V. I.

Lenin

The Balkan War is coming to an end. The capture of
Adrianople is a conclusive victory for the Bulgarians, and the problem’s
centre of gravity has shifted from the theatre of operations to that of the
squabbles and intrigues of the so-called Great Powers.

The Balkan War is one link in the chain of world events marking the
collapse of the medieval state of affairs in Asia and East Europe. To form
united national states in the Balkans, shake off the oppression of the
local feudal rules and completely liberate the Balkan peasants of all
nationalities from the yoke of the landowners—such was the historic task
confronting the Balkan peoples.

The Balkan peoples could have carried out this task ten times more
easily than they are doing now and with a hundred times fewer sacrifices by
forming a Federative Balkan Republic. National oppression, national
bickering and incitement on the ground of religious differences would have
been impossible under complete and consistent democracy. The Balkan peoples
would have been assured of truly rapid, extensive and free development.

What was the real historical reason for settling urgent Balkan problems
by means of a war, a war guided by bourgeois and dynastic interests? The
chief cause was the weakness of the proletariat in the Balkans, and also
the reactionary influence and pressure of the powerful European
bourgeoisie. They are afraid of real freedom both in their own countries
and in the Balkans; their only aim is profit at other people’s expense;
they stir up chauvinism and national enmity to facilitate their policy of
plunder and to impede the free development of the oppressed classes of the
Balkans.

Russian chauvinism over the Balkan events is no less disgusting than
that of Europe. And the concealed, prettified chauvinism of the Cadets,
coloured with liberal phrases, is more disgusting and more harmful than the
crude chauvinism of the Black-Hundred newspapers. Those newspapers openly
attack Austria—in that most backward of European countries the peoples
(say we in parenthesis) are ensured far greater liberty than in Russia. The
Cadet Rech , however, said on the occasion of the capture of
Adrianople: “The new circumstances give Russian diplomacy every
opportunity of showing greater firmness....”

Fine “democrats”, who pretend not to understand that the only
firmness that can be spoken of here is firmness in the pursuit of
chauvinist aims! No wonder Milyukov and Yefremov, Guchkov, Bennigsen,
Krupensky and Balashov got on well together at a dinner given by Rodzyanko
on March 14. Nationalists, Octobrists, Cadets—these are but different
shades of the disgusting bourgeois nationalism and chauvinism that are
irrevocably hostile to liberty.

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