Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Report of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (1921).pdf/67

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war, a result of historic development; but we should not like to assert that history has spoken the last word in all these territorial questions. Of course, we are for the national self-determination. We are convinced that all these questions will be finally settled only after Soviet Governments have been instituted everywhere. The boundaries which the Soviet Governments will determine will be the final boundaries. I trust that when Czecho-Slovakia shall have become a Soviet State, the representatives of the Czecho-Slovakian Soviet Government will co-operate with us in a war to the finish against all monarchistic and "democratic" republics. At the very first Congress of the Third International we emphatically declared that the present boundaries of all countries were only very indefinite, merely temporary boundaries which would be revised by history at a very early moment. That has been the standpoint of the Communist International from the very beginning of its existence, and I trust that the Czecho-Slovakian comrades will also recognise this fact. Our Czech comrades must always support the International standpoint on this question. The bourgeois Czecho-Slovakian State is not being ignored by us; but as Internationalists we declare that our Czecho-Slovakian comrades must settle all national questions which are acute at present, and will grow more acute in the future from the viewpoint of proletarian policies. ("Hear, hear.")

Now, as to the Party of the masses. We must undoubtedly give credit to the Czecho-Slovak comrades for the fact that they are entering the Communist International with a party membership of 350,000 This is certainly a great achievement for the Czecho-Slovak comrades. It is quite manifest that in Czecho-Slovakia we have made a big step forward, having inflicted an ignominious defeat upon the Social Democratic Party. This is a great accomplishment not to be overlooked. We are more in favour of mass parties, far more indeed than the gentlemen