In Russia this chauvinism has overcome the bourgeois liberals (the "Constitutional-Democrats"), and part of the Narodniks -- down to the Socialist-Revolutionaries[20] and the "Right" Social-Democrats. (In particular, the chauvinist utterances of E. Smirnov, P. Maslov and G. Plekhanov, for example, should be branded; they have been taken up and widely used by the bourgeois "patriotic" press.)
   
In the present situation, it is impossible to determine, from the standpoint of the international proletariat, the defeat of which of the two groups of belligerent nations would be the lesser evil for socialism. But to us Russian Social-Democrats there cannot be the slightest doubt that, from the standpoint of the working class and of the toiling masses of all the nations of Russia, the defeat of the tsarist
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monarchy, the most reactionary and barbarous of governments, which is oppressing the largest number of nations and the greatest mass of the population of Europe and Asia, would be the lesser evil.
   
The formation of a republican United States of Europe should be the immediate political slogan of Europe's Social-Democrats. In contrast with the bourgeoisie, which is ready to "promise" anything in order to draw the proletariat into the mainstream of chauvinism, the Social-Democrats will explain that this slogan is absolutely false and meaningless without the revolutionary overthrow of the German, the Austrian and the Russian monarchies.
   
Since Russia is most backward and has not yet completed its bourgeois revolution, it still remains the task of Social-Democrats in that country to achieve the three fundamental conditions for consistent democratic reform, viz., a democratic republic (with complete equality and self-determination for all nations), confiscation of the landed estates, and an eight-hour working day. But in all the advanced countries the war has placed on the order of the day the slogan of socialist revolution, a slogan that is the more urgent, the more heavily the burden of war presses upon the shoulders of the proletariat, and the more active its future role must become in the re-creation of Europe, after the horrors of the present "patriotic" barbarism in conditions of the tremendous technological progress of large-scale capitalism. The bourgeoisie's use of wartime laws to gag the proletariat makes it imperative for the latter to create illegal forms of agitation and organisation. Let the opportunists "preserve" the legal organisations at the price of treachery to their convictions -- revolutionary Social-Democrats will utilise the organisational experience and links of the working class so as to create illegal forms of struggle for socialism, forms appropriate to a period of crisis, and to unite the workers, not with the chauvinist bourgeoisie of their respective countries, but with the workers of all countries. The proletarian International has not gone under and will not go under. Notwithstanding all obstacles, the masses of the workers will create a new International. Opportunism's present triumph will be short-lived. The greater the sacrifices imposed by the war the clearer will it become to the mass of the workers
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that the opportunists have betrayed the workers' cause and that the weapons must be turned against the government and the bourgeoisie of each country.
   
The conversion of the present imperialist war into a civil war is the only correct proletarian slogan, one that follows from the experience of the Commune, and outlined in the Basle resolution (1912); it bas been dictated by all the conditions of an imperialist war between highly developed bourgeois countries. However difficult that transformation may seem at any given moment, socialists will never relinquish systematic, persistent and undeviating preparatory work in this direction now that war has become a fact.
   
It is only along this path that the proletariat will be able to shake off its dependence on the chauvinist bourgeoisie, and, in one form or another and more or less rapidly, take decisivo steps towards genuine freedom for the nations and towards socialism.
   
Long live the international fraternity of the workers against the chauvinism and patriotism of the bourgeoisie of all countries!
   
Long live a proletarian International, freed from opportunism!
Central Committee
of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour
Party
NOTES
[19] The Stuttgart Congress of the Second International was held on August 18-24, 1907. The R.S.D.L.P. delegation consisted of 37 members, the Bolshevik delegates including Lenin, Lunacharsky and Litvinov.
   
The Congress conducted its main work in committees set up to draft resolutions for the plenary meetings. Lenin worked on the committee which drafted a resolution on "Militarism and International Conflicts". Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg introduced into Bebel's draft the historic amendment on the duty of the socialists to use the war-created crisis to arouse the masses for the overthrow of capitalism. The amendment was adopted by the Congress (concerning the Congress, see Lenin's articles "The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart" in Volume 13 of the present edition, pp. 75-81 and 82-93). [Transcriber's Note: To distinguish these two articles having the same title, I have simply appended a "[a]" and a "[b]" to the titles: "The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart [a]" and "The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart [b]". --
DJR]
   
The Copenhagen Congress of the Second International was held between August 28 and September 3, 1910, the R.S.D.L.P: being represented by Lenin, Plekhanov, Lunacharsky, Kollontai, Pokrovsky and others. The Congress appointed, several committees for preliminary discussion and drafting of resolutions on the agenda items. Lenin worked on the co-operative committee.
   
The Congress's resolution "The Struggle Against Militarism and War" confirmed the Stuttgart Congress's resolution on "Militarism and International Conflicts" and listed the demands to be advanced by the socialist parliamentary deputies: (a) all conflicts between states to be unfailingly submitted for settlement by international courts of arbitration, (b) general disarmament; (c) abolition of secret diplomacy; (d) autonomy for all nations and their protection against military attacks and oppression.
page 461
   
The Basle Congress of the Second International was held on November 24-25, 1912. It was the extraordinary congress called in connection with the Balkan War and the imminent European war. The Congress adopted a manifesto emphasising the imperialist nature of the approaching world war, and called on the socialists of all countries to wage a vigorous struggle against war. (The Basle Manifesto is discussed on pp. 208-17, 307-08 in this volume.) [Transcriber's Note: See, respectively, Lenin's "The Collapse of the Second International", sections I and II, and
Socialism and War
, the section entitled "The Basel Manifesto". --
DJR]
[p. 31]
[20] Socialist-Revolutionaries -- a petty-bourgeois party in Russia, founded at the end of 1901 and the beginning of 1902 as a result of the union of various Narodnik groups and circles (Union of Socialist Revolutionaries, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, etc.). The newspaper
Revolutsionnaya Rossiya (Revolutionary Russia ) (1900-05) and the journal
Vestnik Russkoi Revolutsii (Herald of the Russian Revolution ) (1901-05) became its official organs. The Socialist-Revolutionaries did not recognise the class differences between the proletariat and the petty proprietors, glossed over the class contradictions within the peasantry, and rejected the proletariat's leading role in the revolution. The Socialist-Revolutionaries' views were an eclectic mixture of the ideas of Narodism and revisionism; they tried, as Lenin put it, to patch up "the rents in the Narodnik ideas with bits of fashionable opportunist 'criticism' of Marxism" (see present edition, Vol. 9, p. 310). [Transcriber's Note: See Lenin's "Socialism and the Peasantry". --
DJR]
The Bolshevik Party exposed the Socialist-Revolutionaries' attempts to masquerade as socialists, conducted a determined struggle against the Socialist-Revolutionaries for influence over the peasantry, and showed how dangerous their tactic of individual terrorism was to the working-class movement. At the same time the Bolsheviks were prepared, on definite conditions, to enter into temporary agreements with the Socialist-Revolutionaries in the struggle against tsarism. As early as the first Russian revolution (1905-07), the Right wing of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party broke away and formed the legal Popular-Socialist Party, whose outlook was close to that of the Cadets, the Left wing forming the semi-anarchist league of Maximalists. In the period of reaction between 1907 and 1910, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party suffered a complete ideological and organisational breakdown. During the First World War most of its members took a social-chauvinist position.
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