1917 Leon Trotsky

Published in Pravda No. 53, May 23 (10), 1917.

'Soldiers and workers! You are told that you are defending “freedom” and the “revolution”! In reality you are defending the shady treaties of the tsar, which are concealed from you as one conceals a secret disease.'

 'Democracy will remain an idle deceitful phrase, or merely a half-measure, unless the entire people is given a chance immediately and unqualifiedly to learn how to handle arms.' Written May 23 (10), 1917; published in Pravda No. 55 May 25 (12).

Published in Pravda No. 53, May 23 (10), 1917.

Published in Pravda No. 53, May 23 (10), 1917.

Published in Pravda No. 52, May 22 (9), 1917.

Novaya Zhizn for May 7 publishes interviews with ministers of the ''new'' government. Prime Minister Lvov has declared that ''the country must have its weighty say and send its army into battle''.

This is the sum and substance of the new government’s ''programme''. An offensive, an offensive, an offensive!

"It will be a truly revolutionary government, the only one capable of showing the people that at a time when untold suffering is inflicted upon the masses it will not be awed and deterred by capitalist profits."

Published in Pravda No. 50, May 19 (6), 1917.

That is how history puts the issue—and not history in general, but the economic and political history of the Russia of today.

The Narodniks and Mensheviks, Chernov and Tsereteli, have transferred the Contact Commission from the room adjacent to the one the ministers used to meet in to the ministerial chamber itself. This, and this alone, is the purely political significance of the “new” cabinet.

Published in Pravda No. 47, May 16 (3), 1917.

Published in Pravda No. 47, May 16 (3), 1917.

That is what the proclamation of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet to the socialists of the world, published in today’s papers, amounts to. It has a lot to say against imperialism, but all these words are nullified by a single little phrase which reads:

“The Provisional Government of revolutionary Russia has adopted this platform” (i.e., peace without annexations and indemnities on the basis of self-determination of nations).

Published in Pravda No. 46, May 15 (2), 1917.