V. I. Lenin

RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC LABOUR PARTY Proletarians of all countries, unite!

To All the Citizens of Russia {1}

Comradesworkers and all citizens of Russia!

Awar of four powers against Turkey has started in the
Balkans. {2} War threatens the whole of Europe. Despite their lying
government denials, Russia and Austria are preparing for war. Italy is
becoming more brazen in her policy of plundering the Turkish lands. The
stock-market panic in Vienna and Berlin, in Paris and London shows that the
capitalists of all Europe see no possibility of preserving European peace.

All Europe wants to take part in the events in the Balkans! Everyone
favours “reforms” and even “freedom for the Slavs”. Actually, Russia
wants to snatch a piece of Turkey in Asia and to seize the
Bosporus. Austria has designs on Salonika, Italy on Albania, Britain on
Arabia, and Germany on Anatolia.

Thecrisis is mounting. Hundreds of thousands and mil lions of wage
slaves of capital and peasants downtrodden by the serf-owners are going to
the slaughter for the dynastic interests of a handful of crowned brigands,
for the profits of the bourgeoisie in its drive to plunder foreign lands.

The Balkan crisis is a link in the chain of events which since the turn
of the century has everywhere been leading to sharper class and
international contradictions, to wars and revolutions. The Russo-Japanese
war, the revolution in Russia, a series of revolutions in Asia, mounting
rivalry and hostility between the European states, the threat to peace over
Morocco, and Italy’s plunderous campaign against Tripoli—such has been
the preparation of the current crisis.

Warsand all their calamities are produced by capitalism, which keeps
millions of working people in bondage, sharpens the struggle between
nations, and turns the slaves of capital into cannon fodder. A world-wide
socialist army of the revolutionary proletariat is alone capable of putting
an end to this oppression and enslavement of the masses and to these
massacres of slaves in the interests of the slave-owners.

In Western Europe and America, there is a sharpening struggle by the
socialist proletariat against imperialist bourgeois governments, who are
increasingly inclined to plunge into desperate escapades as they see the
working-class millions inexorably marching to victory. These governments
are preparing war but at the same time are afraid of war in the knowledge
that world-wide war means world wide revolution.

In Eastern Europe—the Balkans, Austria and Russia—alongside areas
of highly developed capitalism, we find the masses oppressed by feudalism,
absolutism and thousands of medieval relics. Like tens of millions of
peasants in Central Russia, the peasants in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the
Adriatic coast, are still ground down by the land-owning serf-masters. The
piratical dynasties of the Hapsburgs and the Romanovs support this medieval
oppression and try to stoke up hostility between the peoples in an effort
to strengthen the power of the monarchy and perpetuate the enslavement of a
number of nationalities. In Eastern Europe, the monarchs still share out
the peoples between them, exchange and trade in them, putting together
different nationalities into patchwork states to promote their own dynastic
interests, very much as the landowners under the serf system used to break
up and shuffle the families of their subject peasants!

Afederal Balkan republic is the rallying cry that our brother
socialists in the Balkan countries have issued to the masses in their
struggle for self-determination and complete freedom of the peoples, to
clear the way for a broad class struggle for socialism.

Itis the rallying cry of true democrats and real friends of the
working class and we must take it up with especial vigour in face of the
Russian tsarist monarchy, one of the most vicious supporters of reaction
throughout the world.

Theforeign policy of Russian tsarism is an unbroken chain of
unprecedented crimes and acts of violence, and the dirtiest and basest
intrigues against the freedom of nations, against democracy and against the
working class. With the aid of Britain’s “liberal” rulers, tsarism is
crushing and choking Persia; tsarism has been undermining the republic in
China; tsarism is sneaking up to seize the Bosporus and extend “its” own
territory at the expense of Turkey in Asia. The tsarist monarchy was the
gendarme of Europe in the 19th century, when Russian serf-peasant troops
put down the uprising in Hungary. Today, in the 20th century, the tsarist
monarchy is the gendarme of both Europe and Asia.

Tsar Nicholas the Bloody, who has dispersed the First and Second Dumas,
who has drowned Russia in blood, enslaved Poland and Finland, and is in
alliance with out—and-out reactionaries conducting a policy of stifling
the Jews and all “aliens”, the tsar whose loyal friends shot down the
workers on the Lena and ruined the peasants to the point of starvation all
over Russia—that tsar pretends to be the champion of Slav independence
and freedom!

Since1877, the Russian people have learned a thing or two, and they
ate now aware that worse than all the Turks are our “ internal Turks ”—the tsar and his servants.

Butthe landowners and the bourgeoisie, the Nationalists and the
Octobrists give their utmost support to this vile and provocative lie about
a freedom-loving tsarism. Such papers as Golos Moskvy {3} and Novoye Vremya are at the head of a whole
army of government newspapers brazenly baiting and badgering Austria, as
though Russian tsarism was not a hundred times more sullied in dirt and
blood than the Hapsburg monarchy.

Andit is not only the Right-wing parties, but even the opposition,
liberal bourgeoisie that has been strident in its chauvinistic imperialist
propaganda, scarcely covered up with diplomatically evasive and
hypocritical phrases. Not only the non-party liberal Russkoye Slovo , {4} but even Rech , the official organ of the Party
of “Constitutional Democrats” (actually counter-revolutionary liberals),
has been zealous in attacking the tsarist Minister Sazonov for his alleged
“tractability”, for his “concessions” to Austria and for inadequate
“protection” of Russia’s “great power” interests. The Cadets have been
blaming the wildest nationalist reactionaries not for their imperialism,
but on the contrary for minimising the weight and the importance of the
“great” idea of the tsarist conquest of Constantinople!!

Forthe sake of the vital interests of all the working people, the
Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party raises its voice in resolute protest
against this base chauvinism and brands it as a betrayal of the cause of
freedom. A country with 30 million starving peasants and with the wildest
arbitrary rule by the authorities, including the shooting of workers in
their hundreds—a country where tens of thousands of fighters for freedom
are being tormented and tortured through hard labour—what such a country
needs above all is liberation from tsarist oppression. The Russian peasant
must think about emancipating himself from the landowning serf-masters and
from the tsarist monarchy, and not allow himself to be diverted from this
vital cause by the false speeches of landowners and merchants about
Russia’s “Slavonic tasks”.

Imperialistliberalism, desirous of tolerating tsarism, may insist on
“peaceful constitutional” action, promising the people both external
victories and constitutional reforms under a preserved tsarist monarchy,
but the Social-Democratic proletariat indignantly rejects this fraud. The
only thing that can ensure free development for Russia and the whole of
Eastern Europe is the revolutionary over throw of tsarism. Only the victory
of a federal republic in the Balkans, together with the victory of a
republic in Russia, can release hundreds of millions of people from the
calamities of war and the torments of oppression and exploitation in the
so-called “time of peace”.

Inthe first five months of 1912, more than 500,000 workers in Russia
rose to political strikes, restoring their strength after the most trying
years of the counter-revolution. In some places, sailors and soldiers rose
up in revolt against tsarism. Our call is for revolutionary mass struggle,
for more steadfast, stable and extensive preparation for resolute joint
action by the workers, peasants and the best section of the army! That is
the only salvation for Russia, which has been oppressed and ruined by
tsarism.

Thesocialists of the Balkan countries have come out with a sharp
condemnation of the war. The socialists of Italy and Austria and the whole
of Western Europe have given them unanimous support. Let us join in their
protest and unfold our agitation against the tsarist monarchy.

Downwith the tsarist monarchy! Long live the democratic republic of
Russia!

Longlive the federal republic of the Balkans!

Downwith war! Down with capitalism!

Longlive socialism, long live international revolutionary
Social-Democracy!

R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee

---
Notes:
{1}
The manifesto was written by Lenin in early October 1912 and was
published by the R.S.D.L.P. C.C. as a separate leaflet. On October 10 (23),
Lenin sent the manifesto to the Secretary of the International Socialist
Bureau, Camille Huysmans, asking him to convey the text of the document to
the secretaries of the Social-Democratic parties and the press. It was soon
published in German in Leipziger Volkszeitung and
Vorw\"arts , in French in the Belgian newspaper Le Peuple ,
and in French, German and English in the Bulletin of the
International Socialist Bureau. It was also published by the Committee of
the R.S.D.L.P. Organisation Abroad and as a special supplement to
No. 28–29 of Sotsial-Demokrat of November 5 (18), 1912.

p. 262

{2}
The First Balkan War ( October 1912–May 1913 ) was fought between Turkey and the countries of the Balkan alliance—Bulgaria,
Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. It ended in the defeat of Turkey, which
under the London Peace Treaty lost almost all her Balkan possessions. The
Slav regions, Macedonia and Thrace, were liberated; the Albanian people won
national independence. The First Balkan War, despite the fact that the
monarchs and the bourgeoisie of the Balkan countries pursued their own
dynastic and plunderous aims, was on the whole progressive—it marked the
liberation of the Balkan peoples from the Turkish yoke and dealt a blow at
the survivals of the serf system. Lenin said it was “one link in the chain
of world events marking the collapse of the medieval state of affairs in
Asia and Eastern Europe” (see present edition, Vol. 19, p. 39).

p. 262

{3}
Golos Moskvy (Voice of Moscow)—a daily, organ of the
Octobrists, published in Moscow from 1906 to 1915.

p. 264

{4}
Russkoye Slovo (Russian Word)—a daily published in Moscow
from 1895 (the first, pilot issue appeared in 1894); its publisher was
I. D. Sytin. Nominally independent, the paper upheld the interests of the
Russian bourgeoisie from a moderate liberal stand. It had good news
coverage and was Russia’s first paper to send its own correspondents to all
the major cities of Russia and many world capitals.

In November 1917, the paper was closed down for running slanderous
anti-Soviet reports. From January 1918 it was published under the name of
Novoye Slovo (New Word) and Nashe Slovo (Our Word), and
was finally closed down in July 1918.

p. 265