Parted red curtains; in the center, in a trench, a German soldier, eyes closed, hands in overcoat pockets, leans against one side of a trench, smoking a pipe, his rifle resting on the other side of the trench. To the right, a Red soldier, red from red fur hat to red boots, holds two rifles. To the left, a Russian soldier casts away his his hat, backpack, and rifle. Across the bottom of the stage it reads, 1918. Operett: "Trockij", Operetta Trotsky. A watercolor postcard by Schima Martos.

1918. Operett: "Trockij", Operetta Trotsky

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Sunday, June 17, 1917

"On June 4, a declaration that I had submitted concerning Kerensky's preparation for an offensive at the front was read by the Bolshevik faction at the congress of the Soviets. We had pointed out that the offensive was an adventure that threatened the very existence of the army. But the Provisional government was growing intoxicated with its own speechifying. The ministers thought of the masses of soldiers, stirred to their very depths by the revolution, as so much soft clay to be moulded as they pleased. Kerensky toured the front, adjured and threatened the troops, kneeled, kissed the earth—in a word, clowned it in every possible way, while he failed to answer any of the questions tormenting the soldiers. He had deceived himself by his cheap effects, and, assured of the support of the congress of the Soviets, ordered the offensive."

Quotation Context

Russian Minister of War Alexander Kerensky returned to Petrograd on June 14, 1917 after a three-week tour of the Russian Front to attend the All-Russian Congress of Soviet and Front Line Organizations. The declaration our author, Leon Trotsky, wrote was delivered on June 17, 1917 (June 4, Old Style.) The Russian army, which had suffered mutiny, enormous numbers of desertions, and incidents of officers being killed by their men in the months since the February Revolution, was beginning to stabilize when the Congress began, with increased support for the Provisional Government and for waging war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, and other Bolsheviks voted against the resolution for Kerensky's offensive.

Source

My Life: an Attempt at an Autobiography by Leon Trotsky, page 311, publisher: Dover Publications, Inc., publication date: 2007

Tags

1917-06-17, June, 1917,