as demoralization began to spread in the ranks of their troops. Having set themselves such a task as the seizure of State authority, the leaders of the Left SRs had apparently quite failed to realize the magnitude and the importance of it, and to realize that it was far beyond their strength. The rebels, after some insignificant attempts at resistance, began sending out parlementaires in every possible direction, and then began a disorderly retreat. The pursuit is going on with complete success. The number of those captured already amounts to several hundred. Full details will be submitted by the Government to the next session of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which will have the final word, both on the rising of July 6 and 7, and on the fate of the so-called Party of the Left SRs as a whole.
Source: Daily Review of the Foreign Press, Neutral Press Supplement (September 6, 1918), pp. 370-371.