The bourgeoisie and the war

To one respect, the Russian government has not lagged behind
its European confrères; like them, it has succeeded in deceiving
“its” people on a grand scale. A huge, monstrous machine of
falsehood sod cunning was set going in Russia too for the purpose of
infecting the masses with chauvinism, of creating the impression that the
tsarist government is waging a “just” war, that it is disinterestedly defending its “brother Slavs,” etc.

The landlord class and the upper stratum of the commercial and
industrial bourgeoisie ardently supported the tsarist government’s
bellicose policy. They are rightly expecting enormous material gains and
privileges for themselves out of the partition of the Turkish and the
Austrian legacy. A whole series of their congresses already have a
foretaste of the profits that would flow into their pockets if the tsarist
army were victorious. Moreover, the reactionaries are very well aware that
if anything can postpone the downfall of the Romanov monarchy and delay the
new revolution in Russia, it can only be a foreign war that ends in victory
for the tsar.

Broad strata of the urban “middle” bourgeoisie, of the bourgeois intelligentsia, professional people, etc., were also infected
with chauvinism—at all events at the beginning of the war. The
Cadets—the party of the Russian liberal bourgeoisie—wholly
and unreservedly supported the tsarist government. In the sphere of foreign
policy the Cadets have long been a government party. Pan-Slavism –
with the aid of which tsarist diplomacy has more than once carried out its
grand political swindles—has become the official ideology of the
Cadets. Russian liberalism has degenerated into national
liberalism. It is vying in “patriotism” with the Black
Hundreds; it always willingly votes for militarism, on land and sea, etc. In the
camp of Russia liberalism, approximately the same thing is observed as was
seen in the 70s in Germany when “free-thinking” liberalism
decayed and from it arose a national-liberal party. The Russian liberal
bourgeoisie has definitely taken the path of counter-revolution. The point
of view of the R.S.D.L.P. on this question has been fully confirmed. Life
has shattered the view held by our opportunists that Russian liberalism is
still a motive force of the revolution in Russia.

Among the peasantry, the ruling clique, with the aid of the bourgeois
press, the clergy, etc., also succeeded in rousing chauvinist sentiments.
But, as the soldiers return from the field of slaughter, sentiment in the
rural districts will undoubtedly turn against the tsarist monarchy. The
bourgeois-democratic parties that come in contact with the peasantry failed
to withstand the chauvinist wave. The Trudovik party in the State Duma
refused to vote for war credits; but through the mouth of its leader
Kerensky it made a “patriotic” declaration which played
extremely well into the hands of the monarchy. The entire legally published
press of the “Narodniks” in general, trailed behind the
liberals. Even the Left-wing of bourgeois democracy—the so-called
Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which is affiliated to the International
Socialist Bureau—floated in the same stream. Mr. Rubanovich. that
party’s representative on the I.S.B., comes out as an open
social-chauvinist. Half of this party’s delegates at the London
Conference of “Entente” Socialists voted for a chauvinist
resolution (while the other half abstained from voting). In the illegally
published press of the Socialist-Revolutionaries (the newspaper

Novosti [1] and others) chauvinists predominate. The revolutionaries “from bourgeois
circles,” i.e., the bourgeois revolutionaries not connected with the
working class, have suffered utter bankruptcy in this war. The sad fate of
Kropotkin, Burtsev and Rubanovich is extremely significant.

The working class and the war

The only class in Russia that they did not succeed in infecting with chauvinism is the proletariat. Only the most ignorant strata
of the workers were involved in the few excesses that occurred at the
beginning of the war. The part played by workers in the Moscow anti-German
riots was greatly exaggerated. In general, and on the whole, the working
class of Russia proved to be immune to chauvinism.

This is to be explained by the revolutionary situation in the country
and by the general conditions of life of the Russian proletariat.

The years 1912–1914 marked the beginning of a new, grand revolutionary
upswing in Russia. We again witnessed a great strike movement such as the
world has not known. The number involved in the mass revolutionary strike
in 1913 was, at the very lowest estimation, one and a half million, and in
1914 it rose above two million and drew near to the level of 1905. On the
eve of the war, in St. Petersburg, things had already developed to the
first barricade battles.

The underground Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party performed its
duty to the International to the full. The banner of internationalism did
not falter in its hands. Our Party had broken organisationally with the
opportunist groups and elements long ago; its feet were not weighted with
the fetters of opportunism and of “legalism at any price,” and
this circumstance helped it to perform its revolutionary duty—just
as the break-away from Bissolati’s opportunist party helped the
Italian comrades too.

The general situation in our country is inimical to the efflorescence of
“socialist” opportunism among the masses of the workers. In
Russia we see a whole series of shades of opportunism and reformism among
the intelligentsia, the petty bourgeoisie, etc.; but it constitutes an
insignificant minority among the politically active strata of the workers.
The privileged stratum of workers and office employees in our country is
very weak. The fetishism of legality could not be created here. The
Liquidators (the party of the opportunists led by Axelrod, Potressov,
Cherevanin, Maslov, and others) found no serious support among the masses
of the workers before the war. The elections to the Fourth State Duma
resulted in the return of all the six anti-liquidator worker
deputies. The circulation of and collection of funds for the legally
published workers’ press in Petrograd and Moscow have proved
irrefutably that four-fifths of the class-conscious workers are opposed to
opportunism and liquidationism.

Since the beginning of the war the tsarist government has arrested and
exiled thousands and thousands of advanced workers, members of our
underground R.S.D.L.P. This circumstance, together with the introduction of
martial law in the country, the suppression of our newspapers, and so
forth, has retarded the movement. But for all that, our Party is continuing
its underground revolutionary activities. In Petrograd, the committee of
our Party is publishing the underground newspaper Proletarsky Golos . [2]

Articles from the Central Organ Sotsial-Demokrat , published
abroad, are reprinted in Petrograd and sent out to the provinces.
Manifestoes are secretly printed and circulated even in soldiers’
barracks. In various secluded places outside the city, secret
workers’ meetings are held. Lately big strikes of metal workers have
begun in Petrograd. In connection with these strikes our Petrograd
Committee has issued several appeals to the workers.

The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Group in the State Duma and the
war

In 1913 a split occurred among the Social-Democratic deputies in the State Duma. On one side were the seven supporters of
opportunism led by Chkheidze. They were elected for the seven
non-proletarian gubernias [3] where the workers numbered 214,000. On the other side were six deputies, all
from workers’ curiae, elected for the most industrialised centres in
Russia, in which the workers numbered 1,008,000.

The chief issue in the split was: the tactics of revolutionary Marxism
or the tactics of opportunist reformism? In practice, the
disagreement manifested itself mainly in the sphere of work
outside of parliament among the masses. In Russia this work had to
be conducted secretly if those conducting it wanted to remain on
revolutionary ground. The Chkheidze group remained a faithful ally of the
Liquidators who repudiated underground work, and defended them in all talks
with the workers, at all meetings. Hence the split. The six deputies formed
the R.S.D.L. group. The year’s work has shown irrefutably that this
is the group that the overwhelming majority of the Russian workers
supports.

On the outbreak of the war the disagreement stood out in glaring relief. The Chkheidze group confined itself to parliamentary action. It did not
vote for credits, for had it done so it would have roused against itself a
storm of indignation among the workers. (We have seen that in Russia even
the petty-bourgeois Trudoviki did not vote for credits); but it did not
utter a protest against social-chauvinism either.

The R.S.D.L. group, expressing the political line of our Party, acted
differently. It carried into the very depths of the working class a protest
against the war; it conducted anti-imperialist propaganda among the broad
masses of the Russian proletarians.

And it met with a very sympathetic response among the workers –
which frightened the government and compelled it, in flagrant violation of
its own laws, to arrest our comrades, the deputies, and to sentence them to
lifelong exile in Siberia. In its very first official announcement of the
arrest of our comrades the tsarist government wrote:

An entirely exceptional position in this respect was taken by some
members of Social-Democratic societies, the object of whose activities
was to shake the military might of Russia by agitating against the war by
means of underground appeals and verbal propaganda.

In response to Vandervelde’s well-known appeal “temporarily” to stop the struggle against tsarism—it
has now become known from the evidence of Prince Kudashev, the tsar’s
envoy in Belgium, that Vandervelde did not draw up this appeal alone, but
in collaboration with the above-mentioned tsar’s envoy –
only our Party, through its Central Committee, replied in the
negative. The guiding centre of the Liquidators agreed with Vandervelde and
officially stated in the press that “in its activities it will
not counteract the war .”

The tsarist government’s primary charge against our comrades, the
deputies, was that they propagated this negative answer to Vandervelde
among the workers.

At the trial, the tsarist Prosecutor, Mr. Nenarokomov, set up the German
and French Socialists as examples for our comrades. “The German
Social-Democrats,” he said, “voted for the war credits and
proved to be the friends of the government. That is how the German
Social-Democrats acted, but the dismal knights of Russian Social-Democracy
did not act in this way ... The Socialists of Belgium and France
unanimously forgot their quarrels with other classes, forgot party strife
and unhesitatingly rallied round the flag.” But the members of the
R.S.D.L. group, obeying the instructions of the Central Committee of the
Party, did not act in this way, he said ...

The trial unfolded an imposing picture of the extensive, underground
and-war agitation our Party was conducting among the masses of the
proletariat. It goes without saying that the tsarist court did not by a
very long way reveal all the activities our comrades were conducting in
this sphere; but even what was revealed showed how much, had been done
within the short space of a few months.

At the trial the secret manifestoes issued by our groups and committees
against the war and for international tactics were read. Threads stretched
from the class-conscious workers all over Russia to the members of the
R.S.D.L. group, and the latter did all in its power to help the workers to
appraise the war from the standpoint of Marxism.

Comrade Muranov, the deputy of the workers of the Kharkov Gubernia, said
at the trial:

“ Understanding that the people did not send me into the State Duma
for the purpose of wearing out the seat of a Duma armchair, I travelled
about the country to ascertain the mood of the working class.” He
admitted at the trial that he took upon himself the function of a secret
agitator of our Party, that in the Urals he organised a workers’
committee at the Verkhneisetsky Works, and in other places. The trial
showed that after the war broke out members of the R.S.D.L. group travelled through almost the whole of Russia for propaganda purposes, that Muranov,
Petrovsky, Badayev and others arranged numerous workers’ meetings, at
which anti-war resolutions were passed, and so forth.

The tsarist government threatened the accused with capital punishment.
Owing to this, not all of them behaved at the actual trial as bravely as
Comrade Muranov. They tried to make it difficult for the tsarist
prosecutors to secure their conviction. The Russian social-chauvinists are
now meanly utilising this to obscure the essence of the question: what kind
of parliamentarism does the working class need?

Parliamentarism is recognized by Südekum and Heine, Sembat and
Valiant, Bissolati and Mussolini, Chkheidze and Plekhanov, and
parliamentarism is recognised by our comrades in the R.S.D.L. Duma group;
it is recognised by the Bulgarian and Italian comrades who have broken with
the chauvinists. There are different kinds of parliamentarism. Some utilise
the parliamentary arena in order to win the favour of their governments,
or, at best, to wash their hands of everything, like the Chkheidze group.
Others utilise parliamentarism in order to remain revolutionary to the end,
to perform their duty as Socialists and internationalists even under the
most difficult circumstances. The parliamentary activities of some bring
them into ministerial seats; the parliamentary activities of others bring
them to prison, to exile, to penal servitude. Some serve the
bourgeoisie, others—the proletariat. Some are social-imperialists.
Others are revolutionary Marxists.

---
Notes:
[1]

Novosti (News) —a daily
Socialist-Revolutionary Party newspaper published in Paris from August 1914
to May 1915.— Ed .

[2]

Proletarsky Golos (Proletarian Voice) —a newspaper, organ of the St. Petersburg Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.,
published underground from February 1915 to December 1916. Four numbers
appeared. Its first issue published the manifesto of the Central Committee
of the R.S.D.L.P. entitled: The War and Russian Social-Democracy .— Ed .

[3]

Provinces.— Ed .