REPRISALS IN RUSSIA

Otago Witness, Issue 3489, 25 January 1921, Page 41

REPRISALS IN RUSSIA

SOCIALIST APPEAL TO BRITISH WORKMEN. LONDON, November 20. An open letter has been addressed to British workmen by a number of Russian Socialist-Democrats, who complain “that tho visit of the British Labour Delegation to Russia last summer has resulted in severe reprisals and prosecutions of all the Socialist who were bold enough to criticise openly the Soviet regime and the actions of the Russian Communist Party.” It is stated that well-known leaders of the Labour movement in Russia, who for many years fought against Czarism, who spent long years in exile and in prison, and who hold prominent positions in tho Russian trade union movement, have again been severely sentenced, imprisoned, and exiled by tho Soviet Government. Six individual cases arc given of men so punished, and the British Labour Party is asked to say to the Soviet Government: "Wa are ready to support, your cause, but we demand that you establish in Russia the elementary foundations of true democracy.” Tho signatories urge that universal equal franchise, freedom of speech, etc., should at ones be instituted in Russia.