Saturday, 11 November 1922 Discussion of Executive Committee Report (Continued)
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Session 5 – Saturday, 11 November 1922 Discussion of Executive Committee Report (Continued) Speakers: Humbert-Droz, Michalkowski, Murphy, Haakon Meyer, Bukharin, Carr, Faure Convened: 7:30 p.m. Chairperson: Kolarov Chair: I give the floor to Comrade Humbert-Droz, who will read messages of greetings that the Pre- sidium considers to be important enough to be pre- sented to the Congress as a whole. Humbert-Droz: The Congress Presidium has received almost a thousand messages of greetings from every part of Russia and the world. We can- not read all these greetings here. But among them are two statements that the Presidium believes to be particularly important. The first is the greetings of the Vladivostok Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’, and Red Army Soldiers’ Deputies to proletarians around the world. (Applause) (Reads:) Greetings of the Vladivostok Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’, and Red Army Soldiers’ Deputies Comrades, warmed by the rays of the red soviet star, we send you our proletarian greetings from the coast of the Pacific Ocean. After four immensely difficult years of Japanese intervention and the atro- cious havoc wreaked by White Guards, the Soviet 192 • Session 5 – 11 November 1922 of Workers’, Peasants’, and Red Army Soldiers’ Deputies met today in liber- ated Vladivostok. The countless victims among the working people of Russia have not fallen in vain. After a long and bloody struggle, the Red Army has taken control of the last inch of Russian territory that was previously in the power of the hirelings of Japanese militarism. The proletariat of the coastal region has greeted its liberation with enthusiasm, branding with a curse the Black Hundreds that fled in cowardly fashion.1 For the first time, the powerful workers’ and peasants’ army paraded its victorious banners through the streets of the now free city. Its triumphant procession gave expression to the power of the working class of Soviet Russia and the entire world, united and invincible. The appearance of its iron-solid ranks in a city abandoned only a few hours earlier by the interventionists awakened in the hearts of working people an unshakeable conviction that the grievous time of horror is now behind them. Now that the interventionists have withdrawn, and the peasant army has taken possession of Vladivostok, the working people no longer need the Far Eastern Republic, a buffer state that had to be set up in 1920 in order to pre- vent a clash between a not yet consolidated Soviet Russia and warlike impe- rialism.2 Comrades, you know how Soviet Russia has grown in power and steadfastness during the last two years, and what successes it has achieved in international relations. You have seen how Soviet Russia’s delegates in Genoa and The Hague defended the interests of their state. You know that the annexation plans of Japan at the Dairen [Dalian] and Changchun Conferences were thwarted.3 Soviet Russia has been reinforced by the enthusiastic and cre- ative efforts of all the energy of workers and peasants, unparalleled in history. The intrigues of countless enemies have been thwarted, unrestrained violent destruction has been halted, and the Japanese policy of annexation has been dashed to pieces by the resistance of the Russian people, by disturbances in 1. The Japanese interventionist army withdrew from Vladivostok in late October. Under tsarism, the Black Hundreds were right-wing bands acting with government support who carried out violent attacks on Jewish communities and revolutionary workers. Later, the term was applied generically to groups carrying out rightist terror. 2. The Far Eastern Republic, encompassing Soviet-controlled Siberia east of Lake Baikal, was merged into the Russian Soviet Republic on 15 November, four days after this session. 3. Regarding the Genoa and Hague conferences, see p. 120, n. 4. Representatives of Japan and the Soviet Far Eastern Republic met in the northeast Chinese city of Dairen, from August 1921 to April 1922, with interruptions. Japan won no concessions from Soviet negotiators, and the Japanese army began its withdrawal from Russian territory in August 1922. The Changchun Conference was held in September 1922 to consider Japanese demands for economic rights in the Russian territory of northern Sakhalin, which Japan then occupied. Russian and Far Eastern Republic delegates gave no ground, and Japanese withdrawal followed in 1924..