"…An empty-headed notion about the necessity of constituting an International out of 'internationalist social-democrats'…" (from) "oppositional elements, picked at random from all socialist parties… The International can be restored only from those same elements of which it has consisted hitherto… The restored International will not be a 'third' in order, which only a handful of sectarians and schism-brokers need, but the same Second International, which has not died, but merely been temporarily paralyzed by the world catastrophe…"

Thus writes Mr. Vl. Kosovskii in No. 8 of the Bund's "Information Sheet"{10}. We thank this not-so-clever Bundist with all our heart for his frankness. He is not the first to have defended opportunism with a directness displeasing to the diplomats of the Bund. Now too he will aid the struggle against opportunism by elucidating to the workers how hopelessly far removed the Bund is from proletarian socialism. Mr. Vl. Kosovskii does not see the connection between opportunism and social-chauvinism. In order to see it, one must be able to think: what are the fundamental ideas of each of these tendencies? what is the development of opportunism in Europe over the last decades? what is the attitude toward social-chauvinism of the opportunist and revolutionary wings in a whole series of European countries, for example, in Russia, Germany, Belgium, France, England, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland, Bulgaria?

Has Mr. Vl. Kosovskii thought about this? Had he tried to answer even the first question, he would quickly have perceived his error.

Incidentally. In No. 7 of the "Information Sheet" Mr. Vl. Kosovskii displayed Germanophile chauvinism, inasmuch as he, accusing French social-democrats, defended the voting for credits by German social-democrats. A certain W. (p. 11–12 in No. 8), defending Mr. Vl. Kosovskii from the "accusation" of chauvinism, writes that Germanophile chauvinism cannot exist in an organization working in Russia. Will Mr. Vl. Kosovskii not explain to Mr. W. why a Ukrainian or Polish bourgeois in Russia, a Danish or Alsatian in France, an Irish in England often display chauvinism hostile to the nations oppressing them?

Written in summer 1915

First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVII

Printed from the manuscript