The Proletarian Revolution in Russia/Part 1/Chapter 5
V
SUPPLEMENTARY
A determining phase of the Russian Revolution was the failure of the Socialists of the Central Powers and of the Allies to respond to the Revolution's call for international solidarity and action against war. This was a fact during the period when the moderates were in control as well as during the regime of the Bolsheviki.
In April, 1917, the Council of Workers and Soldiers through Cheidse, president of the Executive Committee, issued the following manifesto to the workers and Socialists of all countries:
"We, Russian workers and soldiers, united in the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates, send you our warmest greetings and the news of great events. The democracy of Russia has overthrown the century-old despotism of the Czars and enters your ranks as a legitimate member and a powerful force in the battle for our common liberation. Our victory is a great victory of the freedom and democracy of the world. The principal supporter of reaction in the world, the 'gendarme of Europe,' no longer exists. May the earth over his grave become a heavy stone. Long live liberty, long live the international solidarity of the proletariat and its battle for the final victory!
"Our cause is not yet entirely won. Not all the shadows of the old regime have been scattered, and not a few enemies are gathering their forces together against the Russian Revolution. Nevertheless, our conquests are great. The people of Russia will express their will in the Constituent Assembly which is to be called within a short time on the basis of universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage. And now it may already be said with certainty in advance that the democratic republic will triumph in Russia. The Russian people is in possession of complete political liberty. Now it can say an authoritative word about the internal self-government of the country, and about its foreign policy. And in addressing ourselves to all the peoples who are being destroyed and ruined in &is terrible war, we declare that the time has come in which the decisive struggle against the attempts at conquest by the Governments of all nations must begin. The time has come in which the peoples must take into their own hands the questions of war and peace.
"Conscious of its own revolutionary strength, the democracy of Russia declares that it will fight with all means against the policy of conquest of its ruling classes and it summons the peoples of Europe to united, decisive action for peace.
"We appeal to our brothers, to the proletarians of the German-Austrian coalition, and above all to the German proletariat. The first day of the war you were made to believe that in raising your weapons against absolutist Russia you were defending European civilization against Asiatic despotism. In this many of you found the justification of the support that was accorded to the war. Now also this justification has vanished. Democratic Russia cannot menace freedom and civilization.
"We shall firmly defend our own liberty against all reactionary threats, whether they come from without or within. The Russian Revolution will not retreat before the bayonets of conquerors and it will not allow itself to be trampled to pieces by outside military force. We call upon you to throw off the yoke of your absolutist regime, as the Russian people have shaken off the autocracy of the Czar. Refuse to serve as the tools of conquest and power in the hands of the kings, junkers and bankers and we shall, with common efforts, put an end to the fearful butchery that dishonors humanity and darkens the great days of the birth of Russian liberty.
"Workingmen of all countries! In fraternally stretching out our hands to you across the mountains of our brothers' bodies, across the sea of innocent blood and tears, across the smoking ruins of cities and villages, across the destroyed gifts of civilization, we summon you to the work of renewing and solidifying international unity. In that lies the guaranty of our future triumph and of the complete liberation of humanity.
"Workers of all countries, unite!"
The appeal met with repudiation among the majority Socialists of Germany and Austria. The Berlin Vorwaerts, the central organ of the pro-war, social-patriotic Social Democracy, rebuked the Russian Revolution for its appeal to the German proletariat to overthrow the monarchy, and defended the monarchy! Great strikes and demonstrations were planned by the workers for May Day; Vorwaerts and the majority Socialist leaders opposed and discouraged the plans. The Social Democracy was allied all along the line with the German government in an imperialistic war of conquest. Among masses there was an impulsive reaction to the Russian Revolution's appeal, but their potential action was crushed by the Majority Socialists. Social-patriotic Socialists went to Stockholm bent upon intrigues to use the Revolution in the interests of German Imperialism, as Dr. Sudekum in the winter of 1914 went to Italy to cajole the Socialists to drag Italy into the war on the side of Germany. The German Majority Socialists' reactionary attitude was expressed by Scheidemann who said at a meeting of his party's Central Committee, in May, 1917: "To draw a comparison between German and Russian conditions is impossible. For the same reason it is out of the question to follow the Russian example." And Scheidemann bitterly criticized recent strikes of the German workers.
Nor was there any response among the majority Socialists of the allied countries, except in Italy and among minor groups of revolutionary Socialists, as in Germany.
The attitude of the majority Socialists of the Allies is revealed in the following letter addressed to the President of the Petrograd Soviet by the Secretarial Delegation for Foreign Affairs of the Organization Committee (Mensheviki) of the Social Democratic Workers' Party, which shows that the majority Socialists of Great Britain, France and Belgium were intriguing against the Revolution at a time when they did not have the alibi of the "pro-German" Bolsheviki:
"The so-called majority of the English and French Socialists have undertaken a systematic campaign for the purpose of exerting pressure on the Russian Socialist proletariat to discontinue all efforts for peace and waive any independent political policy based on international solidarity and the class struggle. Scores of telegrams have been sent for this purpose by individual representatives and by various groups. From this the Russian proletariat can clearly see the lack of real joy in view of the gigantic revolution accomplished by the Russian people and the complete willingness to sacrifice its freedom on the altar of narrow nationalist interests. They wish to force on the Russian workers a civil peace together with the imperialistic war aims of the bourgeois liberals, the same civil peace which demoralized the proletarian movement in England and France. And so incompatible is this with the task of bringing an actual and genuine democracy in Russia, that Jules Guesde demanded quite openly in his telegram: first victory, and only then the republic. In his own country, moreover, he practiced the same principle inasmuch as he betrayed the republic in favor of those who promised victory. [Upon the declaration of war, Jules Guesde, Albert Thomas and other French Socialists entered the ministry as representatives of their party, and supported the government in all its acts.]
"At the same time that these warnings by the official representatives of Socialism in the democratic countries are being addressed to the Russian proletariat, the government officialdom of England and France are carrying on an equally systematic campaign against the Russian Revolution, against the democratic demands which have already been set up and realized by the proletariat, and primarily against the demand for a republic and the real and complete elimination of the power of the Romanoffs.
"The entire bourgeois press of England and France has been given free rein by the governments to calumniate the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates and the revolutionary army. They are trying by agitation to direct the provisional government toward a counter-revolutionary coup d'etat, to set aside the rule of the man in the street, and thus place the destiny of the Russian Revolution in the hands of the English embassy. They go so far as to threaten financial boycott, and set up the claim that the French creditors, who invested their money with, and participated in the plunder of, the Romanoffs, have a right to interfere in this hour of destiny, in which the Russian people is to decide its future.
"The government Socialists of France and of England have neither enough courage nor enough revolutionary consciousness to fight this reactionary activity; in fact, they lend moral support by their demonstrations to this activity, and do not even shrink from the insinuation that the Russian Social Democracy, after the manner of the Romanoff clique, is considering a separate peace with Germany against the French Republic. Thus, while the Russian proletariat is straining every nerve to destroy the reactionary powers which it has overthrown and save the country from the danger of counter-revolution, its appeal for international solidarity to wage the common fight for the salvation of all nations from the bloody butchery, is purposely misinterpreted and falsified to the workers and soldiers of England and France. The western masses, hampered by martial law, are made antagonistic to the Russians by this insidious agitation. Comrades B. Brizon, A. Blanc and Raffin-Dugens have protested in the French parliament against this despicable distortion of the truth.
"Never has the revolutionary uprising of a people been so betrayed by the very elements from which it was justified in expecting sympathy and support.
"The crowning act in this shameless campaign is the decision of the French parliamentary group of the Socialist Party to send three of its members, E. Lafont, M. Moutet and Marcel Cachin, to Russia to influence the Russian proletariat along lines of national sentiment.
"The nature of this mission is amply characterized, according to newspaper reports, by the fact that it has the sanction of the Parliamentary Commission of Foreign Affairs, whose chairman is a typical representative of French plutocracy, Georges Leygues. And this mission is sanctioned without any pretense at hiding its official nature from the Russian proletariat, by the representatives of a party whose program is the Social Revolution and International Fraternity.
"It is no more than fair to mention, however, that the members Moutet and Lafont have on several occassions in the course of the war defended the interests of Russian emigration, of the Russian Volunteers and of the Russian press in France against the ruling powers. But to avoid disturbing the civil peace with the exploiting classes they, like the party majority, never once protested in Parliament or in the public press against the despicable service that the French Republic rendered to Czarism in persecuting emigration and throttling the Socialist press. Like the majority of the party, they too avoided a break with the government at any cost, whether in connection with the execution of the eleven Russian volunteers in France, or in the case of the brutal suppression with the assistance of the French authorities of the uprising of the Russian expeditionary corps in Marseilles. They did all they could to prevent the French proletariat from learning anything of these heroic deeds of the bourgeoisie, for freedom and justice, and now that they bow down to the floor before the Russian Revolution, the Russian proletariat is fully justified in reminding them that, to the very last, they were silent accessories to the uninterrupted series of misdeeds that constituted the essence of Czarism.
"As for Marcel Cachin, it may be of value to the Russian comrades to know that he has already done similar service on an officially sanctioned mission, in going to Italy to paralyze the agitation of our glorious comrades when they tried to prevent their government from forcing the Italian people into the world-wide slaughter. The presence of this French Sudekum In the delegation and the absence of adherents of the radical minority, which really represents the majority in the party, speaks volumes, but does not give evidence of a very high regard for the Russian proletariat nor of a very strong desire to come to an understanding with its representatives.
"In stating these things we hardly consider it necessary to emphasize that this inspired campaign travels under a false cloak in labeling itself a» the solidarity of the French and English proletariat, which latter really desires peace no less than the proletariat of Russia and Germany. These conspiracies and recommendations emanate from that portion of the working class parties which are corrupted by ministerial ambitions, and if communications of a far different tenor from the other portion do not reach us, it is solely because the censorship in conjunction with nationalist spokesmen stifles all free speech. You may be sure that the international section of the French and English Socialists are deeply and honestly interested in the battle which the Council of Workers and Soldiers is waging for peace and democracy and that they believe as you do, that the Russian Revolution can attain victory only if it is not paralyzed by the poison gas of world war.
"We are firmly convinced that the French Sudekums will be given the same sort of reception by the Russian revolutionary proletariat as was accorded their prototype by the Italian comrades… The most worthy answer to all such plots and schemes will be the redoubled energy of the representatives of the Russian proletariat in their chosen course.
"The confusion created by this policy against the Russian Revolution in the ranks of the proletariat of western Europe, can best be brought to a complete stop if the Council of Workers' Delegates will, over the heads of the patriotic agents of Imperialism, address directly to the working class organizations throughout the world an appeal for international, united action in the direction of universal peace.
"Long live the international solidarity of the proletariat in the battle for freedom!
"Down with the agents of militarism and the advocates of murder!
"Long live the democratic Republic! Long live Revolutionary Socialism!