Through the pages of the Liberator, Commissar of Foreign Affairs Chicherin greets U.S. workers and explains the New Economic Policy.

‘Greetings to American Workers’ by Georgy Chicherin from The Liberator. Vol. 5 No. 7. July, 1922.

I AM glad to send my greetings through the Liberator to the American communists, and all the friends of the Russian Revolution in America. They need have no fear that, whatever the length and complexity of our negotiations with the bourgeois governments, we will ever prejudice or endanger in the slightest degree the power of the workers and peasants, which is the essence of the revolutionary victory and the basis upon which the new communist society will be built.

In many spheres of life in Russia the building of this new society is going forward. In other spheres we have been compelled to pause or make a temporary retreat, because of the breakdown of Russia’s economic life caused by her enormous sacrifice in the world war, the subsequent blockade, and the invasion and devastation of her territories by armies of the white guard sent into Russia by the Entente states.

I hope that the working classes of America will not be deceived by the sophistry of those who, having done everything in their power to destroy Soviet Russia, through armed intervention, through isolation and the starvation consequent upon the blockade, would now lay the blame for her condition upon the Soviet regime. A comparison of the condition of Russia with that of certain capitalist countries of Eastern Europe which were reduced to misery by the war itself, without any subsequent blockade or intervention, will show the falsity of this position. So far from causing the sufferings of Russia, the Soviet system is what has enabled her victoriously to endure them.

Russia has given all her strength to the defence of the revolution and it will be many years before she can build herself up again to a normal state of production. In fostering this process of growth, the Russian government wants the help of foreign technique and foreign capital, if it can secure them without surrendering the sovereign rights of Russia, the social and political conquests of the workers and peasants, and their control of the vital arteries of Russian economic life.

National ownership must exist for a time in Russia side by side. with private enterprise. But private capital cannot come into a position of control in Russia, as it inevitably does in countries governed under a parliamentary system. The law withholding the franchise from the exploiters of labor is still in force in Russia. The local soviets are composed only of workers and peasants and soviet, employes, and the Central Government is chosen by the local soviets. The control of the future is thus in the hands of the working masses. I have no fear, therefore, that the temporary concessions being offered by the Soviets to foreign capital will delay the development of the new labor society. That society cannot develop with Russia in ruins. It will develop with the revival of Russian economic life.

(Signed) GEORGE TCHICHERIN.

The Liberator was published monthly from 1918, first established by Max Eastman and his sister Crystal Eastman continuing The Masses, was shut down by the US Government during World War One. Like The Masses, The Liberator contained some of the best radical journalism of its, or any, day. It combined political coverage with the arts, culture, and a commitment to revolutionary politics. Increasingly, The Liberator oriented to the Communist movement and by late 1922 was a de facto publication of the Party. In 1924, The Liberator merged with Labor Herald and Soviet Russia Pictorial into Workers Monthly. An essential magazine of the US left.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/culture/pubs/liberator/1922/07/v5n07-w52-jul-1922-liberator-hr.pdf