Memorandum On Certain Aspects Of The Bolshevist Movement In Russia. Part III. Bolshevist Program Of World Revolution.
III. BOLSHEVIST PROGRAM OF WORLD REVOLUTION.
1. BOLSHEVISM INTERNATIONAL, NOT NATIONAL.
It is of the essence of the Bolshevist movement that it is international and not national in character. The revolution in Russia is but the first incident in the Bolshevist program. This thought occurs in almost every proclamation or discourse of Lenin and his associates. In his formal program-theses, when the negotiations for peace were in progress (Izvestia, Mar. 8, 1918), Lenin says:
There is no doubt that the Socialist Revolution in Europe must come and will come. All our hopes for the definitive triumph of Socialism are based on this conviction and on this scientific prevision, Our propagandist activities in general, and the organization of fraternization in particular, must be strengthened and developed. (For the full text of these theses, see Appendix XVI, p. 42.)
The Bolshevist propagandist, Bukharin, writes in chapter XIX of his pamphlet "The Program of the Communists" (Moscow, July 19, 1918):
The program of the Communist party is not alone a program of liberating the proletariat of one country; it is the program of liberating the proletariat of the world. (For full text see Appendix XVII, p. 45.)
That the Bolsheviks are playing an international game and aim directly at the subversion of all Governments is disclosed by the avowed tactics of their foreign policy. In his "Peace Program," published at Petrograd February, 1918, Trotsky says:
If in awaiting the imminent proletarian flood in Europe, Russia should be forced to conclude peace with the present day Governments of the Central Powers, it would be a provisional, temporary, and transitory peace, with the revision of which the European Revolution will have to concern itself in the first instance. Our whole policy is built upon the expectation of this revolution.
A similar attitude with respect to the Allies is disclosed even more strikingly in extracts from a speech made by Zinoviev, president of the Petrograd Soviet, speaking February 2, 1919, on the subject of the Princes Island proposal:
We are willing to sign an unfavorable peace with the Allies. * * * It would only mean that we should put no trust whatever in the bit of paper we should sign. We should use the breathing space so obtained in order to gather our strength in order that the mere continued existence of our Government would keep up the world-wide propaganda which Soviet Russia has been carrying on for more than a year.
In an address before an extraordinary session of the Moscow Soviet April 3, 1919, Lenin said:
Spring brings us again to difficulties but I believe this will be our last difficult six months. The Entente and the Anglo-French capitalists will not be able to maintain their pressure longer. On the other hand, the conquests of the Red Army in the Ukraine and on the Don have strengthened our internal position. No matter how great our difficulties, we have great hopes for victory, not only in Russia but throughout the entire world. * * *
We are sure of our victory over the international Imperialists, and this for two reasons: First, because they have taken to fighting among themselves, and, second, because the Soviet movement is growing rapidly throughout the world. The situation of the Soviet Republic is improving every hour. The Imperialists are digging their own graves and there are plenty of people in their own countries who will bury them and pack the ground solid over their coffins.
The proletarian revolution in Hungary is proof of the spread of the Soviet movement. The Hungarian bourgeoisie has itself admitted that there is only one power in the world which can lead nations when the crisis comes and that is the Soviet power. Russian has given an example that the workmen of the whole world have understood.
I have hope that we shall live through all our trials and that to the Russian and Hungarian Soviet Republics will be added an international republic of Soviets. (Izvestia, April 5, 1919.)
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2. TYPICAL PROCLAMATIONS.
Rushing from one front to the other the commander-in-chief of the Red Army issues proclamations and articles from his "Train of Comrade Trotsky," which is equipped with a printing press. This propaganda emphasizes the development of the revolutionary movement all over the world. The following sentences are taken from a typical example of Trotsky's writings (signed article by Trotsky, Petrograd Pravda, Apr. 23, 1919; for full text see Appendix XVIII, p. 46):
The decisive weeks in the history of mankind have arrived. * * *
Spring has come, the spring that decides; our strength is increased tenfold by the consciousness of the fact that the wireless stations of Moscow, Kiev, Budapest, and Munich exchange not only brotherly greetings, but also business agreements respecting common defensive struggle. * * *
To carry out our international duty we must first of all break up the bands of Kolchak, in order to support the victorious workmen of Hungary and Bavaria. In order to assist the uprisings of workmen in Poland, Germany and all Europe, we must establish definitely and irrefutably the Soviet authority over the whole extent of Russia.
The Moscow wireless station sends out dozens of messages every day, and many of them are appeals for "world revolution." The message of August 31, 1919, from Moscow, "To all radio employees in Siberia, the Don, the Caucasus, and other occupied Russian districts," the concluding paragraphs of which follow, also illustrates Bolshevist methods of broadcast propaganda:
Every effort must be exerted so that all messages from Soviet Russia will come to the ears of all workers; let each radio message sent by your brothers from Soviet Russia be read by all workmen and peasants; let the workers of the whole world know that behind the Red Army follow happiness, peace and fraternity of all peoples. The hour is already not far distant when our Red regiments will clear the way and unite us in one family, and at the Congress of radio employees of the whole of Russia our colleagues, amid general enthusiasm, will relate how, when employed at White Guard radio stations, they secretly worked as real proletarians, spreading and extending the workers' and peasants' radios beyond the boundaries of Soviet Russia, and boldly declare: "I was one of the participators in the world revolution!" We will say to those who played the part of traitors and turncoats during the decisive struggle between labor and capital: "The workmen will know how to deal with you according to your deserts." All radio workers who wish to escape from the yoke of the counter-revolutionary regime can boldly fly to Soviet Russia, where everybody is guaranteed work, according to his specialty, in complete security.
In Soviet Russia everyone has the right to work. Long live the solidarity of all radio workers! Long live the solidarity of workers throughout the world! Long live the Socialist world revolution!
THE CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION ON THE
RADIO SECTION OF THE ALL-RUSSIAN UNION OF
WORKMEN AND EMPLOYEES ON NATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS.
(Wireless News.)
3. COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL.
The Communist International, established by the Bolsheviks in Moscow in March, 1919, issues appeals "To the toilers of the whole world." Such a proclamation was sent out by wireless, and reprinted in all the Bolshevist newspapers, in connection with May 1 of this year, from which the following paragraphs are taken:
The communist revolution grows. The Soviet republics in Russia, Hungary and Bavaria report what has been accomplished daily. Germany is shaking with civil war. A revolution is taking place in Turkey. In Austria and Czecho-Slovakia the workmen are gathering under the glorious flag of socialism. In France enormous demonstrations have started; in Italy the struggle boils and the workmen call for a dictatorship of the proletariat. In England strikes have taken on the character of an epidemic. In America the working class comes out on the streets; in Japan the workmen are agitated; in the neutral countries like Holland and Switzerland hundreds and thousands of workmen recently took part in a political strike. The workmen of all countries have understood that the decisive moment has come. "Soviets" - by this you will conquer.
The workmen know that only a dictatorship of the proletariat can save humanity from that bloody horror into which the bourgeoisie in all countries has plunged it. The workmen know that the proletarian dictatorship will lead to a triumph of socialism. There is no middle course. Either the bloody dictatorship of executioners-generals, who will kill hundreds of thousands of workmen and peasants in the name of the interests of a band of bankers, or the dictatorship of the working class, that is of the overwhelming majority of toilers which will disarm the bourgeoisie, create its own Red Army and free the whole world of slavery. Down with the autocracy of tsars and kings.
(For full text see Appendix XIX, p. 47.)
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This world-wide and international character of Bolshevism is well stated by the American representative at Archangel in a report of July 30, 1919, forwarding and commenting on Bolshevist newspapers:
This sort of propaganda against the Peace Conference shows the imperialistic character of the present Moscow government which, while constantly pleading for noninterference in its own internal affairs never lets the people inhabiting its territory for a moment forget that the corner stone of its own foreign policy is to stir, up strife and revolution in other countries.
4. COMPROMISES TACTICAL.
When the Bolsheviks say they want peace and give assurances that they wish simply to be let alone in order to work out their experiment in Russia, such offers to compromise are, it has been shown, purely tactical. After the expulsion of the Bolshevist Ambassador Joffe from Berlin, Chicherin boasted of the millions of roubles taken to Berlin for propaganda purposes (official note to German foreign office in Izvestia, Dec. 26, 1918). Another illustration of the “scrap of paper” attitude of the Bolsheviks toward treaties is contained in a signed article (Izvestia, Jan. 1, 1919) on “Revolutionary methods,” in which Joffe himself says:
Having accepted this forcibly imposed treaty (Brest-Litovsk), revolutionary Russia of course had to accept its second article which forbade “any agitation against the state and military institutions of Germany.” But both the Russian Government as a whole and its accredited representative in Berlin never concealed the fact that they were not observing this article and did not intend to do so.
And this agitation continued even after the Bolsheviks had signed with Germany, August 27, 1918, the so-called supplementary treaties of Brest-Litovsk, which were not signed like the original treaty under seeming duress, but were actively sought for and gladly entered upon by the Bolsheviks.
By the supplementary agreement dealing with finance the Bolsheviks undertook to deliver to Germany "in compensation of losses sustained by Germans through Russian measures" 6,000,000,000 marks, of which one and one-half billions were to be paid partly in gold bullion and partly in paper money; 1,000,000,000 in Russian merchandise; two and one-half billion to be in the form of a loan to be guaranteed by certain state revenues and particularly the rent for “certain economic concessions which will be given to Germans;” the remaining 1,000,000,000 to be paid by the Ukraine or Finland, if the Bolsheviks might so arrange it, or in accordance with a special agreement to be made later. It was also agreed that all property of Germans in Russia, including bank deposits, expropriated by the Bolsheviks in pursuance of communist principles, should be returned to the former owners. Despite Bolshevist principles inheritance by Germans in Russia was also provided for.
English translations of the full texts of. the supplementary treaties are published as Appendixes XX and XXI (pages 49 and ff).
