isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSAR 337
to compel the Bolsheviks to treat them roughly and so to
widen the gulf between the parties. This, Trotsky said, caused
him more anxiety than the advance of Krasnov's Cossacks and
the reports about the formation of White Guards.' Somewhat
later he expressed to Sadoul his hope that, after the Bolsheviks
had carried out the most essential points of their programme,
they would invite the Mensheviks to join the government.
The talks about coalition came to an abrupt end on 3 November,
when Martov and Abramovich declared that they would
engage in no negotiations as long as the arrests then taking place
continued and the newspapers just banned were not allowed to
reappear. 2 The Bolsheviks had arrested a few right-wing politicians
and banned some newspapers which had openly called for
armed resistance. In .the Soviet Trotsky thus justified these
measures: 'The demand to stop all repression at the time of
civil war amounts to a demand that we stop the civil war ....
Our adversaries have not proposed peace to us .... In conditions
of civil war it is let,>"itimatc to ban hostile papers.'J He
emphatically assured the Soviet that the government had no intention
of setting up its own press monopoly. It was, however,
in duty bound to destroy the press monopoly of the propertied
classes, as every Socialist party had promised to do. The pnnting
presses and the paper-mills would be nationalized; and then
the government would allocate printing facilities and paper to
all parties and groups in proportion to their strength in elections.
Thus genuine freedom of the press would be established for the
first time in history. The capacity of people to spread their
views would depend on their real influence in social and political
life, not on their financial resources. 4
A month after the revolution, the first White Guards, under
the command of Kornilov, Kaledin, Alexcev, and Denikin,
1
Sadoul, op. cit., pp. 68-69.
1
Protokoly Tsm. Korn., p. 174-
3 Trotsky, Sochinenya, vol. iii, book, 2 pp. rn4-5.
• Some time later Trotsky addressed the Grenadier Regiment on the same subject.
'What do the advocates of the bourgeoisie mean by the freedom of the press?
The same as they mean by freedom of trade. Every man who has some capital has
the right, because he ha< the means, to open a factory, a shop, a brothel, or a
newspaper, according to his personal ta