The great European war of 1914–1915 gave all European, as well as Russian, Social Democrats the opportunity to test their tactics in a crisis of world-historical dimensions. The reactionary, predatory, slave-holding character of the war on the side of tsarism is incomparably more manifest than on the side of other governments. Nevertheless, the main group of liquidators (the only one, besides ours, possessing serious influence in Russia, thanks to its liberal connections) turned toward social-chauvinism! Possessing for a rather long time a monopoly on legality, this group of "Our Dawn" conducted preaching among the masses in the sense of "non-resistance to war," wishes for the victory of the Triple (now Quadruple) Entente, accusations against German imperialism of "sins beyond measure," and the like. Plekhanov, who from 1903 onward had repeatedly given examples of his extreme political spinelessness and transition to the opportunists, occupied an even sharper position on this same stance, praised by all of Russia's bourgeois press. Plekhanov descended to the point of declaring the war just on the side of tsarism and placed interviews in the government newspapers of Italy, drawing her into the war!!

The correctness of our evaluation of liquidationism and the exclusion of the main group of liquidators from our party was thus fully confirmed. The real program of the liquidators and the real significance of their tendency now consists not only in opportunism in general, but also in that they defend the great-power privileges and advantages of the Great Russian landowners and bourgeoisie. This is the tendency of national-liberal working-class politics. This is the alliance of a part of radical petty bourgeois and an insignificant portion of privileged workers with "their own" national bourgeoisie against the mass of the proletariat.