As The 100th Anniversary Of World War I Enters Its Second Year-The Anti-War Resistance Begins- Lenin -What Has Been Revealed By the Trial of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Duma Group[1]

As The 100^th Anniversary Of World War I Enters Its Second Year-The Anti-War Resistance Begins- Lenin  

The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense of “pride” in having participated in such an epic adventure even if it did mow down the flower of European youth from all classes) from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts (as foretold by the blood-letting in the American Civil War and the various “small” wars in Asia, Africa, and, uh, Europe in the mid to late 19^th century once war production on a mass scale followed in the train of other industrial production). Also trampled underfoot in the opposing trenches, or rather thrown in the nearest trash bin of the their respective parliamentary buildings were the supposedly eternal pledges against war in defense of one’s own capitalist-imperialist  nation-state against the working masses and their allies of other countries by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations (Anarchists, Syndicalists and their various off-shoots)representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20^th century history. All those beautifully written statements and resolutions that clogged up the international conferences with feelings of solidarity were some much ill-fated wind once bullet one came out of gun one.

Other than isolated groups and individuals, mostly like Lenin and Trotsky in exile or jail, and mostly in the weaker lesser capitalistically developed countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove their manhood. (When the first international conference of anti-war socialists occurred in Switzerland in 1915 one wag pointed out that they could all fit in one tram [bus].) Almost all parties assuming that the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everyone could go back to the eternal expressions of international working-class solidarity after the smoke had settled (and the simple white-crossed graves dug). You see, and the logic is beautiful on this one, that big mail-drop of a Socialist International, was built for peace-time but once the cannon roared then the “big tent” needed to be folded for the duration. Jesus.  

Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the first months of the second year of the war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in the hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not for long because “Long Live The Communist International,”  a new revolutionary international, would become the order of the day in the not distant future), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in Russia and Europe in the 19^th century (including forbears Marx and Engels), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as 1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.  

Lenin also has a "peace" plan, a peace plan of sorts, a way out of the stinking trench warfare stalemate eating up the youth of the Eurasian landmass. Do what should have been done from the beginning, do what all the proclamations from all the beautifully-worded socialist manifestos called on the international working-class to do. Not a simple task by any means especially in that first year when almost everybody on all sides thought a little blood-letting would be good for the soul, the individual national soul, and in any case the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everybody could start producing those beautifully worded-manifestos against war again. (That by Christmas peace “scare” turned out to be a minute “truce” from below by English and German soldiers hungry for the old certainties banning the barbed wire and stinking trenches for a short reprieve in the trench fronts in France and played soccer before returning to drawn guns-a story made into song and which is today used as an example of what the lower ranks could do-if they would only turn the guns around. Damn those English and German soldiers never did turn the damn things around until too late and with not enough resolve and the whole world has suffered from that lack of resolve ever since.)

Lenin’s hard-headed proposition: turn the bloody world war among nations into a class war to drive out the war-mongers and bring some peace to the blood-soaked lands. But that advanced thinking is merely the wave of the future as the rat and rain-infested sinkhole trenches of Europe were already churning away in the first year as a death trap for the flower of the European youth.   

The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way as did the various German-induced wars attempting to create one nation-state out of various satraps almost could not be avoided in the early 20^th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and range and the increased rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last wars. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.

The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began the damn thing among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.

A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’s  prisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America “Big Bill” Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “Club Fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell),  were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.

Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. Even my old anti-war amigo from my hometown who after I got out of the American Army during the Vietnam War marched with me in countless rallies and parades trying to stop the madness got caught in the bogus information madness and supported Bush’s “paper war” although not paper for the benighted Iraqi masses ever since (and plenty of other “wise” heads from our generation of ’68 made that sea-change turn with him).

At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. “Be ready to fight” the operative words.

So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.                  

Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100^th anniversary of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before the first frenzied shots were fired, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in places like Russia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the hodge-podge colonies all over the world map, in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.  

 

 

V. I.   Lenin

What Has Been Revealed By the Trial of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Duma Group^[1]

---

Published: Sotsial-Demokrat No. 40, March 29, 1915. Published according to the text in Sotsial-Demokrat.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [197[4]], Moscow, Volume 21, pages 171-177.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters and R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2003 (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats:   Text • README

---

The trial, by the tsar’s court, of five members of the R.S.D.L. Duma group and six other Social-Democrats seized on November 4, 1914 at a conference near Petrograd has ended. They have all been sentenced to life exile in Siberia. The censor has deleted from accounts of the trial published in the legal press all the passages that may be unpleasant to tsarism and the patriots. The “internal enemies” have been rapidly dealt with and again nothing is to be seen or heard on the surface of public life except the savage howling of a pack of bourgeois chauvinists, echoed by some handfuls of social-chauvinists.

What, then, has the trial of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour group proved?
First of all, it has shown that this advance contingent of revolutionary Social-Democracy in Russia failed to display sufficient firmness at the trial. It was the aim of the accused to prevent the State Prosecutor from finding out the names of the members of the Central Committee in Russia and of the Party’s representatives in its contacts with workers’ organisations. That aim has been achieved. To continue achieving that aim in the future, we muse resort to a method long recommended officially by the Party, i.e., refuse to give evidence. However, to attempt to prove one’s solidarity with the social-patriot Mr. Yordansky, as Rosenfeld did, or one’s disagreement with the Central Committee, is a wrong method, one that is inexcusable from the standpoint of a revolutionary Social-Democrat.

We shall note that, according to a Dyen report (No. 40)^[2]—there is no official or complete record of the trial—Comrade Petrovsky stated: “In the same period [November] I received the Central Committee resolution . . . and besides I was given resolutions adopted by workers in seven various places concerning their attitude towards the war, resolutions coinciding with the Central Committee’s attitude. ”
This declaration does Petrovsky credit. The tide of chauvinism was running high on all sides. In Petrovsky’s diary there is an entry to the effect that even the radical-minded Chkheidze spoke with enthusiasm of a war for “liberty”. This chauvinism was resisted by the R.S.D.L. group deputies when they were free, but it was also their duty, at the trial, to draw a line of distinction between themselves and chauvinism.
The Cadet Rech^[3] had servilely “thanked” the tsar’s court for “dispelling the legend” that the Russian Social-Democratic deputies wanted the defeat of the tsar’s armies. Taking advantage of the fact that in Russia the Social-Democrats are tied hand and foot in their activities, the Cadets are pretending to take seriously the so-called “conflict” between the Party and the Duma group, and declare that the accused gave their evidence without the least compulsion. What innocent babes? They pretend ignorance of the threat of a court-martial and the death sentence that hung over the deputies in the early stage of the trial.
The comrades should have refused to give evidence concerning the illegal organisation, and, in view of the historic importance of the moment, they should have taken advantage of a public trial to openly set forth the Social-Democratic views, which are hostile, not only to tsarism in general, but also to social-chauvinism of all and every shade.
Let the government and bourgeois press wrathfully attack the R.S.D.L. group; let the Social-Revolutionaries, liquidators and social-chauvinists (who must fight us somehow, if they cannot fight us on the issue of principles!) with gleeful malice “discover” signs of weakness or of fictitious “disagreement with the Central Committee”. The Party of the revolutionary proletariat is strong enough to openly criticise itself, and unequivocally call mistakes and weaknesses by their proper names. The class-conscious   workers of Russia have created a party and have placed in the forefront an advance contingent which, during a world war and the world-wide collapse of international opportunism have revealed more than anyone else the ability to perform their duty as internationalist revolutionary Social-Democrats. The road we have been travelling has been tested by the greatest of all crises, and has proved, over and over again, the only correct road. We shall follow it still more firmly and resolutely; we shall throw out fresh advance contingents, and shall see to it that they not only carry out the same work, but carry it through more correctly.
Secondly, the trial has revealed a picture without precedent in world socialism—that of revolutionary Social-Democracy making use of parliamentarianism. More than any speeches, this example will appeal to the minds and hearts of the proletarian masses; more convincingly than any arguments, it will refute the legalist opportunists and anarchist phrase-mongers. The report on Muranov’s illegal work and Petrovsky’s notes will long remain a model of that kind of work carried out by our deputies, which we have had diligently to conceal, and the meaning of which will give all class-conscious workers in Russia more and more food for thought. At a time when nearly all “socialist”(forgive the debasement of the word!) deputies in Europe have proved chauvinists and servants of chauvinists, when the famous “Europeanism” that once charmed our liberals and liquidators has proved an obtuse habitude of slavish legality, there was to be found in Russia a workers’ party whose deputies excelled, not in high-flown speech, or being “received” in bourgeois, intellectualist salons, or in the business acumen of the “European” lawyer and parliamentarian, but in ties with the working masses, in dedicated work among those masses, in carrying on modest, unpretentious, arduous, thankless and highly dangerous duties of illegal propagandists and organisers. To climb higher, towards the rank of a deputy or minister influential in “society” such has been the actual meaning of “European” (i.e., servile) “socialist” parliamentarism. To go into the midst of the masses, to help enlighten and unite the exploited and the oppressed—such is the slogan advanced by the examples set by Muranov and Petrovsky.

This slogan will acquire historic significance. In no country in the world will a single thinking worker agree to confine himself to the old legality of bourgeois parliamentarism, when that legality has been abolished with a stroke of the pen in all the advanced countries, and has led to merely a closer actual alliance between the opportunists and the bourgeoisie. Whoever dreams of “unity” between revolutionary Social-Democratic workers and the “European” Social-Democratic legalists of yesterday, and of today, has learned nothing and forgotten everything, and is in fact an ally of the bourgeoisie and an enemy of the proletariat. Whoever has to this day failed to realise why the R.S.D.L. group broke away from the Social-Democratic group that was making its peace with legalism and opportunism can now learn a lessen from the activities of Muranov and Petrovsky as described in the report on the trial. It was not only by these two deputies that this work was conducted, and only hopelessly naïve people can dream of a compatibility between such work and a “friendly and tolerant attitude” towards Nasha Zarya or Severnaya Rabochaya Gazeta,^[4] towards Sovremennik, the Organising Committee, or the Bund.
Do the government hope to intimidate the workers by sending the members of the R.S.D.L. group to Siberia? They will find themselves mistaken. The workers will not be intimidated, but will the better understand their aims, those of a workers’ party as distinct from the liquidators and the social-chauvinists. The workers will learn to elect to the Duma only men such as the members of the R.S.D.L. group, and for similar and ever more extensive work, such that will be conducted among the masses with still more secrecy. Do the government intend to do away with “illegal parliamentarianism” in Russia? They will merely consolidate the links between the proletariat exclusively with that kind of parliamentarism.
Thirdly, and most important, the court proceedings against the R.S.D.L. group have, for the first time, produced open and objective material, disseminated all over Russia in millions of copies, concerning the most fundamental, the most significant and most vital question of the attitude of the various classes in Russian society towards   the war. Have we not had enough of nauseating intellectualist jabber about the compatibility between “defence of the fatherland” and internationalism “in principle”(i.e., purely verbal and hypocritical internationalism)? Has not the time come to examine the facts that bear upon classes, i.e., millions of living people, not some dozens of phrase-mongers?
Over half a year has passed since the outbreak of war. The press, both legal and illegal, and expressing all trends, has had its say; all the party groups in the Duma have defined their stands—a highly insufficient index of our class groupings, but the only objective one. The trial of the R.S.D.L. group and the press comment on it have summed up all this material. The trial has shown that the finest representatives of the proletariat in Russia are not only hostile to chauvinism in general but, in particular, share the stand of our Central Organ. The deputies were arrested on November 4, 1914. Consequently, they had been conducting their work for over two months. How and with whom did they carry it on? Which currents in the working class did they reflect and express? The answer is found in the fact that the “theses” and Sotsial-Demokrat provided the material for the conference, and that, on several occasions, the Petrograd Committee of our Party issued leaflets of the same nature. There was no other material at the conference. The deputies had no intention of reporting to the conference on other currents in the working class, because no other currents existed.
Perhaps the members of the R.S.D.L. group were expressing the opinion of a mere minority of, the workers? We have no grounds to suppose so, since, in the two and a half years, between the spring of 1912 and the autumn of 1914, four-fifths of the class-conscious workers of Russia rallied around Pravda, with which these deputies were working in complete ideological solidarity. That is a fact. Had there been a more or less appreciable protest among the workers against the Central Committee’s stand, that protest would have surely found expression in the resolutions proposed. Nothing of the kind emerged at the trial, though the latter, it might be said, did “reveal” much of the work done by the R.S.D.L. group. The corrections   made in Petrovsky’s handwriting do not reveal even the slightest hint at any difference of opinion.
The facts show that, in the very first months after the outbreak of the war, the class-conscious vanguard of the workers of Russia rallied, in deed, about the Central Committee and the Central Organ. However unpleasant this fact may be to certain “groups”, it is undeniable. Thanks to the trial, the words cited in the indictment: “The guns should be directed, not against our brothers, the wage slaves of other countries, but against the reactionary and bourgeois governments and parties of all countries"—these words will spread—and have already done so—all over Russia as a call for proletarian internationalism, for the proletarian revolution. Thanks to the trial, the class slogan of the vanguard of the workers of Russia has reached the masses of the workers.
An epidemic of chauvinism among the bourgeoisie and a certain section of the petty bourgeoisie, vacillation in the other section of the latter, and a working class call of this nature—such is the actual and objective picture of our political divisions. It is to this actual situation, not to the pious wishes of intellectuals and founders of grouplets, that one must gear one’s “prospects”, hopes, and slogans.
The Pravdist papers and the “Muranov type” of work have brought about the unity of four-fifths of the class-conscious workers of Russia. About forty thousand workers have been buying Pravda ; far more read it. Even if war, prison, Siberia, and hard labour should destroy five or even ten times as many—this section of the workers cannot be annihilated. It is alive. It is imbued with the revolutionary spirit, is anti-chauvinist. It alone stands in the midst of the masses, with deep roots in the latter, as the champion of the internationalism of the toilers, the exploited, and the oppressed. It alone has held its ground in the general debâcle. It alone is leading the semi-proletarian elements away from the social-chauvinism of the Cadets, the Trudoviks, Plekhanov and Nasha Zarya, and towards socialism. Its existence, its ideas, its work, and its call for the “brotherhood of wage slaves of other countries” have been revealed to the whole of Russia by the trial of the R.S.D.L. group.

It is with this section that we must work, and its unity must be defended against social-chauvinists. That is the only road along which the working-class movement of Russia can develop towards social revolution, and not towards national-liberalism of the “European” type.

---

Notes

[1] The trial of the Bolshevik deputies to the Fourth Duma (A. E. Badayev, M. K. Muranov, G. I. Petrovsky, F. N. Samoilov, N. R. Shagov) and other Social-Democrats, who took part in the illegal Party Conference in Ozerki, took place on February 10 (23), 1915. The case was tried by the Special Court in Petrograd. They were charged under Article 102, i.e. accused of participation in an organisation aiming at the overthrow of the existing state system. The main circumstantial evidence against the Bolshevik deputies was Lenin’s theses The Tasks of Revolutionary Social-Democracy in the European War and the C.C. R.S.D.L.P. manifesto The War and Russian Social-Democracy, which were confiscated during the search.

The five Bolshevik deputies were exiled for life to Turukhansk Territory {Eastern Siberia).

[2] Dyen (Day )—a daily of a bourgeois-liberal trend, which began publication in St. Petersburg in 1912. Among its contributors were Menshevik liquidators, who took over complete control of the paper after February 1917. Closed down by the Revolutionary-Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet on October 26 (November 8), 1917.

[3] Rech (Speech )—the central daily newspaper of the Cadet Party, published in St. Petersburg from February 1906 onwards. It was suppressed by the Revolutionary-Military Committee of the   Petrograd Soviet on October 26 (November 8), 1917, but continued to appear under other names until August 1918.

[4] Severnaya Rabochaya Gazeta (Workers’ Northern Gazette)—a legal daily of the Menshevik liquidators, published in St. Petersburg from January to May 1914.