27.03.1997

Long live the Revolution!

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, March 22 1917

A political earthquake has shaken the foundations of the material and moral order of things created by the war...

The real truth of the matter is that the Revolution was begun and carried out with the utmost success by the masses of the people themselves against the previous exhortations of the Duma, who had feared nothing so much as a revolution; that it was the masses who, ever since Thursday, had been fraternising with, and gaining over to their side, the troops, and that it was not until Monday that the liberals and the radicals of the Duma appeared on the scene...

M Miliukov, in his capacity of foreign minister, has alone ventured to make a reassuring statement to the Allies. But we do not as yet know on what authority that statement was made by him ... Indeed, those whose knowledge of Russian affairs is of an earlier date than March l6, who have had some acquaintance with the frame of mind of the Russian masses in town and country on the eve of the outbreak, know well that the war had lost all hold over the minds of the people at large, that the Red Flag which was planted, to the accompaniment of the revolutionary labour ‘Marseillaise’, on all the public buildings in Petrograd and Moscow, was not at all the war banner of what people are pleased to call ‘patriotism’, and fully expect to learn that the cry, ‘Down with the autocracy!’ was everywhere coupled with the cry, ‘Down with the war!’

The revolutionary people of Russia are out not for the conquest of Constantinople, nor even for the re-conquest of Poland. Their watchword is: ‘Reform and peace’ - of course, peace not by surrender, but by negotiation and on the principle of no annexations, but still peace in preference to the continuation of the war for imperialist objects ...

The old reaction is dead and buried and will not resurrect even on the day of judgement. But the Russian ‘liberal’ bourgeoisie, with its imperialist appetite, is not much better than the French bourgeoisie was in 1848...

They too have been compelled to agree to the programme of the Revolution, but there can be no doubt that they too would dearly like to wriggle out of their pledges, to restore some sort of monarchy with a strong centralised and armed power, and would, if needs be, not hesitate to introduce a military dictatorship under some grand duke, like Nicolas Nicolaevitch, against the revolutionary people ... The danger is there and is real, and it is well to look facts in the face. It may well be that we are only in the initial stages of the Revolution.

But, whatever is in store for Russia itself, her Revolution will have a most profound and far-reaching effect throughout the world. The Russian Revolution announces with mighty clarion call the rebirth of the International - an International bleeding from a thousand wounds, but now redeemed by the daring and victorious proletariat of Russia.

For can anyone imagine that its thundering echoes will not set the blood coursing quicker in the veins of the suffering proletariat in other countries, will not recall old, almost forgotten, but still slumbering and glorious memories in the minds of socialists the world over, will not reveal to them, as if by a flash of vivifying lightening, the way out of the tragic impasse into which they have allowed themselves to be driven by the sinister forces of capitalist society, will not awaken their internationalist consciousness, will not instil in their breasts a new courage, will not break the mesmeric spell in which they have been held by the terrors and by the false ideas of the last two years and a half?

... Above all, what of this country, whose people is already beginning to feel the strong pinch of famine and of other accompaniments of the war, and seething with economic and political discontent from top to bottom? Mr Henderson and his ‘pals’ have hastened to telegraph Petrograd good wishes in the forthcoming good fight against the “despotism of Germany”. They have sent their telegraph to the wrong address, and their message is wholly unauthorised. The masses of the people think otherwise, and they too will feel ere long the powerful rustlings of the wings of the Angel of Revolution.

We, who have fought our battles hitherto as a small minority, will now derive fresh courage from the example set by the Russian people. The first tremendous breach in the walls of the enemy has been made; the hour is close at hand when we too in this country will plant the Red Flag on the grave of reaction and shout: ‘Long live the Revolution! Long live the International!’