IX
Throughout the first half of June, while arrangements for a big military
offensive were being made, and were causing Kerensky and the other
Socialist Ministers to strain every nerve, Lenine, Trotzky, Kamenev,
Zinoviev, and other leaders of the Bolsheviki were as strenuously engaged
in denouncing the offensive and trying to make it impossible. Whatever gift
or genius these men possessed was devoted wholly to destruction and
obstruction. The student will search in vain among the multitude of records
of meetings, conventions, debates, votes, and resolutions for a single
instance of participation in any constructive act, one positive service to
the soldiers at the front or the workers' families in need, by any
Bolshevik leader. But they never missed an opportunity to embarrass those
who were engaged in such work, and by so doing add to the burden that was
already too heavy.
Lenine denounced the offensive against Germany as "an act of treason
against the Socialist International" and poured out the vials of his wrath
against Kerensky, who was, as we know, simply carrying out the decisions of
the Soviet and other working-class organizations. Thus we had the
astonishing and tragic spectacle of one Socialist leader working with
titanic energy among the troops who had been betrayed and demoralized by
the old regime, seeking to stir them into action against the greatest
militarist system in the world, while another Socialist leader worked with
might and main to defeat that attempt and to prevent the rehabilitation of
the demoralized army.
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