“To overcome our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must win over to our side 90,000,000 of the 100,000,000 of population of Russia under the Soviets. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them; they must be annihilated.”
To be sure that the Jewish Bolsheviks were not boasting, the following report of the American Consul General at Moscow, dated September 3, 1918, is of the utmost significance. This report, which was published in the “Memorandum on Certain Aspects of the Bolshevist Movement in Russia,” Washington, Government Printing Office, 1919, reads in part as follows:
“Since May the so-called Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution has conducted an openly avowed campaign of terror. Thousands of persons have been summarily shot without even the form of trial. Many of them have no doubt been innocent of even the political views which were supposed to supply the motive of their execution.”
The American Consul General concludes his report by stating:
“The situation cries aloud to all who will act for the sake of humanity.”13
Trotzky made an attempt to justify “mass terror” in an article signed by him in the official daily newspaper Izvestia on January 10, 1919, under the title “Military Specialists and the Red Army.” In this article Trotzky states among other things as follows:
“Terror as the demonstration of the will and strength of the working class, is historically justified, precisely because the proletariat was able thereby to break the political will of the Intelligentsia, pacify the professional men of various categories and work, and gradually subordinate them to its own aims within the fields of their specialties.”14