CHAPTER I

Produced by Al Haines.

[Illustration: Cover]

[Illustration: Leon Trotzky]

THE BOLSHEVIKI

AND

WORLD PEACE

BY LEON TROTZKY

INTRODUCTION BY LINCOLN STEFFENS

BONI AND LIVERIGHT

NEW YORK

1918

Copyright

1918

Boni & Liveright Inc.

CONTENTS

Introduction by Lincoln Steffens

Author's Preface

CHAPTER

I. The Balkan Question

II. Austria-Hungary

III. The War against Czarism

IV. The War against the West

V. The War of Defense

VI. What Have Socialists to do with Capitalist Wars?

VII. The Collapse of the International

VIII. Socialist Opportunism

IX. The Decline of the Revolutionary Spirit

X. Working Class Imperialism

XI. The Revolutionary Epoch

INTRODUCTION

The voice that speaks in this book is the voice of Leon Trotzky, the

Bolshevik Minister of Foreign Affairs for Revolutionary Russia. It is

expressing ideas and views which lighted him on the course of his policy

toward the War, Peace and the Revolution. It throws light, therefore,

on that policy; it helps to an understanding of it, if one wishes to

understand. But that isn't all. The spirit that flames and casts

shadows upon these pages is not only Trotzky's. It is the spirit also of

the Bolsheviki; of the red left of the left wing of the revolutionary

movement of New Russia. It flashed from Petrograd to Vladivostok, in

the first week of the revolt; it burned all along the Russian Front

before Trotzky appeared on the scene. It will smoulder long after he is

gone. It is a hot Fact which has to be picked up and examined, this

spirit. Whether we like it or don't, it is there; in Russia; it is

elsewhere; it is everywhere to-day. It is the spirit of war; class war,

but war. It is in this book.

Nor is that all.

The mind in this book--the point of view from which it starts, the views

to which it points--Trotzky's mind is the international mind. We have

heard before of this new intelligence; we have read books, heard

speeches, witnessed acts demonstrative of thoughts and feelings which

are not national, but international; not patriotic, but loyal only to

the lower-class-conscious war aims of the workers of the world. The

class warrior is as familiar a figure to us as the red spirit is of the

red left of revolution. But the voice which utters here the spirit and

the mind, not only of the Russian, but of the world revolution is the

voice of one having authority.

And Trotzky, in power, has been as red as he is in this book. The

minister of foreign affairs practised in Petrograd what he preached in

Switzerland, where he wrote most of the chapters of his book. And he

practised also what all the other great International Socialist leaders

talked and wrote.

That's what makes him so hard to understand, him and his party and the

Bolshevik policy. We are accustomed to the sight of Socialists and

Radicals going into office and being "sobered by the responsibilities of

power." French and Italian Socialists in the Liberal ministries of

their countries; British Labor leaders in Parliament in England or in

the governments of their Colonies; and the whole Socialist party in

Germany and Austria (except Liebknecht in prison)--all are examples of

the effect of power upon the International Mind. The phenomenon of

compromise and surrender is so common that many radicals oppose the

taking of any responsible office by any member of their parties; and

some of the extremists are advocating no political action whatsoever,

nothing but industrial, economic or what they call "direct action."

(Our I.W.W.'s don't vote, on principle.) This is anarchism.

Leon Trotzky is not an anarchist; except in the ignorant sense of the

word as used by educated people. He is a Socialist; an orthodox Marxian

Socialist. But he has seen vividly the danger of political power. The

body of this book was addressed originally to the German and Austrian

Socialists, and it is a reasoned, but indignant reproach of them for

letting their political position and their nationalistic loyalty carry

them away into an undemocratic, patriotic, political policy which

betrayed the weaker nations in their empires, helped break up the Second

(Socialist) International and led the Socialist parties into the support

of the War.

Clear upon it, Trotzky himself does not illustrate his own thesis. He

not only detests intellectually the secrecy and the sordid wickedness of

the "old diplomacy"; when he came as minister into possession of the

archives of the Russian Foreign Office, he published the secret

treaties.

That hurt. And so with the idea of a people's peace. All the

democratic world had been talking ever since the war began of a peace

made, not by diplomats in a private room, but by the chosen

representatives of all the peoples meeting in an open congress. The

Bolsheviki worked for that from the moment the Russian Revolution broke;

and they labored for the Stockholm Conference while Paul Milyoukov and

Alexander Kerensky were negotiating with the allied governments. When

the Bolsheviki succeeded to power, Lenine and Trotzky formally

authorized and officially proposed such a congress. Moreover Trotzky

showed that they were willing, if they could, to force the other

countries to accept the people's peace conference.

This hurt. This hurt so much that the governments united in

extraordinary measures to prevent the event. And when they succeeded,

and it was seen that no people's peace could be made openly and

directly, Trotzky proceeded by another way to get to the same end. He

opened negotiations with the Kaiser's government and allies; arranged an

armistice and agreed tentatively upon terms of peace.

This act not only hurt; it stunned the world, and no wonder! It was

like a declaration of war against a whole world at war. It was

unbelievable. The only explanation offered was that Trotzky and Lenine

were pro-German or dishonest, or both, and these things were said in

high places; and they were said with conviction, too. Moreover this

conviction colored, if it did not determine, the attitude the Allies

took toward New Russia and the peace proposals Trotzky got from the

German government. Was this assumption of the dishonesty of Trotzky the

only explanation of his act?

This book shows, as I have said, that Trotzky saw things from the

revolutionary, international point of view, which is not that of his

judges; which is incomprehensible to them. He wrote it after the War

began; he finished the main part of it before the Russian Revolution. It

is his view of the War, its causes and its effects, especially upon

international Socialism and "the" Revolution. These are the things he

holds in his mind all through all these pages: "the" Revolution and

world democracy. Also I have shown that, like the Russians generally,

his mind is literal. The Russians mean what they say, exactly; and

Trotzky not only means, he does what he writes. Putting these

considerations together, we can make a comprehensible statement of the

motive and the purpose of his policy; if we want to comprehend.

To all the other secretaries of state or of foreign affairs in the

world, the Russian Revolution was an incident, an interruption of the

War. To Minister Trotzky it was the other way around.

The World War was an incident, an effect, a check of "the" Revolution.

Not the Russian Revolution, you understand. To Trotzky the Russian

Revolution is but one, the first of that series of national revolutions

which together will become the Thing he yearns for and prophesies: the

World Revolution.

His peace policy therefore is a peace drive directed, not at a separate

peace with the Central Powers; and not even at a general peace, but to

an ending of the War in and by "the" Revolution everywhere.

Especially in Germany and Austria. He said this. The correspondent of

the London _Daily News_ cabled on January 2, right after the armistice

and the agreement upon peace terms to be offered the Allies, that

"Trotzky is doing his utmost to stimulate a revolution in Germany....

Our only chance to defeat German designs is to publish terms (from the

Allies) ... to help the democratic movement in Germany."

Trotzky is not pro-German. He certainly was not when he wrote this

book. He hates here both the Austrian and the German dynasties, and his

ill-will toward the House of Hapsburg is so bitter that it sounds

sometimes as if there were something personal about it. And there is.

He shows a knowledge of and a living sympathy with the small and subject

nations which Austria rules, exploits and mistreats. He blames his

Austrian comrades for their allegiance to a throne which is not merely

undemocratic, but "senile" and tyrannical. That he, the literal

Trotzky, would turn right around and, as the Russian Minister of Foreign

Affairs, do what he had so recently criticized the Austrian Socialists

for doing is unlikely.

Trotzky is against all the present governments of Europe, and the

"bourgeois system" everywhere in the world. He isn't pro-Allies; he

isn't even pro-Russian. He isn't a patriot at all. He is for a class,

the proletariat, the working people of all countries, and he is for his

class only to get rid of classes and get down or up to--humanity. And

so with his people.

The Russians have listened to the Socialist propaganda for generations

now. They have learned the chief lessons it has taught: liberty, land,

industrial democracy and the class-war the world over. This War was not

their war; it was the Czar's war; a war of the governments in the

interest of their enemies, the capitalists of their several countries,

who, as Trotzky says, were forcing their states to fight for the right

to exploit other and smaller peoples. So when they overthrew the Czar,

the Russians wanted to drop his war and go into their own, the class

war. Kerensky held them at the front in the name of "the" Revolution;

he would get peace for them by arrangement with the allies. He didn't;

he couldn't; he was dismissed by them. Not by the Bolsheviki, but by the

Russian people who know the three or four things they want: land and

liberty at home; the Revolution and Democracy for all the world.

I heard a radical assert one day that that was the reason Trotzky could

be such an exception to the rule about radicals in power. He came to the

head of the Russian Revolution when his ideas were the actual demands of

the Russian people and that it was not his strength of character, but

the force of a democratic public opinion in mob power, which made him

stick to his philosophy and carry out his theories and promises. I find

upon inquiry here in New York that while he was living and working as a

journalist on the East Side, he left one paper after another because he

could not conform, to their editorial policies and would not compromise.

He was "stiff-necked," "obstinate," "unreasonable." In other, kinder

words, Trotzky is a strong man, with a definite mind and a purpose of

his own, which he has the will and the nerve to pursue.

Also, however, Trotzky is a strong man who is ruled by and represents a

very simple-minded people who are acting like him, literally upon the

theory that the people govern now, in Russia; the common people; and

that, since they don't like the War of the Czar, the Kaiser, the Kings

and the Emperors, their government should make peace with the peoples of

the world, a democratic peace against imperialism and capitalism and the

state everywhere, for the establishment in its stead of a free,

world-wide democracy.

That may be the true explanation of Trotzky's Bolshevik peace policy in

the world crisis of the World War. That is the explanation which is

suggested by this book.

"Written in extreme haste," he says at the close of his preface, "under

conditions far from favorable to systematic work ... the entire book,

from the first page to the last, was written with the idea of the New

International constantly in mind--the New International which must rise

out of the present world cataclysm, the International of the last

conflict and the final victory."

LINCOLN STEFFENS.

New York, January 4th, 1918

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The forces of production which capitalism has evolved have outgrown the

limits of nation and state. The national state, the present political

form, is too narrow for the exploitation of these productive forces.

The natural tendency of our economic system, therefore, is to seek to

break through the state boundaries. The whole globe, the land and the

sea, the surface as well as the interior, has become one economic

workshop, the different parts of which are inseparably connected with

each other. This work was accomplished by capitalism. But in

accomplishing it the capitalist states were led to struggle for the

subjection of the world-embracing economic system to the profit

interests of the bourgeoisie of each country. What the politics of

imperialism has demonstrated more than anything else is that the old

national state that was created in the revolutions and the wars of

1789-1815, 1848-1859, 1864-1866, and 1870 has outlived itself, and is

now an intolerable hindrance to economic development.

The present War is at bottom a revolt of the forces of production

against the political form of nation and state. It means the collapse

of the national state as an independent economic unit.

The nation must continue to exist as a cultural, ideologic and

psychological fact, but its economic foundation has been pulled from

under its feet. All talk of the present bloody clash being a work of

national defense is either hypocrisy or blindness. On the contrary, the

real, objective significance of the war is the breakdown of the present

national economic centres, and the substitution of a world economy in

its stead. But the way the governments propose to solve this problem of

imperialism is not through the intelligent, organized cooeperation of

all of humanity's producers, but through the exploitation of the world's

economic system by the capitalist class of the victorious country; which

country is by this War to be transformed from a great power into the

world power.

The War proclaims the downfall of the national state. Yet at the same

time it proclaims the downfall of the capitalist system of economy. By

means of the national state capitalism has revolutionized the whole

economic system of the world. It has divided the whole earth among the

oligarchies of the great powers, around which were grouped the

satellites, the small nations, who lived off the rivalry between the

great ones. The future development of world economy on the capitalistic

basis means a ceaseless struggle for new and ever new fields of

capitalist exploitation, which must be obtained from one and the same

source, the earth. The economic rivalry under the banner of militarism

is accompanied by robbery and destruction which violate the elementary

principles of human economy. World production revolts not only against

the confusion produced by national and state divisions but also against

the capitalist economic organization, which has now turned into

barbarous disorganization and chaos.

The War of 1914 is the most colossal breakdown in history of an economic

system destroyed by its own inherent contradictions.

All the historical forces whose task it has been to guide the bourgeois

society, to speak in its name and to exploit it, have declared their

historical bankruptcy by the War. They defended capitalism as a system

of human civilization, and the catastrophe born out of that system is

primarily _their_ catastrophe. The first wave of events raised the

national governments and armies to unprecedented heights never attained

before. For the moment the nations rallied around them. But the more

terrible will be the crash of the governments when the people, deafened

by the thunder of the cannon, realize the meaning of the events now

taking place in all their truth and frightfulness.

The revolutionary reaction of the masses will be all the more powerful

the more prodigious the cataclysm which history is now bringing upon

them.

Capitalism has created the material conditions of a new Socialist

economic system. Imperialism has led the capitalist nations into

historic chaos. The War of 1914 shows the way out of this chaos by

violently urging the proletariat on to the path of Revolution.

For the economic backward countries of Europe the War brings to the fore

problems of a far earlier historic origin--problems of democracy and

national unity. This is in a large measure the case with the peoples of

Russia, Austria-Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula. But these historically

belated questions, which were bequeathed to the present epoch as a

heritage from the past, do not alter the fundamental character of the

events. It is not the national aspirations of the Serbs, Poles,

Roumanians or Finns that has mobilized twenty-five million soldiers and

placed them in the battlefields, but the imperialistic interests of the

bourgeoisie of the Great Powers. It is imperialism that has upset

completely the European _status quo_, maintained for forty-five years,

and raised again the old questions which the bourgeois revolution proved

itself powerless to solve.

Yet in the present epoch it is quite impossible to treat these questions

in and by themselves. They are utterly devoid of an independent

character. The creation of normal relations of national life and

economic development on the Balkan Peninsula is unthinkable if Czarism

and Austria-Hungary are preserved. Czarism is now the indispensable

military reservoir for the financial imperialism of France and the

conservative colonial power of England. Austria-Hungary is the mainstay

of Germany's imperialism. Issuing from the private family clashes

between the national Servian terrorists and the Hapsburg political

police, the War very quickly revealed its true fundamental character--a

struggle of life and death between Germany and England. While the

simpletons and hypocrites prate of the defense of national freedom and

independence, the German-English War is really being waged for the

freedom of the imperialistic exploitation of the peoples of India and

Egypt on the one hand, and for the imperialistic division of the peoples

of the earth on the other.

Germany began its capitalistic development on a national basis with the

destruction of the continental hegemony of France in the year 1870-1871.

Now that the development of German industry on a national foundation has

transformed Germany into the first capitalistic power of the world, she

finds herself colliding with the hegemony of England in her further

course of development. The complete and unlimited domination of the

European continent seems to Germany the indispensable prerequisite of

the overthrow of her world enemy. The first thing, therefore, that

imperialistic Germany writes in her programme is the creation of a

Middle European League of Nations. Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Balkan

Peninsula and Turkey, Holland, the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland,

Italy, and, if possible, enfeebled France and Spain and Portugal, are to

make one economic and military whole, a Great Germany under the hegemony

of the present German state.

This programme, which has been thoroughly elaborated by the economists,

political students, jurists and diplomats of German imperialism and

translated into reality by its strategists, is the most striking proof

and most eloquent expression of the fact that capitalism has expanded

beyond the limits of the national state and feels intolerably cramped

within its boundaries. The national Great Power must go and in its

place must step the imperialistic World Power.

In these historical circumstances the working class, the proletariat,

can have no interest in defending the outlived and antiquated national

"fatherland," which has become the main obstacle to economic

development. The task of the proletariat is to create a far more

powerful fatherland, with far greater power of resistance--_the

republican United States of Europe_, as the foundation of the United

States of the World.

The only way in which the proletariat can meet the imperialistic

perplexity of capitalism is by opposing to it as a practical programme

of the day the Socialist organization of world economy.

War is the method by which capitalism, at the climax of its development,

seeks to solve its insoluble contradictions. To this method the

proletariat must oppose its _own_ method, the method of the Social

Revolution.

The Balkan question and the question of the overthrow of Czarism,

propounded to us by the Europe of yesterday, can be solved only in a

revolutionary way, in connection with the problem of the United Europe

of to-morrow. The immediate, urgent task of the Russian Social

Democracy, to which the author belongs, is the fight against Czarism.

What Czarism primarily seeks in Austria-Hungary and the Balkans is a

market for its political methods of plunder, robbery and acts of

violence. The Russian bourgeoisie all the way up to its radical

intellectuals has become completely demoralized by the tremendous growth

of industry in the last five years, and it has entered into a bloody

league with the dynasty, which had to secure to the impatient Russian

capitalists their part of the world's booty by new land robberies.

While Czarism stormed and devastated Galicia, and deprived it even of

the rags and tatters of liberty granted to it by the Hapsburgs, while it

dismembered unhappy Persia, and from the corner of the Bosporus strove

to throw the noose around the neck of the Balkan peoples, it left to the

liberalism which it despised the task of concealing its robbery by

sickening declamations over the defense of Belgium and France. The year

1914 spells the complete bankruptcy of Russian liberalism, and makes the

Russian proletariat the sole champion of the war of liberation. It

makes the Russian Revolution definitely an integral part of the Social

Revolution of the European proletariat.

In our war against Czarism, in which we have never known a "national"

truce, we have never looked for help from Hapsburg or Hohenzollern

militarism, and we are not looking for it now. We have preserved a

sufficiently clear revolutionary vision to know that the idea of

destroying Czarism was utterly repugnant to German imperialism. Czarism

has been its best ally on the Eastern border. It is united to it by

close ties of social structure and historical aims. Yet even if it were

otherwise, even if it could be assumed that, in obedience to the logic

of military operations, it would deal a destructive blow to Czarism, in

defiance of the logic of its own political interests--even in such a

highly improbable case we should refuse to regard the Hohenzollerns not

only as an objective but as a subjective ally. The fate of the Russian

Revolution is so inseparably bound up with the fate of European

Socialism, and we Russian Socialists stand so firmly on the ground of

internationalism, that we cannot, we must not for a moment, entertain

the idea of purchasing the doubtful liberation of Russia by the certain

destruction of the liberty of Belgium and France, and--what is more

important still--thereby inoculating the German and Austrian proletariat

with the virus of imperialism.

We are united by many ties to the German Social Democracy. We have all

gone through the German Socialist school, and learned lessons from its

successes as well as from its failures. The German Social Democracy was

to us not only _a_ party of the International. It was _the_ Party _par

excellence_. We have always preserved and fortified the fraternal bond

that united us with the Austrian Social Democracy. On the other hand, we

have always taken pride in the fact that we have made our modest

contribution towards winning suffrage in Austria and arousing

revolutionary tendencies in the German working class. It cost more than

one drop of blood to do it. We have unhesitatingly accepted moral and

material support from our older brother who fought for the same ends as

we on the other side of our Western border.

Yet it is just because of this respect for the past, and still more out

of respect for the future, which ought to unite the working class of

Russia with the working classes of Germany and Austria, that we

indignantly reject the "liberating" aid which German imperialism offers

us in a Krupp munition box, with the blessing, alas! of German

Socialism. And we hope that the indignant protest of Russian Socialism

will be loud enough to be heard in Berlin and in Vienna.

The collapse of the Second International is a tragic fact, and it were

blindness or cowardice to close one's eyes to it. The position taken by

the French and by the larger part of English Socialism is as much a part

of this breakdown as the position of the German and Austrian Social

Democracy. If the present work addresses itself chiefly to the German

Social Democracy it is only because the German party was the strongest,

most influential, and in principle the most basic member of the

Socialist world. Its historic capitulation reveals most clearly the

causes of the downfall of the Second International. At first glance it

may appear that the social revolutionary prospects of the future are

wholly deceptive. The insolvency of the old Socialist parties has

become catastrophically apparent. Why should we have faith in the

future of the Socialist movement? Such skepticism, though natural,

nevertheless leads to quite an erroneous conclusion. It leaves out of

account the good will of history, just as we have often been too prone

to ignore its ill will, which has now so cruelly shown itself in the

fate that has overcome the International.

The present War signalizes the collapse of the national states. The

Socialist parties of the epoch now concluded were national parties. They

had become ingrained in the national states with all the different

branches of their organizations, with all their activities and with

their psychology. In the face of the solemn declarations at their

congresses they rose to the defense of the conservative state, when

imperialism, grown big on the national soil, began to demolish the

antiquated national barriers. And in their historic crash the national

states have pulled down with them the national Socialist parties also.

It is not Socialism that has gone down, but its temporary historical

external form. The revolutionary idea begins its life anew as it casts

off its old rigid shell. This shell is made up of living human beings,

of an entire generation of Socialists that has become fossilized in

self-abnegating work of agitation and organization through a period of

several decades of political reaction, and has fallen into the habits

and views of national opportunism or possibilism. All efforts to save

the Second International on the old basis, by personal diplomatic

methods and mutual concessions, are quite hopeless. The old mole of

history is now digging its passageways all too well and none has the

power to stop him.

As the national states have become a hindrance to the development of the

forces of production, so the old Socialist parties have become the main

hindrance to the revolutionary movement of the working class. It was

necessary that they should demonstrate to the full their extreme

backwardness, that they should discredit their utterly inadequate and

narrow methods, and bring the shame and horror of national discord upon

the proletariat, in order that the working class might emancipate

itself, through these fearful disillusionments, from the prejudices and

slavish habits of the period of preparation, and become at last that

which the voice of history is now calling it to be--the revolutionary

class fighting for power.

The Second International has not lived in vain. It has accomplished a

huge cultural work. There has been nothing like it in history before.

It has educated and assembled the oppressed classes. The proletariat

does not now need to begin at the beginning. It enters on the new road

not with empty hands. The past epoch has bequeathed to it a rich

arsenal of ideas. It has bequeathed to it the weapons of criticism.

The new epoch will teach the proletariat to combine the old weapons of

criticism with the new criticism of weapons.

This book was written in extreme haste, under conditions far from

favorable to systematic work. A large part of it is devoted to the old

International which has fallen. But the entire book, from the first to

the last page, was written with the idea of the New International

constantly in mind, the New International which must rise up out of the

present world cataclysm, the International of the last conflict and the

final victory.

LEON TROTZKY.

THE BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE

CHAPTER I

THE BALKAN QUESTION

"The War at present being waged against Russian Czarism and its

vassals is dominated by a great historic idea. The impetus of

this great historic idea consecrates the battlefields of Poland

and of Eastern Russia. The roar of cannon, the rattling of

machine guns, and the onrush of cavalry, all betoken the

enforcement of the democratic programme for the liberation of

the nations. Had Czarism, in league with the French

capitalistic powers and in league with an unscrupulous 'nation

of shopkeepers,' not succeeded in suppressing the Revolution of

1905, the present slaughter of the nations would have been

avoided.

"A democratic Russia would never have consented to wage this

unscrupulous and futile War. The great ideas of freedom and

justice now speak the persuasive language of the machine gun and

the sword, and every heart susceptible of sympathy with justice

and humanity can only wish that the power of Czarism may be

destroyed once for all, and that the oppressed Russian

nationalities may again secure the right to decide their own

destinies."

The above quotation is from the _Nepszava_ of August 31, 1914, the

official organ of the Socialist party of Hungary. Hungary is the land

whose entire inner life was erected upon the high-handed oppression of

the national minorities, upon the enslavement of the laboring classes,

upon the official parasitism and usury of the ruling caste of large

landowners. It is the land in which men like Tisza are masters of the

situation, dyed-in-the-wool agrarians, with the manners of political

bandits. In a word, Hungary is a country closest of kin to Czar-ruled

Russia.

So what is more fitting than that the _Nepszava_, the Socialist organ of

Hungary, should hail with outbursts of enthusiasm the liberating mission

of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies? Who other than Count Tisza

could have felt the call to "enforce the democratic programme for the

liberation of the nations"? Who was there to uphold the eternal

principles of law and justice in Europe but the ruling clique of

Budapest, the discredited Panamists? Would you entrust this mission to

the unscrupulous diplomacy of "perfidious Albion," to the nation of

shopkeepers?

Laughter turns away wrath. The tragic inconsistencies of the policies

followed by the International not only reach their climax in the

articles of the poor Nepszava; they disarm us by their humor.

The present series of events began with the ultimatum, sent to Servia by

Austria-Hungary. There was not the slightest reason why the

international Social Democracy should take under its protection the

intrigues of the Serbs or any other of the petty dynasties of the Balkan

Peninsula. They were all endeavoring to hide their political adventures

under the cloak of national aspirations. We had still less cause to

lash ourselves into a state of moral indignation because a fanatic young

Serb responded to the cowardly, criminal and wily national politics of

the Vienna and Budapest government authorities with a bloody

assassination.[1]

[1] It is noteworthy that these opportunistic Austrian and German

Socialists are now writhing with moral indignation over the

"treacherous assassination at Sarajevo." And yet they always

sympathized with the Russian terrorists more than we, the Russian

Social Democrats, did, who are opposed on principle to the

terroristic method. Lost in the mist of chauvinism, they can no

longer see that the unfortunate Servian terrorist, Gavrilo

Prinzip, represents precisely the same national principle as the

German terrorist, Sand. Perhaps they will even ask us to transfer

our sympathies from Sand to Kotzebue? Or perhaps these eunuchs

will advise the Swiss to overthrow the monuments erected to the

assassin Tell and replace them with monuments to the Austrian

governor, Gessler, one of the spiritual forerunners of the

murdered archduke?

Of one thing we have no doubt. In the dealings between the Danube

Monarchy and the Servian government, the historic right, that is to say,

the right of free development, rests entirely with Servia, just as Italy

was in the right in the year 1859. Underneath the duel between the

imperial police scoundrels and the terrorists of Belgrade, there is

hidden a far deeper meaning than merely the greed of the

Kareorgoievitches or the crimes of the Czar's diplomacy. On one side

were the imperialistic claims of a national state that had lost its

vitality, and on the other side, the strivings of the dismembered

Servian nation to reintegrate itself into a national whole and become a

living vital state.

Is it for this that we have sat so long in the school of Socialism to

forget the first three letters of the democratic alphabet? This

absolute lapse of memory, moreover, made its appearance only after the

fourth of August. Up to that fatal date the German Marxists showed that

they knew very well what was happening in Southeastern Europe.

On July 3, 1914, after the assassination at Sarajevo, the _Vorwaerts_

wrote:

"The bourgeois revolution of the South Slavs is in full swing,

and the shooting at Sarajevo, however wild and senseless an act

in itself, is as much a chapter of this revolution as the

battles by which the Bulgarians, Serbs and Montenegrins

liberated the peasants of Macedonia from the yoke of Turkish

feudal exploitation. Is it a wonder that the South Slavs of

Austria-Hungary look with longing to their racial brothers in

the kingdom of Servia? The Serbs in Servia have attained the

highest goal a people can attain in the present order of

society. They have attained national independence. Whereas in

Vienna or Budapest they treat every one bearing the name of Serb

or Croatian with blows and kicks, with court-martial justice and

the gallows.... There are seven and a half million South Slavs

who, as a result of the victories in the Balkans, have grown

bolder than ever in demanding their political rights. And if

the imperial throne of Austria continues to resist their impact,

it will topple over and the entire Empire with which we have

coupled our destiny will break to pieces. For it is in line

with historic evolution that such national revolutions should

march onward to victory."

If the international Social Democracy together with its Servian

contingent, offered unyielding resistance to Servia's national claims,

it was certainly not out of any consideration for the historic rights of

Austria-Hungary to oppress and disintegrate the nationalities living

within her borders; and most certainly not out of consideration for the

liberating mission of the Hapsburgs. Until August, 1914, no one, except

the black and yellow hirelings of the press, dared to breathe a word

about that. The Socialists were influenced in their course of conduct

by entirely different motives. First of all, the proletariat, although

by no means disputing the historic right of Servia to strive for

national unity, could not trust the solution of this problem to the

powers then controlling the destinies of the Servian kingdom. And in

the second place--and this was for us the deciding factor--the

international Social Democracy could not sacrifice the peace of Europe

to the national cause of the Serbs, recognizing, as it did, that, except

for a European revolution, the only way such unity could be achieved was

through a European war.

But from the moment Austria-Hungary carried the question of her own fate

and that of Servia to the battlefield, Socialists could no longer have

the slightest doubt that social and national progress would be hit much

harder in Southeastern Europe by a Hapsburg victory than by a Servian

victory. To be sure, there was still no reason for us Socialists to

identify our cause with the aims of the Servian army. This was the idea

that animated the Servian Socialists, Ljaptchevitch and Katzlerovitch,

when they took the manly stand of voting against the war credits.[2]

But surely we had still less reason to support the purely dynastic

rights of the Hapsburgs and the imperialistic interests of the

feudal-capitalistic cliques against the national struggle of the Serbs.

At all events, the Austro-Hungarian Social Democracy, which now invokes

its blessings upon the sword of the Hapsburgs for the liberation of the

Poles, the Ukrainians, the Finns and the Russian people, must first of

all clarify its ideas on the Servian question, which it has gotten so

hopelessly muddled.

[2] To appreciate fully this action of the Servian Socialists we must

bear in mind the political situation by which they were

confronted. A group of Servian conspirators had murdered a member

of the Hapsburg family, the mainstay of Austro-Hungarian

clericalism, militarism, and imperialism. Using this as a welcome

pretext, the military party in Vienna sent an ultimatum to Servia,

which, for sheer audacity, has scarcely ever been paralleled in

diplomatic history. In reply, the Servian government made

extraordinary concessions, and suggested that the solution of the

question in dispute be turned over to the Hague tribunal.

Thereupon Austria declared war on Servia. If the idea of a "war of

defense" has any meaning at all, it certainly applied to Servia in

this instance. Nevertheless, our friends, Ljaptchevitch and

Katzlerovitch, unshaken in their conviction of the course of

action that they as Socialists must pursue, refused the government

a vote of confidence. The writer was in Servia at the beginning

of the War. In the Skuptchina, in an atmosphere of indescribable

national enthusiasm, a vote was taken on the war credits. The

voting was by roll-call. Two hundred members had all answered

"Yes." Then in a moment of deathlike silence came the voice of

the Socialist Ljaptchevitch--"No." Every one felt the moral force

of this protest, and the scene has remained indelibly impressed

upon my memory.

The question at issue, however, is not confined to the fate of the ten

million Serbs. The clash of the European nations has brought up the

entire Balkan question anew. The Peace of Bucharest, signed in 1903,

has solved neither the national nor the international problems in the

Near East. It has only intensified the added confusion resulting from

the two unfinished Balkan Wars, unfinished because of the complete

temporary exhaustion of the nations participating in it.

Roumania had followed in the path of Austro-Hungarian politics, despite

the Romanesque sympathies of its population, especially in the cities.

This was due not so much to dynastic causes, to the fact that a

Hohenzollern prince occupied the throne, as to the imminent danger of a

Russian invasion. In 1879 the Russian Czar, as thanks for Roumania's

support in the Russo-Turkish war of "liberation," cut off a slice of

Roumanian territory, the province of Bessarabia. This eloquent deed

provided a sufficient backing to the dynastic sympathies of the

Hohenzollern in Bucharest. But the Magyar-Hapsburg clique succeeded in

incensing the Roumanian people against them by their denationalizing

policy in Transylvania, which has a population of three million

Roumanians as against three-fourths of a million in the Russian province

of Bessarabia; and they further antagonized them by their commercial

treaties, which were dictated by the interests of the large

Austro-Hungarian land-owners. So that Roumania's entrance into the War

on the side of the Czar, despite the courageous and active agitation

against participation in the War on either side, carried on by the

Socialist party under the leadership of my friends Gherea and Rakowsky,

is to be laid altogether at the door of the ruling class of

Austria-Hungary, who are reaping the harvest they have sown here as well

as elsewhere.

But the matter is not disposed of by fixing the historical

responsibility. To-morrow, in a month, in a year or more the War will

bring to the foreground the whole question of the destiny of the Balkan

peoples and of Austria-Hungary, and the proletariat will have to have

its answer to this question. European democracy in the nineteenth

century looked with distrust at the Balkan people's struggle for

independence, because it feared that Russia might be strengthened at the

expense of Turkey. On this subject Karl Marx wrote in 1853, on the eve

of the Crimean War:

"It may be said that the more firmly established Servia and the

Servian nationality is the more the direct influence of Russia

on the Turkish Slavs is shoved into the background. For in order

to be able to assert its peculiar position as a state, Servia

had to import its political institutions, its schools ... from

Western Europe."

This prophecy has been brilliantly fulfilled in what has actually

happened in Bulgaria, which was created by Russia as an outpost on the

Balkans. As soon as Bulgaria was fairly well established as a national

state, it developed a strong anti-Russian party, under the leadership of

Russia's former pupil, Stambulov, and this party was able to stamp its

iron seal upon the entire foreign policy of the young country. The whole

mechanism of the political parties in Bulgaria is so constructed as to

enable it to steer between the two European combinations without being

absolutely forced into the channel of either, unless it chooses to enter

it of its own accord. Roumania went with the Austro-German alliance,

Servia, since 1903, with Russia, because the one was menaced directly by

Russia, the other by Austria. The more independent the countries of

Southeast Europe are from Austria-Hungary, the more effectively they

will be able to protect their independence against Czarism.

The balance of power in the Balkans, created by the Congress of Berlin

in 1879, was full of contradictions. Cut up by artificial

ethnographical boundaries, placed under the control of imported

dynasties from German nurseries, bound hand and foot by the intrigues of

the Great Powers, the peoples of the Balkans could not cease their

efforts for further national freedom and unity. The national politics

of independent Bulgaria was naturally directed towards Macedonia,

populated by Bulgarians. The Berlin Congress had left it under Turkish

rule. On the other hand, Servia had practically nothing to look for in

Turkey with the exception of the little strip of land, the sandbag Novy

Bazar. Its national interests lay on the other side of the

Austro-Hungarian boundary, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slavonia and

Dalmatia. Roumania had no interests in the south, where it is separated

from European Turkey by Servia and Bulgaria. Roumania's expansion

policy was directed towards the northwest and east, towards Hungarian

Transylvania and Russian Bessarabia. Finally, the national expansion of

Greece, like that of Bulgaria, collided with Turkey.

Austro-German politics, aiming at the artificial preservation of

European Turkey, broke down not on account of the diplomatic intrigues

of Russia, although these of course were not lacking. It broke down

because of the inevitable course of evolution. The Balkan Peninsula had

entered on the path of capitalist development, and it was this fact that

raised the question of the self-determination of the Balkan peoples as

national states to the historical issue of the day.

The Balkan War disposed of European Turkey, and thereby created the

conditions necessary for the solution of the Bulgarian and Greek

questions. But Servia and Roumania, whose national completion could

only be achieved at the expense of Austria-Hungary, found themselves

checked in their efforts at expansion southwards, and were compensated

at the expense of what racially belonged to Bulgaria--Servia in

Macedonia, and Roumania in Dobrudja. This is the meaning of the second

Balkan War and the Peace of Bucharest by which it was concluded.

The mere existence of Austria-Hungary, this Turkey of Middle Europe,

blocks the way to the natural self-determination of the peoples of the

Southeast. It compels them to keep constantly fighting against each

other, to seek support against each other from the outside, and so makes

them the tool of the political combinations of the Great Powers. It was

only in such chaos that Czaristic diplomacy was enabled to spin the web

of its Balkan politics, the last thread of which was Constantinople.

And only a federation of the Balkan states, both economic and military,

can interpose an invincible barrier to the greed of Czarism.

Now that European Turkey has been disposed of, it is Austria-Hungary

that stands in the way of a federation of the Balkan states. Roumania,

Bulgaria, and Servia would have found their natural boundaries, and

would have united with Greece and Turkey, on the basis of common

economic interests, into a league of defense. This would finally have

brought peace to the Balkan Peninsula, that witches' cauldron which

periodically threatened Europe with explosions, until it drew it into

the present catastrophe.

Up to a certain time the Socialists had to reconcile themselves to the

routine way in which the Balkan question was treated by capitalistic

diplomats, who in their conferences and secret agreements stopped up one

hole only to open another, even wider one. So long as this dilatory

method kept postponing the final solution, the Socialist International

could hope that the settlement of the Hapsburg succession would be a

matter not for a European war, but for the European Revolution. But now

that the War has destroyed the equilibrium of the whole of Europe, and

the predatory Powers are seeking to remodel the map of Europe--not on

the basis of national democratic principles, but of military

strength--the Social Democracy must come to a clear comprehension of the

fact that one of the chief obstacles to freedom, peace and progress, in

addition to Czarism and German militarism, is the Hapsburg Monarchy as a

state organization. The crime of the Galician Socialist group under

Daszynski consisted not only in placing the Polish cause above the cause

of Socialism, but also in linking the fate of Poland with the fate of

the Austro-Hungarian armies and the fate of the Hapsburg Monarchy.

The Socialist proletariat of Europe cannot adopt such a solution of the

question. For us the question of united and independent Poland is on a

par with the question of united and independent Servia. We cannot and

we will not permit the Polish question to be solved by methods which

will perpetuate the chaos at present prevailing in Southeastern Europe,

in fact through the whole of Europe. For us Socialists the independence

of Poland means its independence on both fronts, on the Romanoff front

and on the Hapsburg front. We not only wish the Polish people to be

free from the oppression of Czarism. We wish also that the fate of the

Servian people shall not be dependent upon the Polish nobility in

Galicia.

For the present we need not consider what the relations of an

independent Poland will be to Bohemia, Hungary and the Balkan

Federation. But it is perfectly clear that a complex of medium-sized and

small states on the Danube and in the Balkan Peninsula will constitute a

far more effective bar to the Czaristic designs on Europe than the weak,

chaotic Austro-Hungarian State, which proves its right to existence only

by its continued attempts upon the peace of Europe.

In the article of 1853, quoted above, Marx wrote as follows on the

Eastern question:

"We have seen that the statesmen of Europe, in their obdurate

stupidity, petrified routine, and hereditary intellectual

indolence, recoil from every attempt at answering the question

of what is to become of Turkey in Europe. The driving force

that favors Russia's advance towards Constantinople is the very

means by which it is thought to keep her away from it, the empty

theory, never carried out, of maintaining the _status quo_. What

is this _status quo_? For the Christian subjects of the Porte

it means nothing else than the perpetuation of their oppression

by Turkey. As long as they are under the yoke of the Turkish

rule, they look upon the head of the Greek Church, the ruler of

60 million Greek Church Christians, as _their natural protector

and liberator_."

What is here said of Turkey now applies in a still greater degree to

Austria-Hungary. The solution of the Balkan question is unthinkable

without the solution of the Austro-Hungarian question, as they are both

comprised in one and the same formula--the Democratic Federation of the

Danube and Balkan Nations.

"The governments with their old-fashioned diplomacy," wrote Marx, "will

never solve the difficulty. Like the solution of so many other

problems, the Turkish problem, too, is reserved for the European

Revolution." This statement holds just as good to-day as when it was

first written. But for the Revolution to solve the difficulties that

have piled up in the course of centuries, the proletariat must have its

_own_ programme for the solution of the Austro-Hungarian question. And

this programme it must oppose just as strenuously to the Czaristic greed

of conquest as to the cowardly and conservative efforts to maintain the

Austro-Hungarian _status quo_.