Lenin CW-Vol. 23.pdf - From Marx to Mao

167EFFORTS TO WHITEWASH OPPORTUNISMThe Paris Nashe Slovo, 78 recently suppressed by theFrench Government to oblige tsarism (the excuse beingthat copies of Nashe Slovo were found on the Russian soldierswho had mutinied in Marseilles!), was indignant over the“lamentable” role of Deputy Chkheidze. With the permissionof the authorities, Chkheidze addressed public meetings inthe Caucasus, appealing to the population not to create“disorder” (accompanied by looting of shops, etc.), but toorganise co-operative societies, etc. A nice trip for an allegedSocial-Democrat to make “under the protection of a governor,a colonel, a priest and a police captain” (Nashe SlovoNo. 203).L. Martov forthwith hastened to enter a noble protestin the Bund’s Bulletin against “representing Chkheidze asa sort of [?? not “a sort of”, but “the same sort as all theliquidators” 79 ] extinguisher of the awakening revolutionaryspirit”. Martov’s defence of Chkheidze proceeds alongtwo lines: fact and principle.He challenges the fact by declaring that Nashe Slovoquotes from a Caucasian Black-Hundred paper, and that thosewho spoke at the meeting with Chkheidze were Mikoladze,a retired officer “known in his uyezd as a radical publicpersonality”, and the priest Khundadze, who “in 1905 wasprosecuted for participating in the Social-Democratic movement”.(“It is well known,” adds Martov, “that participationof village priests in the Georgian Social-Democratic movementis quite common.”)Such is Martov’s “defence” of Chkheidze. And it is a veryfeeble defence. Even if Chkheidze’s appearance on the sameplatform with a priest was reported by a Black-Hundred