In his speech in the House of Commons on 29th May, Bonar Law [1] justified the aid that Britain is giving to Poland by referring in passing to a message from Comrade Trotsky to French soldiers which said: “We can watch this temporary advance of the feeble Polish troops without being too alarmed; when we have finished with Denikin and the day is near we will throw ourselves on that front with overwhelming reserves”. Seeing in these words a threat to Poland’s independence, the government of Great Britain bound itself by a commitment to assist her and is now fulfilling that commitment.
I have not written any letters to French soldiers, but a phrase similar to one quoted by Mr. Bonar Law was contained in my letter to Comrade Loriot, a leader of the French communists. [2] The letter was written on 1st September last year during the period of Denikin’s closest approach to Moscow. The threat from Yudenich’s quarter was no reason for the unhindered movement of White Guard Polish forces into areas which in no way could be allocated to Poland. French comrades, like honest workers throughout the world, were at that time anxiously watching the development of military operations on our west and south-west. In my letter I explained that the operations by the Polish forces could not have a decisive importance, that the main enemy was Denikin [3] and that after his rout we could switch sufficient reserves to the western front to safeguard the Soviet Republic from an onslaught by White Guard Poland. To see in those words the proclamation of a future offensive by us against Poland is trebly absurd. First, these sort of intentions are not being announced in the press, yet my letter had been printed in Kommunisticheskii Internatsional No.5 on page 511; secondly a statement of this kind would in no event be addressed to French communists; thirdly it would run counter to the whole policy of Soviet power.
Mr. Bonar Law would very likely have been clear about this had he taken the trouble to think, but there is no cause for him to take such an exercise. Like all countries Britain is today divided into two parts: the honest majority of the people which wants peace with Russia, wants to understand the whole dishonesty and villainy of Poland’s assault upon her and the support given by the Entente, and a predatory minority which approves and supports any ill caused to the Russian people dictated by whatever motives. As the policy of intervention rests upon this minority, Mr. Bonar Law has no need to be over-scrupulous in his choice of arguments.
Izvestia, 13th June 1920.
1) It seems to me that it would be essential to find out at once whether Curzon’s [4] ultimatum is known in Britain and what the reaction of the press is to it. In general to sound out, so far as this is possible through Klyshko, Rothstein [5] and others, the attitude to the ultimatum in government and opposition circles.
2) Qua answer we might adopt, as it seems to me, the following fundamentals:
A letter to members of the Politburo dated 13th July 1920,
first published in The Trotsky Papers edited by J. Meijer
and published by the International Institute for Social History,
by whose kind permission it is reproduced here.
To all workers, peasants and all honest citizens of Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine:
On the 11th July the British government approached us with a proposal for ending the war with Poland and sending our representatives to London for peace talks with Poland and other border states. In addition Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, reported that in the event of an armistice being concluded the Polish forces will retreat to the frontier which was laid down for Poland at the peace conference in December of last year. In the same note it proposed that we do not touch Wrangel in his Crimean “sanctuary”.
To this offer of mediation by the British government we, the Council of People’s Commissars, replied in the negative. And in explaining this action of ours to the Russian and Ukrainian peoples may we express our firm conviction that our words will also reach the Polish people.
The People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs has issued a Red Book in Russian and foreign languages on Russo-Polish relations, where specific documents reveal day by day on the one hand the energetic, sincere and honest efforts of Soviet power to secure peace with Poland even at the price of big concessions, and on the other the stubborn, malicious and predatory ambitions of bourgeois-landlord Poland to inflict at the Entente’s instigation a mortal blow on Soviet Russia. If Britain had not wanted the war she could easily have prevented it. It would have been sufficient to refuse Poland war supplies and money. But Britain wanted the war. While holding talks with us in order to lull the working masses, she was at the same time continuously sending war material to Pilsudski and Wrangel against the Russian workers and peasants. Britain caused the Polish War and Britain is responsible for it.
Lord Curzon refers to the League of Nations on whose behalf he is presenting his proposal. But Poland, who has launched a campaign of robbery and plunder against us, is a member of this League of Nations. Another member of that League of Nations is rapacious imperial Japan, which is currently conducting monstrous outrages in the Far Eastern Republic under the cover of her allies. If the task of the League of Nations was to assist the cause of peace then it ought to have prevented Poland from starting the war, and demanded that Japan evacuate Eastern Siberia. But there was none of that. All the members of the League of Nations, and especially France, Britain and America, are linked by a collective guarantee in the matter of provoking a war by Poland against the Ukraine and Russia. The most powerful League of Nations members have been and are helping Poland as much as they can. They did not even reply to us when we approached them in April with an appeal to restrain the hand of the Pilsudski government which was already poised to strike. Yet now, when cruel blows have been dealt to the White Guard Polish forces by the Red Army, the League of Nations which is responsible for this comes forward with an olive branch in its hands – or rather, Britain, under the cover of the League over which she rules, offers us her mediation in reconciling us with Poland and the other border states and invites us to send peace delegates for this purpose to London: the very centre where all the snares are set against the Soviet Republic and from where the order was given to Poland to launch her offensive against the Ukraine and Russia.
No, Britain has not been called upon to act as intermediary and peacemaker in the bloody struggle which her criminal bourgeoisie conceived and feeds.
But the British government as we have seen already does not confine itself to the question of Poland. Lord Curzon in his same note of 11th July proposes to us nothing more or less than ending the war with Baron Wrangel if, in exchange, he promises to withdraw his bands south of the isthmus in order to establish himself within the limits of the Crimean peninsula which Britain has placed at his disposal. just a few days ago the same Lord Curzon stated on behalf of the British government that the pre-condition for commercial relations was the mutual obligation of Russia and Great Britain to non-interference in each others” internal affairs; but hardly had the British government time to acknowledge the receipt of Soviet Russis’s agreement to this condition than Lord Curzon considered himself called upon not only to interfere in Russis’s internal affairs, but also to donate a part of federal Soviet territory to private bandits acting in the service of British imperialism.
It is not the first time that the British government has manifested an interest in Baron Wrangel in the Crimea. When the Red forces which had routed Denikin were preparing to step over the Crimean threshold in order to mop up Wrangel’s remnants of Denikin’s army, Lord Curzon came forward with the same olive branch in hand and offered us the complete capitulation of Wrangel and his forces on condition of an amnesty. We agreed, and upon the insistence of the British government we halted the offensive immediately. Whereupon Lord Curzon at once changed the conditions and began to talk, instead of Wrangel’s capitulation, of our non-incursion over the boundaries of the Crimea. At the same time the War and Naval departments of Great Britain were vigorously working to arm and supply Wrangel’s forces. The outcome of this co-ordinated collaboration of Curzon, Churchill and Wrangel was a new offensive by the White Guard forces northwards from the Crimea at the beginning of June. It was quite evident that the offensive by Baron Wrangel, for whom Lord Curzon had previously requested the amnesty, was mapped and planned to supplement White Guard Poland’s offensive and consequently was dictated from the same London centre. Yet now the British Foreign Secretary again proposes that we abandon the offensive action against Wrangel, and prepares to set up his hireling on Russian territory just as if nothing had happened before.
No, neither Lord Curzon, the British government as a whole nor the League of Nations which it commands are called upon to interfere in the internal affairs of the Russian Soviet Federation and to act as peacemakers over a civil war which they themselves have caused and inflamed.
All the previous work of the British government, its allies and helpmates bear witness to the fact that their mediation pursues at the present time a single goal: to save Pilsudski and Wrangel, whom they had set against us, from their deserved rout, and to gain for them an opportunity to recover, re-form, re-equip and re-arm, and to commence a fresh campaign against workers’ and peasants’ Russia.
We have rejected League of Nations mediation in our war against White Poland and her accomplice Wrangel. But this does not of course mean that we are refusing to continue our negotiations with Britain and other countries, whether members of the League of Nations or not. Our policy of peace remains unaltered. While turning down Lord Curzon’s mediation, we are ready at any moment to enter into trading relations with British industrialists and merchants as well as with the capitalists of other countries. In justification of his policy, Lloyd George recently explained to the House of Commons that in Africa Britain had frequently to trade with cannibals. On this question we have common ground with Lloyd George and his government, inasmuch as we consider that until Europe and America become communist Soviet Russia must, in the interests of economic development, enter into trading relations with capitalist cannibals. We merely deny them the right to come forward as the saviours of small nations and the peacemakers of civil war. We know them too well to trust them. Let us warn the toiling masses of France, Britain, Poland and all countries against trusting the incorrigibly greedy, incurably base and indefatigably criminal bourgeois governments ...
An appeal issued by the Council of People’s Commissars,
first published in Pravda and Izvestia 21st July 1920.
According to all the information we have from various sources, Great Britain has possibly not since the age of Chartism lived through such a period of working-class re-awakening of interests and strivings to action as she does now in connection with the Russo-Polish War and the Russo-Polish peace negotiations. For the notes that are sent us by British diplomacy form but a reflection, a caricatured shadow, a faint image of the profound events and realities which are now taking place in British life. This is first and foremost the influence of the British working class. However much Lloyd George and Curzon might chatter, had there not been a congress in London to which two thousand delegates from throughout the country had come, not a letter of our replies would have been read. [9]
Given such a serious factor as the will of the awakening British working class, we can say that our diplomatic work has now a great point of support in Great Britain. Some reports say that in France also, where the situation is less promising as regards the state of the labour movement, an upsurge is observable and that the federation of metalworkers’ and masons’ unions has already backed the British Council of Action and has proclaimed the necessity for a general strike should France not go to the peace talks. Thus our diplomatic position, which is a result of our military position, has improved because our Red forces stand twelve miles from Warsaw. It is for this reason that Comrade Kamenev’s [10] and Comrade Krasin’s [11] work in London has turned out so favourably.
From a report to the Moscow Soviet, 17th August 1920
(On the Wrangel Front)
Of all the villainies of world imperialism whose full measure has been displayed over recent years, Poland’s invasion of our country is still a fact which is exceptional in its enormity.
It is essential that every Russian peasant man and woman knows of all the steps which we have undertaken to avoid the war (report the basic facts). France’s role:
Britain’s conduct:
The bourgeois press had prepared for Poland’s offensive by means of lies about an offensive by us. By means of false references to a preparation by us for an offensive, Bonar Law deceives public opinion to justify military aid to Poland.
By means of diplomatic mediation, Curzon is assisting Wrangel to concentrate his forces for a thrust against us.
From personal notes on the proletariat and peasantry in the revolution and the Soviet-Polish War,
written in 1920 and first published in Works, Volume 17 part 2.
1. Andrew Bonar Law (1858-1923), Canadian-born British Conservative politician, became leader of the Conservative Party in 1911; aligned thee Conservative Party with the Irish Unionists in opposition to Home rule; entered the war-time Coalition government led by Herbert Asquith in 1915 as Colonial Secretary; served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons under Lloyd George; resigned as Chancellor after the end of the war; resigned as Tory leader in 1921 due to ill-health; after the fall of the Lloyd George coalition in 1922 Bonar Law became prime minister, but had to resign due to his continued ill-health in may 1923.
2. Fernand Loriot (1870-1932), leading supporter of the Communist International in the French trade unions, and a founder of the French Communist Party.
3. Anton Ivanovich Denikin (1872-1947), Tsarist general, organiser and commander of counter-revolutionary Volunteer Army in South Russia, 1918-1920.
4. This refers to Curzon’s note of 11th July 1920, which was discussed by the Central Committee on 16th July. Chicherin’s reply, which was dated 17th July, largely embodied Trotsky’s suggestions. See Extract 58 for details of the Curzon note. The 1920 Curzon note, loosely referred to as an “ultimatum” by Trotsky, should not be confused with the 1923 Curzon Ultimatum dealt with in Extracts 73-75.
5. Klyshko and Rothstein were Russian communists who had emigrated to Britain in 1907 and 1891 respectively. In 1920 Klyshko was a member of a Soviet trade delegation to Britain. Theodore Rothstein (1871-1953) was a founder member of the British Communist Party.
6. David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Welsh Liberal politician, responsible as Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) for the introduction of old age pensions, unemployment benefit and sickness benefits; prime minister from 1916 to 1922.
7. Piotr Nikoplayevich Wrangel (1878-1928), White Guard leader who re-grouped the remnants of Denikin’s defeated Volunteer Army in the Crimean Peninsula, and with substantial aid from Britain and France, attacked Soviet Russia from the south. His army was defeated by the end of 1920.
8. Alfred Rosmer (1877-1964), leading supporter of the Communist International in the French trade unions, and a founder of the French Communist Party.
9. The Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party held a special conference on 9th August which called for the whole industrial power of the working class to be used in the event of a war against the Soviet Union, and for the formation of local Councils of Action. The national Council of Action held a national meeting on 13th August attended by 1,044 delegates from trade unions, local Labour Parties and trades councils.
10. Kamenev was the newly created People’s Commissar for Foreign Trade who went to London in May 1920 to negotiate a basis for Anglo-Soviet trade.
11. Lev Kamenev (1883-1936) was the head of the Soviet peace delegation that arrived in London at the beginning of August 1920. He was accompanied by Krasin (1870-1926) and Klyshko. Kamenev, a member of the Politburo, advised Lloyd George of Soviet peace terms for an end to the Polish war. On 11th August Lloyd George sent a telegram to the Polish government urging acceptance of the Soviet terms. But on 16th August the Poles counter-attacked the Red Army outside Warsaw and drove them back, securing more favourable terms.
Last updated on: 1.7.2007