V. I.

Lenin

Socialism and War

The Attitude of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party Towards the War

*

PREFACE TO THE FIRST (Foreign) EDITION

The war has been going on for a year already. Our Party
defined its attitude towards it at its very beginning, in the Central
Committee’s manifesto that was drawn up in September 1914 and printed
(after it had been sent to the members of the C.C., and to our Party’s
responsible representatives in Russia, and after their consent had been
received) on November 1, 1914, in No.33 of our Party’s Central Organ, Sotsial-Demokrat . [1]

Later, in No. 40 (March 29, 1915), were printed the resolutions of the Berne
Conference [2] in which our principles and tactics were more
precisely enunciated.

At the present time, in Russia, there is an obvious growth of
revolutionary temper among the masses. In other countries, symptoms of the
same phenomenon are observed everywhere, in spite of the suppression of the
revolutionary strivings of the proletariat by the majority of the official
Social-Democratic parties, which have taken the side of their governments and
their bourgeoisie. This state of things makes particularly urgent the
publication of a pamphlet that sums up Social-Democratic tactics in
relation to the war. Reprinting in full the above-mentioned Party documents,
we provide them with brief explanations, endeavouring to take into account
all the chief arguments in favour of bourgeois and of proletarian tactics
that have been expressed in literature and at Party meetings.