09.01.1997

Russian socialists and the International

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, January 4 1917

At the moment when these lines are written, the impending destinies of the peace question are shrouded in darkness ... But, whatever happens, the peace towards which the world seems to be slowly tending will not be a peace compelled by organised labour’s victory over imperialism ...

Therefore, war in its present shape may go; imperialism will remain. Whatever peace comes, whether with ‘complete victory’ of one of the two imperialist camps, or with compromise, imperialism will go on its ascendant movement, the antagonist appetites will grow and will clash ...

All this will continue until the only possible solution comes, the vanquishing of imperialism, of capitalism itself, the victory of international socialism, as the final outcome of the new period of history inaugurated in 1914, the period of world struggles and unprecedented social antagonisms, of political and social earthquakes - “the revolutionary period”, as we Russian internationalists put it.

... One chief instrument of the system are and will be those who in the name of ‘social-patriotism’ are poisoning the minds and hearts of the workers and helping to enchain them ...

Everywhere labour is the battleground of the irreconcilable struggle between social-patriotism and internationalism, and Russia too has not escaped this fate. The ‘patriotic’ taming of labour which goes on in western Europe, with its advanced political life, has found its way into tyrannical Russia ...

In Russia the intellectual stratum of the movement is largely responsible. Up to the time of the Revolution (1905-1907) a numerous revolutionary ‘intelligentsia’ occupied a dominant place in the socialist organisations in Russia ... Some of them remain faithful to internationalism and partake in our struggle for international proletarian aims, but a considerable part ... has been swept away by the wave of patriotism ...

There is also a stratum of intellectuals from the ranks of labour, whose entire development was influenced by the ‘intelligentsia’, and who are closely linked up with it ...

Russian political backwardness itself has helped social-patriotism ... The imperialist liberal opposition seems to open the path to the Russian people to a better future; the deluded social-patriots by supporting this imperialist opposition ... have entered the path of corruption of labour through alliance with imperialism ...

We, the thoroughly internationalist socialists, declare that the military defence of the country in imperialist wars is not a task in which the organised conscious working class should in any way concur. The proletariat’s task, its historic mission, ... must be carried on without taking the least notice of the interests of the military defence of the respective countries ...

... Let the irreconcilable opposition between internationalism and social-patriotism find expression between the masses in a clear differentiation between the two camps. And then - let the future bring the gigantic struggles that await us.

G Chicherin
Russian socialist groups