V. I.

Lenin

Was it so long ago that China was considered typical of the
lands that had been standing still for centuries? Today China is a land of
seething political activity, the scene of a virile social movement and of a
democratic upsurge. Following the 1905 movement in Russia, the democratic
revolution spread to the whole of Asia—to Turkey, Persia, China. Ferment
is growing in British India.

A significant development is the spread of the revolutionary democratic
movement to the Dutch East Indies, to Java and the other Dutch colonies,
with a population of some forty million.

First, the democratic movement is developing among the masses of Java,
where a nationalist movement has arisen under the banner of
Islam. Secondly, capitalism has created a local intelligentsia consisting
of acclimatised Europeans who demand independence for the Dutch East
Indies. Thirdly, the fairy large Chinese population of Java and the other
islands have brought the revolutionary movement from their native land.

Describing this awakening of the Dutch East Indies, van Ravesteyn, a
Dutch Marxist, points out that the age-old despotism and tyranny of the
Dutch Government now meet with resolute resistance and protest from the
masses of the native population.

The usual events of a pre-revolutionary period have begun. Parties and
unions are being founded at amazing speed. The government is banning them,
thereby only fanning the resentment and accelerating the growth of the
movement. Recently, for example, it dissolved the “Indian Party” because
its programme and rules spoke of the striving for independence . The Dutch
Derzhimordas [1] (with the approval, incidentally, of the
clericals and liberals—European liberalism is rotten to the core!)
regarded this clause as a criminal attempt at separation from the
Netherlands! The dissolved party was, of course, revived under a different
name.

A National Union of the native population has been formed in Java. It
already has a membership of 80,000 and is holding mass meetings. There is
no stopping the growth of the democratic movement.

World capitalism and the 1905 movement in Russia have finally aroused
Asia. Hundreds of millions of the down trodden and benighted have awakened
from medieval stagnation to a view life and are rising to fight for
elementary human rights and democracy.

The workers of the advanced countries follow with interest and
inspiration this powerful growth of the liberation movement, in all its
various forms, in every part of the world. The bourgeoisie of Europe,
scared by the might of the working-class movement, is embracing reaction,
militarism, clericalism and obscurantism. But the proletariat of the
European countries and the young democracy of Asia, fully confident of its
strength and with abiding faith in the masses, are advancing to take the
place of this decadent and moribund bourgeoisie.

The awakening of Asia and the beginning of the struggle for power by
the advanced proletariat of Europe are a symbol of the new phase in world
history that began early this century.

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Notes:
[1]
Derzhimorda —the name of a policeman in Gogol’s
Inspector-General , a boorish, insolent oppressor, a man of
violence.