Revolutionary movements in various European and Asian states have made themselves known in the most recent period so impressively that before us there emerges quite clearly a new and incomparably higher stage than before of the international struggle of the proletariat.

In Persia, counterrevolution has occurred, peculiarly combining the Russian dispersal of the First Duma with the Russian uprising of the end of 1905. Troops of the Russian tsar, shamefully defeated by the Japanese, are taking their revenge, zealously serving the counterrevolution. Following the exploits of shootings, punitive expeditions, beatings and plunder in Russia come the exploits of these same Cossacks in suppressing revolution in Persia. That Nikolai Romanov at the head of the Black Hundred landowners and capitalists terrified by strikes and civil war rages against Persian revolutionaries—this is understandable, and the role of international executioners is not for the first time falling to the lot of the Christloving Russian warriors. That England, with pharisaic hand-washing, maintains an openly friendly neutrality toward Persian reactionaries and supporters of absolutism—this is a phenomenon of a somewhat different kind. Liberal English bourgeois, irritated by the growth of the workers' movement at home, frightened by the upsurge of revolutionary struggle in India, show more and more frequently, more and more openly, more and more sharply what beasts the most "civilized," having passed through the highest school of constitutionalism, European political "figures" become when it comes to the awakening of the struggle of the masses against capital, against the capitalist colonial system, i.e., the system of enslavement, plunder and violence. The position of Persian revolutionaries is difficult in a country which the masters of India, on the one hand, and the counterrevolutionary Russian government, on the other, have already nearly agreed to partition between themselves. But the stubborn struggle in Tabriz, the repeated transition of military fortune into the hands of revolutionaries, seeming—it had appeared—to be completely smashed, shows that the Shah's bashibazouks, even with the help of Russian Liakhovs and English diplomats, encounter the strongest resistance from below. Such a revolutionary movement, which knows how to give military rebuff to attempts at restoration, which forces the heroes of such attempts to turn for help to foreigners—cannot be destroyed, and the most complete triumph of Persian reaction would under such conditions prove to be merely the vestibule of new popular uprisings.

In Turkey, revolutionary movement in the army, guided by the Young Turks, has won the day. True, this victory is a half-victory, or even less than half a victory, for the Turkish Nicholas the Second has for now escaped with a promise to restore the famous Turkish constitution. But such half-victories in revolutions, such forced hasty concessions of the old power represent the surest pledge of new, far more decisive, sharper, drawing in wider masses of the people, vicissitudes of civil war. And the school of civil war does not pass for peoples without cost. This is a difficult school, and the complete course of it necessarily contains within itself victories of counterrevolution, the debauchery of embittered reactionaries, savage reprisals of the old power against rebels, etc. But only avowed pedants and senile mummies can whine about the peoples entering this agonizing school; this school teaches the oppressed classes the conduct of civil war, teaches victorious revolution, concentrates in the masses of contemporary slaves that hatred which slaves—beaten, stupid, ignorant—eternally harbor within themselves, and which leads to the greatest historical exploits of slaves who have become conscious of the shame of their slavery.

In India, the indigenous slaves of "civilized" English capitalists have precisely of late caused unpleasant trouble for their "masters." There is no end to the violence and plunder called the system of English rule in India. Nowhere in the world—with the exception, of course, of Russia—is there such misery of the masses, such chronic famine of the population. The most liberal and radical figures of free Britain, like John Morley—an authority for Russian and non-Russian Cadets, a star of "progressive" (in reality = fawning before capital) publicistry—transform themselves as rulers of India into veritable Genghis Khans, capable of sanctioning all measures of "pacification" of the entrusted population, up to and including the flogging of political protesters! A little weekly newspaper of English social-democrats, "Justice," is banned in India by these liberal and "radical" scoundrels like Morley. And when a member of the English parliament, leader of the "Independent Labour Party," Keir Hardie dared in audacious fashion to come to India and speak to the natives about the most elementary demands of democracy, the entire English bourgeois press raised a howl against the "rebel." And now the most influential English newspapers gnash their teeth speaking of "agitators" disturbing the peace of India, and welcome thoroughly Russian, Plevna-like verdicts of judges and measures of administrative reprisal against Indian democrats-publicists. But in India, the street has begun to intercede for its writers and political leaders. The vile verdict of English jackals passed on the Indian democrat Tilak—he was condemned to long exile, whereby an inquiry made the other day in the English House of Commons clarified that Indian jurors voted for acquittal, while the charge was brought by votes of English jurors!—this vengeance upon a democrat by the servants of the money-bag provoked street demonstrations and a strike in Bombay. The proletariat in India too has matured to conscious political mass struggle,—and once this has become so, the song of English-Russian order in India is sung! By their colonial plunder of Asian countries, Europeans managed to harden one of them, Japan, for great military victories, ensuring her independent national development. There is not the slightest doubt that the centuries-long plunder of India by the English, that the present struggle of these "advanced" Europeans against the democracy of Persia and India will harden millions and tens of millions of proletarians in Asia, harden them for such victorious (as in the Japanese case) struggle against oppressors. The European conscious worker already has Asian comrades, and the number of these comrades will grow not by days, but by hours.

In China, revolutionary movement against medievalism has also made itself known with particular force in recent months. True, nothing definite can yet be said concerning the movement in this instance—so little is known of it and so abundant are reports of rebellions in various localities of China—but the strong growth of "new spirit" and "European currents" in China, especially after the Russo-Japanese war, is beyond question, and consequently inevitable is the transition of old Chinese rebellions to conscious democratic movement. That this time some participants in colonial plunder felt themselves disturbed is evident from the behavior of the French in Indochina: they were helping Chinese "historical power" deal with revolutionaries! They were equally fearful for the safety of "their" Asian possessions situated in the neighborhood.

But French bourgeoisie are troubled not only by their Asian possessions. Barricades in Villeneuve-Saint-George, near Paris, the shooting of strikers who built these barricades (Thursday, 30 July (17 July old style)—these events once again and yet again showed the sharpening of class struggle in Europe. Clemenceau, a radical ruling France in the name of capitalists, works with extraordinary zeal at destroying the last remnants of republican-bourgeois illusions in the proletariat. The shooting of workers by troops acting on the orders of the "radical" government—under Clemenceau has become scarcely less frequent an occurrence than before. Clemenceau has already received for this the epithet "Red" from French socialists, and now, when again working-class blood has been shed by his agents, gendarmes and generals, socialists recall the winged phrase once spoken by this most progressive bourgeois republican to working-class delegates: "we are on different sides of the barricade." Yes, the French proletariat and the most extreme bourgeois republicans are now finally drawn up on different sides of the barricade. The working class of France shed much blood conquering and defending the republic, and at the present time, on the soil of fully consolidated republican order, the decisive struggle of owners and workers is advancing ever faster. "It was not a simple massacre," writes "L'Humanité" concerning the day of 30 July, "it was a piece of battle." Generals and police at all costs wanted to provoke workers and transform a peaceful, unarmed demonstration into a bloodbath. But, surrounding the strikers and demonstrators from all sides, attacking the unarmed, the troops met with resistance, provoked the immediate building of barricades and brought matters to events that agitate all of France. These barricades made of boards were ridiculously poorly constructed, the same newspaper writes. But that is not important. What is important is that the Third Republic had gone out of the habit of barricades. Now "Clemenceau is reintroducing them into the habit,"—and he reasons about this with the same frankness with which the "executioners of June 1848, Galliffet in 1871," spoke of civil war.

And not merely the socialist press, apropos of the events of the 30th of July, recalls these great historical dates. Bourgeois newspapers with furious malice throw themselves at workers, accusing them of behaving as though they intended to begin the socialist revolution. One of these newspapers recounts in doing so a small, but characteristic episode, depicting the mood of both sides at the place of events. When workers were carrying one of their wounded comrades past General Virville, who commanded the attack on strikers, from the crowd of demonstrators came shouts: "Saluez!" ("present arms"). And the general of the bourgeois republic presented arms to the wounded enemy.

The sharpening of the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is observed in all the advanced capitalist countries, and the diversity of historical conditions, political systems and forms of workers' movements determines the different manifestation of one and the same tendency. In America and England, with complete political freedom, with the absence of any revolutionary and socialist tradition in the proletariat, or at least of any living tradition, this sharpening is expressed in the intensification of the movement against trusts, in the extraordinary growth of socialism and the attention of the propertied classes to it, in the transition of workers, sometimes purely economic, organizations to planned and independently-proletarian political struggle. In Austria and Germany, in part also in the Scandinavian countries, the sharpening of class struggle manifests itself in electoral struggle, in the relations between parties, in the convergence of all and sundry bourgeois of different stripes with one another against the common enemy—the proletariat, in the intensification of judicial and police repressions. Two hostile camps are slowly, but steadily increasing their forces, consolidating their organizations, diverging ever more sharply from one another in all social life, as though silently and concentratedly preparing for the coming revolutionary battles. In the Romance countries—Italy, especially France—the sharpening of class struggle manifests itself in particularly stormy, sharp, partly directly revolutionary explosions, when the smoldering hatred of the proletariat for its oppressors bursts forth with sudden force, and the "peaceful" atmosphere of parliamentary struggle is replaced by scenes of veritable civil war.

The international revolutionary movement of the proletariat does not go and cannot go evenly and in identical forms in different countries. Complete and all-sided utilization of all possibilities in all fields of activity develops only as the result of the class struggle of workers of various countries. Each country contributes its own valuable, original features to the general stream, but in each separate country the movement suffers from one or another one-sidedness, from one or another theoretical or practical shortcomings of individual socialist parties. On the whole we see clearly a tremendous step forward of international socialism, the rallying of millions-strong armies of the proletariat in a whole series of concrete clashes with the enemy, the approach of decisive struggle with the bourgeoisie—a struggle many times more prepared on the side of the working class than in the times of the Commune, that last great uprising of the proletariat.

And this step forward of all international socialism, together with the sharpening of revolutionary-democratic struggle in Asia, places Russian revolution in special and especially difficult conditions. The Russian revolution has a great international ally both in Europe and in Asia, but at the same time, and precisely because of this, it has not only a national, not only a Russian, but also an international enemy. Reaction against the intensifying struggle of the proletariat is inevitable in all capitalist countries, and this reaction unites the bourgeois governments of the whole world against every popular movement, against every revolution both in Asia and especially in Europe. Opportunists in our party, like the majority of Russian liberal intelligentsia, still dream of such a bourgeois revolution in Russia as would "not repel" the bourgeoisie, not frighten it, not give rise to "excessive" reaction, not lead to the seizure of power by revolutionary classes. Vain hopes! Philistine utopia! The inflammable material is growing so rapidly in all the advanced states of the world, the fire is so clearly spreading to the majority of Asian states, which only yesterday were sleeping profound sleep, that the intensification of international bourgeois reaction and the sharpening of every separate national revolution are absolutely inevitable.

Counterrevolution in Russia neither fulfills nor can fulfill the historical tasks of our revolution. Russian bourgeoisie inevitably tends more and more toward the international anti-proletarian and anti-democratic trend. Russian proletariat should not rely on liberal allies. It must go its own way independently toward the complete victory of revolution, basing itself on the necessity of violent resolution of the agrarian question in Russia by the peasant masses themselves, helping them overthrow the rule of the Black Hundred landowners and Black Hundred autocracy, setting for itself the task of democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry in Russia, and remembering that its struggle and its victories are inseparably linked with the international revolutionary movement. Fewer illusions regarding the liberalism of the counterrevolutionary (both in Russia and throughout the world) bourgeoisie. More attention to the growth of the international revolutionary proletariat!

"Proletariy" No. 33, (5 August) 23 July 1908

Printed from the text of the newspaper "Proletariy"