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Lunacharsky Articles and speeches on international politicsAbout unity
From the editor. With Comrade Voinov's article, we open a discussion on the question of unity, and we hope that this discussion will help to unite the elements of the Russian social-democracy that have remained true to the principles of the International.
Just as after a terrible earthquake the inhabitants look with surprise at a country that was so familiar to them and has now completely changed its face, so we, after a terrible social catastrophe - a world war - do not recognize our party. New watersheds appeared; currents that seemed opposite run in the same direction and are ready to merge, and positions that seemed related and contiguous are now torn apart by impenetrable abysses. One high ridge now passes through our party, in front of which the frontiers that used to divide us seem dwarfed. On one side of this ridge remain those who have remained faithful to the banner of the International, on the other, those who have been seized in one way or another by a national-patriotic feeling justified by one or another sophism.
An enormous task confronted us, a task, both in difficulty and in the possibilities lurking in it, again surpassing everything that history had previously placed before us. First, the most difficult defensive task: to save the International. To save all-human, all-proletarian socialism, while all the foundations of culture sometimes, in the most paradoxical way, bizarrely broke down along national and state borders. To save him at a time when the detachments of the most numerous, most disciplined, arousing the greatest hopes, turned out to be plagued by the infection of national mutual hatred; save it at a time when every government, relying on the highest exertion of the forces of every national-bourgeois society, is ready to crush any attempt at a purely proletarian international undertaking.
But our task is not limited to defense. Our defense itself is inconceivable without attack. It is our duty to raise in all countries, and above all in Russia, the proletarian, and more broadly, the people's movement against slaughter, to oppose the bourgeois great powers, which clashed among themselves because of their predatory interests, with a new - great power - the international working class, ready to fight. in turn to fight them all in the only holy, only justified war - the war for the highest ideal that has ever been waged on earth.
To call forth such a movement in Russia, to fulfill the second part of the plans of international congresses, i.e., to use the horrors of the war against the ruling classes and in the interests of bringing about a final social upheaval, to facilitate the emergence and strengthening of the same movement in all countries and to unite this movement into one international movement - this gigantic task.
The precondition for its fulfillment for them is, on the one hand, a new demarcation, and, on the other hand, a new unification.
From all groups and currents ready to join the new Third International, we must demand sharply and definitely reject those elements that are infected with nationalism and which, therefore, are compromising and dangerous ties between them and the world, cruelly hostile to us, a world that preaches slaughter between peoples, and ready to fall upon us as traitors, in the name of national unity, which absurdly unites deeply hostile classes and cuts the single body of the proletariat through the living flesh. There can be no agreements with the social chauvinists, and no concessions can be made to them. If we still hope to save the vacillating elements, then we will be able to pull them out of the muddy puddle of social-nationalism onto our dry land only with the help of the greatest severity against any deviation from orthodox internationalism. Only a merciless criticism of outright National Socialism and any mixture in which elements of it are confused with elements of genuine socialism can be a real cure for intermediate types, which we do not at all want to repel, but which we will not attract by clouding the purity of our idea. There are no compromises here.
But the task of unification is just as important as the task of separation. Under present conditions, the idea of internationalism has a colossal soldering power. Shall we, Russian Social-Democrats, stop now at questions that have lost their sharpness and perhaps have become obsolete forever about the greater or lesser role of legal or illegal methods of struggle? Will we suspect individual groups that have shown dictatorial aspirations of wanting to continue the same policy of intolerance, not realizing that before these elements in all tragic force the question of rallying under a single banner of all detachments that can be rallied into an army international socialism?
The old barriers are crumbling. Both in the camp of the "liquidators" and in the camp of the most uncompromising Bolsheviks there were elements who were carried away by the volunteer movement, or who came out in a literary manner with a sermon of a nationalist tinge. The anti-factional groups also made a heavy sacrifice to this craze.
But the remaining elements, to the credit of our Social-Democracy, everywhere in the majority, who remain faithful to revolutionary international socialism, should all the more quickly seek support in each other. We must immediately bring into contact all the elements, at present almost homogeneous, but still continuing the policy of alienation and mistrust towards each other.
Time does not endure. It is necessary that the Party recover itself as soon as possible from the paralysis that has taken possession of it almost entirely as a result of an unexpected external blow. Work must begin as soon as possible to organize its available forces. That is why it seems to us that the time has come to energetically raise the question of a conference of all Social-Democratic-Internationalists in Russia.
Unfortunately, this first conference can, of course, only be of a preliminary nature, not entirely normal. We cannot even think now of convening a conference with the right representation of the organizations working in Russia. It immediately follows from this that there can be no question of any majority or minority at the conference, because no one can guarantee either a sufficiently complete or proportional representation of old or possibly new party trends.
The conference should be exclusively deliberative. Under the current conditions, this will not prevent it from doing an extremely important and urgent job.
The initiative but to convene it could be taken by a representative of various R.S.D.R.P. in some great center of Western Europe.
They would prepare the technical environment for the conference and inform the groups and individuals.
It seems to us that all representatives of any Social-Dem. groups in Russia or abroad. First of all, of course, the more established less long ago organization.
But in addition, the doors of the conference must be wide open to all Social Democrats in general, for its decisions will be of a purely moral and preparatory nature, its main task will be to find a line of contact between all international elements. According to the technical conditions, in this case it will not be possible to act without a choice; in doing so, the core body of representatives of the organizations mandated by them will have to be given the opportunity to choose between comrades who will express a desire to attend the conference and to invite those whose past party activities make their presence more desirable and useful.
It goes without saying that such a limited choice should only take place in the event of an excessive number of such applications.
The conference will have to try to determine a program of immediate action of an organizational and technical nature that would keep as many revolutionary international Social-Democrats as possible in one army. Do not find disagreements, do not show your intransigence, do not try to majorize, but try to find a compromise, easy in this case, because it is difficult to find it within the circle of revolutionary and socialist internationalism.
After all, by the very fact of the appearance of “internationalists” at the conference of Social Democrats, everyone brushes aside any tendency to make concessions in relation to the military-bourgeois world and the National Socialist elements that pander to it.
No one, going to this conference, will assume formal obligations, but only the moral obligation to make every effort to rally the largest possible masses for a cause of gigantic significance and exorbitant difficulty.
Believing and knowing how the consciousness of this uniqueness of the task puts pressure on all Party elements loyal to the International, we guarantee with full conviction that this preliminary conference will not be superfluous, that it will succeed in working out a modus vivendi of the Party for that period of time until we can create a legitimate all-party conference or, even better, an all-party congress.
Perhaps the editors of the newspaper Nashe Slovo, which combines representatives of Mensheviks and Bolsheviks of all varieties, will decide to take the initiative in this idea? After all, it would never occur to anyone now to try to confuse our proposal with some kind of chicane legal sophisms that are not justified in any way in In this case, by looking back and fears, in general, by all the legacies of antiquity, the ashes of which must be shaken off as soon as possible?
We know that in the old factions, not completely disarmed by the catastrophe, a lot of distrust has accumulated towards each other and that they are separated, so to speak, by whole mountains of rubbish of past misunderstandings. We know that some of this garbage did not always consist of petty nonsense, that once it was the walls and bastions of real political positions: they collapsed and now it is only rubble. The mountains of rubbish however are large. But behind them, behind these now absurd ramparts dividing the united Russian Social-Democracy, other forces have accumulated, forces tending to merge.
Listening and looking closely at what is happening in the Menshevik camp and in the Bolshevik camp, we note with joyful excitement that here and there the idea of an international revolutionary rebuff to the reactionary forces is strong and is growing stronger, and moreover rebuff in a practical, active form adapted to the conditions of the times.
Let these streams of energy, naturally rolling towards the same channel, take down the mountains of garbage and merge. In the future, we must try by all means to contribute to the elimination of various misunderstandings that have lost their living soul, which roam like ghosts, confusing the living forces. We must try as often as possible to push these living forces among themselves, to reveal their almost complete identity as conclusively as possible. On this road, sooner or later we shall come to the recognition of the profound and genuine unity of the international Social-Democrats in Russia at the present time in the face of their most important and foremost task.
Or maybe these efforts are not needed? Maybe the obstacles are not as great as our imagination, still in captivity of the past, draws them to us? Perhaps the proposal of the conference, in the form in which we are now doing it, will immediately find a lively response in all the factions of the R.S.D.R.P.?
If so, then so much the better. Neither the signer of these lines, nor his comrades close to him, want to pose as a third faction of some kind of specialist peacekeepers who stand out against the background of people of discord, we want nothing more than the soonest united Social Democrats in the terrible hour that has struck for them and friendly work all its currents, all groups, all individuals over the solemn and difficult historical task,
We expect from the factions of our Party, from its various representatives, a response to this appeal of ours.
Warriors.