The trial by the Tsar's court of five members of the RSDLP Fraction and six other social-democrats, arrested at a conference near Petersburg on November 4, 1914, has ended{168}. All have been sentenced to exile. The legal newspapers published court reports, from which the censorship cut out passages disagreeable to Tsarism and the patriots. The reprisal against the "internal enemies" was carried out swiftly, and on the surface of public life there is again to be seen and heard nothing but the frenzied howling of the darkness of bourgeois chauvinists and the tiny chorus of social-chauvinists joining in.

What, then, did the trial of the RSDLP Fraction prove?

First, it revealed insufficient firmness on the witness stand of this vanguard detachment of revolutionary social-democracy in Russia. The defendants pursued the aim of making it difficult for the prosecutor to expose who was a member of the Central Committee in Russia and the party's representative in its known relations with workers' organizations. This aim was achieved. To achieve it in future, the procedure long officially recommended by the party should be applied in court—refusal to testify. But to attempt to demonstrate one's solidarity with the social-patriot Mr. Iordansky, as Comrade Rozenfeld did, or one's disagreement with the Central Committee, is an incorrect procedure and inadmissible from the standpoint of a revolutionary social-democrat.

Let us note that according to the report in "Den" (No. 40){169}—there is no official and complete court report—Comrade Petrovsky declared: "During the same period (in November) I received a resolution of the Central Committee... and besides this, I was presented with resolutions from workers in seven localities concerning the workers' attitude toward the war, which coincided with the Central Committee's attitude."

This declaration does Petrovsky credit. Chauvinism all around was very powerful. It is no wonder that in Petrovsky's diary there is a phrase to the effect that even the radically-minded Chkheidze spoke with enthusiasm about the "liberatory" war. Against this chauvinism the RSDLP Fraction deputies put up resistance when they were at liberty, but it was also their task to cut themselves off from it in court.

The Cadet "Rech"{170} servilely "thanks" the Tsar's court for having "dispelled the legend" that the social-democratic deputies desired defeat of the Tsar's troops. Taking advantage of the fact that the social-democrats in Russia are bound hand and foot, the Cadets pretend to take seriously the alleged "conflict" between the party and the faction, asserting that the defendants gave their testimony not from fear of the judges. What innocent babes! They apparently do not know that in the early stages of the case the deputies were threatened with court-martial and execution.

The comrades should have refused to testify on the question of illegal organization and, understanding the world-historic moment, should have used the open doors of the court to set forth directly the social-democratic views, hostile not only to Tsarism in general but to social-chauvinism in all and every shade of it.

Let the government and bourgeois press furiously assail the RSDLP Fraction, let the social-revolutionaries, liquidators, and social-chauvinists maliciously "seize upon" manifestations of weakness or alleged "disagreement with the Central Committee" (they must fight us somehow, if they are unable to fight us on principle!). The party of the revolutionary proletariat is strong enough to criticize itself openly, to call a mistake and weakness a mistake and weakness without circumlocution. The class-conscious workers of Russia have created such a party and brought forth such a vanguard detachment as have shown during the world war and the world collapse of international opportunism greater capacity than all others to fulfill their duty as international revolutionary social-democrats. The path along which we have traveled has been tested by the greatest crisis and has proved—again and again—to be the sole correct path: we shall proceed along it even more resolutely, even more firmly, we shall bring forward new vanguard detachments, we shall achieve not only the performance of the same work by them, but also the more correct completion of it to the end.

Second, the trial unfolded a picture, unprecedented in international socialism, of the use of parliamentarism by revolutionary social-democracy. An example of such use will appeal more persuasively to the mind and heart of the proletarian masses than any speeches, will refute the opportunist-legalists and anarchist phrase-mongers more convincingly than any arguments. The report on the illegal work of Muranov and Petrovsky's notes will long remain a model of the work of deputies which we had to carefully conceal, and the significance of which will now be understood ever more carefully by all class-conscious workers of Russia. At a time when almost all "socialist" (forgive me for profaning this word!) deputies of Europe turned out to be chauvinists and servants of chauvinists, when the famous "Europeanism" that captivated our liberals and liquidators proved to be a dull habit of slavish legality, in Russia there was found one workers' party whose deputies shone not with verbosity, not with "access" to bourgeois, intelligentsia salons, not with the business acumen of a "European" lawyer and parliamentarian, but with their ties to the workers' masses, with selfless work among these masses, with the performance of modest, invisible, difficult, thankless, and especially dangerous functions of an illegal propagandist and organizer. To rise higher—to the position of a deputy or minister influential in "society"—such in reality was the meaning of "European" (read: lackey) "socialist" parliamentarism. To descend lower—to help enlighten and unite the exploited and oppressed—such is the slogan put forward by the models of Muranov and Petrovsky.

And this slogan will acquire world-historic significance. Not a single thinking worker in any country in the world will agree to the old satisfaction with the legality of bourgeois parliamentarism—after this legality in all advanced countries was at once annulled with the stroke of a pen and led only to the closest actual alliance of opportunists and the bourgeoisie. He who dreams of "unity" of revolutionary social-democratic workers with "European" legalists of the old and present type has learned nothing and forgotten everything, is in reality an ally of the bourgeoisie and an enemy of the proletariat. Whoever has not understood until now why and for what reason the RSDLP Fraction separated from the social-democratic fraction that reconciled itself with legalism and opportunism, let him now learn from the court report on the work of Muranov and Petrovsky. This work was conducted not only by these two deputies, and only hopelessly naive people can dream of the compatibility of such work with a "friendly, tolerant attitude" toward "Our Dawn" or toward the "Northern Workers' Gazette"{171}, toward the "Contemporary," toward the OK or toward the Bund.

Does the government hope to frighten the workers by banishing members of the RSDLP Fraction to Siberia? It will be mistaken. The workers will not be frightened, but will better understand their tasks, the tasks of the workers' party, as distinct from the liquidators and social-chauvinists. The workers will learn to elect to the Duma only such people as the members of the RSDLP Fraction, for the same and even broader, and at the same time even more concealed, activity among the masses. Does the government think to kill "illegal parliamentarism" in Russia? It will only strengthen the bond of the proletariat exclusively with such parliamentarism.

Third—and this is the most important—the trial of the RSDLP Fraction provided for the first time open, objective material distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies throughout Russia on the most important, fundamental, essential question of the attitude toward the war of the different classes of Russian society. Is not the deadly tedious intelligentsia chatter about the compatibility of "defense of the fatherland" with "principled" (read: verbal or hypocritical) internationalism quite enough? Is it not time to look at facts relating to classes, that is, to millions of people's lives, rather than to dozens of heroes of phrase-mongering?

More than half a year has passed since the war began. The legal and illegal press of all tendencies has spoken out, all the Duma party groups have made their positions clear—a very insufficient but the only objective indicator of our class groupings. The trial of the RSDLP Fraction and the press response summed up all this material. The trial proved that the advanced representatives of the proletariat in Russia are not only hostile to chauvinism in general, but specifically share precisely the position of our Central Organ. The deputies were arrested on November 4, 1914. For more than two months, consequently, they conducted their work. With whom and how did they conduct it? What currents in the working class did they reflect and express? The answer to this is given by the fact that the materials for the conference were "theses" and the "Social-Democrat," that the Petersburg Committee of our party repeatedly issued leaflets of the same content. There were no other materials at the conference. The deputies were not about to report to the conference on other currents in the working class, because there were no other currents.

Perhaps the members of the RSDLP Fraction expressed only the opinion of a minority of workers? We have no right to make such an assumption, because over 2½ years, from spring 1912 to autumn 1914, around "Pravda," with which these deputies worked in complete ideological solidarity, four-fifths of the class-conscious workers of Russia rallied. This is a fact. If there had been any significant protest among the workers against the position of the Central Committee, this protest could not have failed to find expression in a draft or drafts of a resolution. The court discovered no such thing, although it "discovered," so to speak, much of the work of the RSDLP Fraction. Petrovsky's handwritten amendments show not even a hint of divergence.

The facts speak to the effect that in the very first months after the war, the class-conscious vanguard of the workers of Russia actually rallied around the Central Committee and the Central Organ. However unpleasant this fact may be to one or another "faction," it is irrefutable. The words cited in the charge: "It is necessary to direct weapons not against one's brothers, the hired slaves of other countries, but against the reactionary and bourgeois governments and parties of all countries"—these words, thanks to the trial, have been and will be spread throughout Russia as a call to proletarian internationalism, to proletarian revolution. The class slogan of the vanguard of Russian workers has now reached even the broadest masses thanks to the trial.

The universal chauvinism of the bourgeoisie and one section of the petty bourgeoisie, the vacillations of another section, and such a call from the working class—such is the factual, objective picture of our political divisions. With this factual picture, not with the good wishes of intellectuals and founders of little groups, must one's "views," hopes, and slogans be coordinated.

The Pravda newspapers and work of the "Muranov type" created the unity of four-fifths of the class-conscious workers of Russia. About 40,000 workers bought "Pravda"; many more read it. Even if war, prison, Siberia, and hard labor were to scatter them fivefold and tenfold, this layer cannot be destroyed. It is alive. It is permeated with revolutionism and anti-chauvinism. It alone stands among the people's masses and in their very depths as a preacher of the internationalism of the toilers, the exploited, the oppressed. It alone has stood firm in the general collapse. It alone leads the semi-proletarian strata away from the social-chauvinism of the Cadets, the Trudoviks, Plekhanov, "Our Dawn," toward socialism. Its existence, its ideas, its work, its appeal to the "brotherhood of the hired slaves of other countries" have been shown to all of Russia by the trial of the RSDLP Fraction.

It is with this layer that one must work, its unity against the social-chauvinists must be defended, along this sole path can the workers' movement of Russia develop in the direction of social revolution, not toward a national-liberal "European" type.

"Social-Democrat" No. 40, March 29, 1915

Printed according to the text of the newspaper "Social-Democrat"