"We have reiterated and reiterated our desire for peace, our need for peace and our readiness to give foreign capital the most generous concessions and guarantees.... I know of no reason why a Socialistic commonwealth like ours cannot do business indefinitely with capitalistic countries. We don't mind taking their capitalistic locomotives and farming machinery, so why should they mind taking our Socialistic wheat, flax and platinum?"
Having waded through blood and violence to exterminate "capitalism" and cancel all "concessions" and "guarantees" in Russia, has "the dictatorship of the proletariat" emerged out of its nightmare of destruction simply to coax "foreign capital" back into Socialistic Russia by bribing offers of "the most generous concessions and guarantees?" After two years of a reign of terror to make an earthly paradise by destroying "capitalism" and the whole machinery of "capitalistic countries," this hungry reaching out by Lenine after "capital" and "capitalistic" things is almost too ludicrous for belief!
Eyre's interview with Trotzky, sent from "Riga (by courier to Berlin, Feb. 23)" and printed in the "New York World" of February 25, 1920, simply reenforces Lenine's appeal to "foreign capital" and the wicked "capitalistic countries." According to Eyre in the "World" of February 25, Trotzky spoke of "Russia, bankrupt, bleeding and starved," and said in part:
"Our military successes have not blinded us to our need of peace. We require peace for the re-establishment of economic stabilization.... We have had to sacrifice the welfare of our people and the health of future generations to the desperate needs of the hour."
And for what? Apparently only to substitute the autocracy of a new proletarian aristocracy for the autocracy of the old regime, and the