The Proletarian Revolution in Russia/Part 2/Chapter 8
VIII
I
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM
The State of Affairs in the Socialist International
The international duty of the Russian working class has become very evident in these days.
We see not only perfectly inactive people but even chauvinists calling themselves internationalists, men like Messrs. Plekhanov and Potresoff, even Kerensky himself. This imposes upon the proletarian party a stem obligation to draw a clear, accurate line of cleavage between lip internationalism and active internationalism.
Mere appeals to the workers of all lands, professions of internationalist faith, direct or veiled attempts to organize a progressive series of proletarian movements in the various countries at war, frantic efforts to bring about agreements between the Socialists of the belligerent countries on the subject of the revolutionary struggle, Socialistic campaigns for peace propaganda, etc. all that, when we consider its actual value regardless of the honesty of the prime movers of such enterprises is just hot air naive sentimentalism, which can be cleverly used by chauvinists to deceive the masses in an underhand way.
The French social-patriots, the government Socialists, most adroit and best grounded in parliamentary juggling, have broken all records for sonorous and melodious manifestoes and internationalist phraseology, coupled with the baldests betrayal of Socialism and internationalism; for they have accepted positions in a cabinet waging an imperialistic war, they have voted for all credits or loans (as Cheidse, Skobeleff, Tseretelli and Stekloff have been doing recently in Russia) and opposed the social struggle in their own country.
Good people often forget the cruel, savage paraphernalia of a world-wide imperialistic war. Phrases and naive sentimental desires are impotent.
There is only one way of being a genuine internationalist: to strain all our energies in an endeavor to develop the revolutionary movement and speed the revolutionary struggle in our own land, to support that struggle in every way, by propaganda, sympathy, material aid, and support only that struggle, in every country without exception. Everything else is a snare and a delusion.
The international Socialist and working class movements the world over have in the course of the war split into three groups. Whoever understands their tendencies, has analyzed them closely and still deserts the fight for real active internationalism, is a weakling and a fraud.
1.—Social-patriots, that is, Socialists in words and chauvinists in fact, who agree to defend their fatherland in an imperialistic war and particularly in this imperialistic war. These men are our class enemies. They have gone over to the bourgeois camp. They count among their numbers the majority of Socialist leaders in every nation. Plekhanov & Co in Russia, Scheidemann in Germany, Renaudel, Guesde and Sembat in France, Bissolati & Co. in Italy, Hyndman, the Fabians and the Laborites in England, Branting & Co. in Sweden, Troelstra and his party in Holland, Stauning and his party in Denmark, Victor Berger[1] and other defenders of the fatherland in America, etc.
2.—The second group, that might be called the center, is hesitating between social-patriotism and actual internationalism. These people swear by all that is holy that they are Marxists, that they are internationalists, that they are for peace, for exerting pressure upon the government, for presenting all sorts of demands that show the desire of the nation for peace, they are peace propagandists and want a peace without annexations and they want peace with the social-patriots. The center is for union and against any sort of shism. The center is the heaven of petty bourgeois phrases of lip internationalism, of cowardly opportunism, of compromise with the social-patriots. The fact is that the center is not convinced of the necessity of a revolution against the government of its own country; it does not preach that kind of revolution; it does not wage an incessant fight for the revolution, and it resorts to the lowest, super-Marxist dodges to get the difficulty.
The social-patriots are the enemies of our class, they are bourgeois in the midst of the labor movement. They represent layers or groups of the working class which have been practically bought by the bourgeois through better wages, positions of honor, etc., and which help their bourgeoisie to exploit and oppress smaller and weaker nations, and take part in the division of capitalistic spoils.
The members of the center group are routine worshipers, eaten up by the gangrene of legality, corrupted by the parliamentary comedy, bureaucrats accustomed to nice sinecures and steady jobs. Historically and economically, they do not represent any special stratum of society; they only represent the transition from the old-fashioned labor movement as it was from 1871 to 1914, which rendered inestimable services to the proletariat through its slow, continued, systematic work of organization in a large, very large field, to the new movement which was objectively necessary at the time of the first world-wide war of Imperialism, and which has inaugurated the social-revolutionary era.
The main leader and representative of the center is Karl Kautsky, who dominated the second International (from 1889 to 1914), who has been responsible for the complete downfall of Marxism, who has showed an unherd-of lack of principles and the most pitiful hesitancy and betrayed the cause since August, 1914.
Among these centrists are Kautsky, Haase, Ledebour, and the so-called labor group in the Reichstag; in France, Longuet, Pressman and the so-called minority; in England, Philip Snowden, Ramsay MacDonald and other leaders of the Independent Labor Party, and a part of the British Socialist Party; Morris Hillquit and many others in the United States; Turati, Treves, Modigliani and others in Italy, Robert Grimm and others in Switzerland; Victor Adler & Co. in Austria; the Mensheviki, Axelrod, Martov, Cheidse, Tseretelli and others in Russia.
It goes without saying that some individual members of these groups go unconsciously from social-patriotism to centerism, and vice versa. Every Marxist knows, however, that classes retain their character regardless of the free migration of people from one group to another, in spite of all the efforts which are made to blend class or harmonize tendencies.
3.—The third, truly internationalist, is most accurately represented by the so-called "Zimmerwald Left."[2]
It is characterized by its complete schism from the social-patriots and the centrists. It has been waging a relentless war against its own imperialistic government and its own imperialistic bourgeoisie. Its motto is: "Our worst enemy is at home." It has fought ruthlessly the nice and respectable social pacifist's phraseology, for those people who are social pacifists in words are bourgeois pacifists in deeds; bourgeois pacifists dream of an everlasting peace which shall not be preceded by the overthrow of capitalist domination. They have been employing every form of sophistry to demonstrate the impossibility, the inopportunities of keeping up the proletarian class struggle or of starting a proletarian Social Revolution in connection with the present war.
The members of this group in Germany are known as the Spartacus or International Group, to which Karl Liebknecht belongs. Karl Liebknecht is the best known representative of that tendency and of the new real, proletarian international.
Karl Liebknecht called upon the workingmen and soldiers of Germany to turn their guns upon their own government. Karl Liebknecht did that openly from the tribune of parliament, the Reichstsag. Then he went out on Potsdamer Platz, one of the largest public squares in Berlin, with a batch of unlawfully printed proclamations to head a demonstration that shouted: "Down with the government." He was arrested and sentenced to hard labor. He is now serving his term in a German jail, like hundreds if not thousands of other real Socialists of Germany who have been jailed for waging war against war.
Karl Liebknecht attacked mercilessly in his speeches and his writings not only the Plekhanovs and the Potresofs of Germany (Scheidemann, Legien, David, etc), but also the centrists of Germany, the German Cheidses and Tseretellis, men like Kautsky, Haase, Ledebour and others.
Karl Liebknecht and his friend. Otto Ruhle, alone among 110 Socialist deputies in the Reicfastag, disregarded the party discipline, destroyed the harmonioas union with the centrists and the chauvinists, and fought everybody. Liebknecht alone really represents Socialism, the proletarian cause, the proletarian revolution. The rest of the German Social Democracy, to quote the apt words of Rosa Luxemburg, also a member and leader of the Spartacus Group, is "a stinking carrion.'"[3]
Another group of real internationalists in Germany is gathered around the Bremen paper. The Workers' Politics.
In France those who stand closest to real internationalism are Loriot and his friends (Bourderon and Merrheim have gone over to the social-pacifist group), Henri Guilbeaux, who publishes in Switzerland a paper called Demain. In England, the supporters of the review. The Trade Unionist, and some of the members of the British Socialist Party and of the Independent Labor Party (for instance, William Russell, who has openly separated himself from the leaders who are betraying Socialism), the Scotch teacher and Socialist, MacLean, who has been sentenced to jail by the bourgeois government for his revolutionary activity against the war; hundreds of English Socialists are in jail for the same offense. They are the only real internationalists. In the United States, the Socialist Labor Party and certain elements of the opportunistic Socialist Party which began in 1917 to publish the paper The Internationalist.[4]
In Holland, the party of the "Tribunists," publishing the daily paper The Tribune (Anton Pannekoek, Herman Gorter, Weinkopp, and Henriette Roland-Holst, who, a centrist at Zimmerwald, now has, however, joined our ranks). In Sweden, the section of the younger men and of the left with such representatives as Lindhagen, Ture, Nerman, Karlston, Strom and Z. Heglund, who at Zimmerwald was personally active in .the organization of the Zimmerwald Left, and who is now serving a jail term for his activity against the war. In Denmark, Trier and his friends who have left the purely bourgeois Social Democratic Party headed by Minister Stauning. In Bulgaria, the simon-pure. In Italy, Constantino Lazzari, secretary of the Socialist Party, and Serrati, editor of the central organ Avanti. In Poland, Karl Radek, Ganetzky and other leaders of the Social Democracy, forming the Kraev group, Rosa Luxemburg, Tyshka and others forming the "main group" of the Social Democracy. In Switzerland, the "left," which put through the referendum of January, 1917, in order to fight the social-patriots and the center, and which at the session of the Socialist Party in the canton of Zurich on February 11, 1917, carried a revolutionary resolution against the war. In Austria, the youthful friends of Friedrich Adler, whose, activity manifested itself partly through the "Karl Marx Club," now closed by the reactionary Austrian government, which imprisoned Adler for his heroic but ill-considered attempt upon the life of Premier Stuergh.
We shall not bother with the slight differences of opinion among the members of the "left." We are only interested in the general tendency as such. It is by no means easy to remain a real internationalist during a ruthless imperialistic war. Those who can do it are rare, but in them repose all the hopes of Socialism; they alone are the leaders of the masses, not the corrupters of the masses.
The differences between reformists and revolutionists in the ranks of the Social Democrats and of Socialists in general cannot but undergo a positive change in the midst of an imperialistic war. People, however, who simply present "demands" to bourgeois governments with a view to "the conclusion of peace" or "the manifestation of the nations desire for peace," are mere reformists. For the problem of war can only be solved by revolutionary means. Nothing will end the war, nothing usher in a really democratic peace, not a peace imposed by violence, nothing will free the nations from the conspiracy of greedy capitalists fattening on the war, nothing but a proletarian revolution.
We can and we must demand all those reforms from the bourgeois governments, but it is only a mere reformist who would expect that type of men, fettered by thousands of capitalistic ties, to break those ties; until those ties are broken all the talk of war against war will remain empty, deceitful prattle.
II
The Fiasco of the Zimmerwald International
The Zimmerwald International assumed from the very first a hesitating, Kautsky-like "center" attitude which compelled the Left to stand by itself, to separate itself from the rest and to come forth with its own manifesto, which was published in Switzerland in Russian, in German and in French.
The fatal weakness of the Zimmerwald International and which brought about its fiasco (from a political and intellectual viewpoint it was already a fiasco), was its hesitancy, its lack of decision, when it came to the practical and all-important question of breaking completely with the social-patriots and with the social-patriot international headed by Vandervdde and Huysmans at The Hague.
We Russians do not as yet realize that the majority of the Zimmerwald International was dominated by Kautsky. But this is an absolute fact which can not be minimized and of which Western Europe is fully aware. A chauvinist, an extreme German chauvinist, Heilman, editor of the arch-chauvinist Chemnitz Gazette and contributor of the arch-chauvinist Bell (a Social Democrat, of course, and an ardent partisan of the Social Democratic unity) was compelled to acknowledge in writing that the "center" (or Kautskians) and the Zimmerwald majority were one and the same thing.
By the end of 1916 or the beginning of 1917 this had become an admitted fact. In spite of the condemnation of social-pacifism pronounced by the Kienthal Manifesto, the whole Zimmerwald right, the Zimmerwald majority, went over to social-pacifism. Kautsky & Co. crossed the bridge in January and February, 1917; then followed in succession the Frenchmen Bourderòn and Merrheim, who cast their votes with the social-pacifists for a pacifist resolution of the Socialist Party in December, 1916, and of the General Confederation of Labor (the national organization of French labor unions), also in December, 1916; Turati & Co. in Italy, where the entire party assumed a pacifist attitude, Turati personally delivering himself (and not by accident) of a few nationalistic sentences in which he praised the imperialistic war in a speech on December 17, 1916; the chairman of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences, Robert Grimm, joined hands with the chauvinists of his own party, Gruelich, Pfluger, Gustave Muller and others opposed to the real internationalists.
At two conferences of Zimmerwaldists of various countries, held in January and February of 1917, this double-faced attitude of the Zimmerwald majority was stigmatized by the "left" internationalists of several countries, by Munzerberg, secretary of the internationalist organization of the Young People's Socialist groups and editor of the fine internationalist publication, International Youth, by Zinoviev, chairman of the executive committee of our party, by Karl Radek of the Polish Social Democratic Party (the Kraev movement), by Max Hartstein, a German Social Democrat and member of the "Spartacus Group."
The Russian proletariat has done much. Nowhere on earth has the working class developed as much revolutionary energy as it has in Russia. But much is expected from those who have accomplished much. We cannot remain with our feet in the Zimmerwald mud. There is nothing to expect from the Zimmerwald Kautskians, more or less allied with the chauvinistic International of Plekhanov and Scheidemann.
We must break away from this sort of International. We must at once organize a new, revolutionary, proletarian International, or rather, acknowledge frankly and fearlessly that the new International is organized and working. This will be the International of those who are internationalists in their deeds, and whom I have enumerated in a foregoing paragraph. They alone represent the revolution, the masses of internationalists, and they have not tried to corrupt the masses.
Even if there are few Socialists of that type, let every Russian worker ask himself how many conscious revolutionists there were in Russia on the eve of the March Revolution in 1917.
It is not so much a question of numbers; it is a question of expressing correctly the ideas and the policy of the truly revolutionary proletariat. Never mind about "proclaiming" internationalism; the essential thing is for us to be, even when the times are most trying, real internationalists in our deeds.
We shall not allow ourselves to be deceived by agreements and international congresses. International relations will remain, as long as this imperialistic war lasts, held as in a vise by the military dictatorship of the imperialistic bourgeoisie. Remember that even the republican Milyukov, who had to submit to the "auxiliary-government" of the Council of Workers' Delegates, would not allow into Russia, in April, 1917, Franz Platen, the Swiss Socialist, secretary of the party and internationalist, a member of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences, although Platen was married to a Russian woman, although he had taken part in the Revolution of 1905 in Riga, and for that offense had served a term in a Russian jail, and who having given security to the Czar's government for his release, wanted that security returned to him. Well, if the republican Milyukov could do such a thing, in April, 1917, and in Russia, then we can see how much stock we may take in the promises and declarations made by the bourgeoisie on the subject of peace without annexations. How about the arrest of Trotzky by the English Government? How about Martov being refused permission to leave Switzerland; how about the attempt made to lure him to England, where he would have shared Trotzky's fate?
Let us beware of illusions and of self-deception.
To wait for international conferences and congresses is simply to betray internationalism. Real international Socialists are not allowed to meet at Stockholm, not even to send letters, in spite of the censorship which can be exercised on all writings.
Let us not wait, let us organize at once a third International and hundreds of Socialists imprisoned in England and in Germany will heave a sigh of relief, thousands and thousands of German workers, who are now trying to organize strikes and demonstrations, will read in forbidden sheets about our decision, about our fraternal confidence in Karl Liebknecht (and in him alone among their Socialist leaders), about the decision we have taken to fight now the so-called "revolutionary defense" group; they will read all this and it will inject new strength into their revolutionary internationalism.
Much is expected from him who has accomplished much. There is no land on earth which is as free as Russia is now. Let us make use of this freedom not to prop up the bourgeoisie or the bourgeois "revolutionary defense," but to organize a third International, bold and honest and proletarian, the kind which Liebknecht would have, an International which will set its face boldly against all traitors, all social-patriots and the vacillating people of the "center."
After what I have just said, I need not waste any words to explain that a union of the Social Democrats of Russia is impossible. Rather stay alone, as Liebknecht did, that is, remain with the revolutionary proletariat, than to entertain even for a minute any thought of a union with the Mensheviki, with Cheidse and Tseretelli, who are willing to join hands with the Potresofs who voted for the war credit in the Executive Committee of the Council of Workers' Delegates, and who have gone over to the "revolutionary defense" group.
Let the dead bury their dead.
Whosoever wants to help hesitating souls should stop hesitating himself.
III
The Communist Party
I am coming to the last question which is: what shall we call our party? We would call it the Communist Party, using Marx' and Engels' terminology.[5]
We are Marxists and our policy is based upon the Communist Manifesto which has been perverted and disregarded by the "Social Democracy" on two important points:
1.—As workingmen have no country, the "defense of the fatherland" in an imperialistic war is a betrayal of Socialism.
2.—The Marxian theory of government has been perverted by the second International.
The term "Social Democracy" is unscientific, as Marx explained in 1875, and Engels, in a more popular form, in 1894. Mankind can only pass from Capitalism into Socialism, that is, public ownership of the means of production and the distribution of products according to individual work. Our party looks farther ahead than that: Socialism is bound sooner or later to ripen into Communism, whose banner bears the motto: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
That is the first reason. Here is my second: The second part of the term "Social Democracy" is scientifically wrong. Democracy is only a form of authority. We Marxists are opposed to every form of authority.
The leaders of the second International (1889–1914), Plekhanov, Kautsky and their ilk, perverted and debased Marxism. The difference between Marxism and Anarchism is that Marxism admits the necessity of some sort of authority during the transition from Capitalism to Socialism; not the kind of authority represented by a democratic, bourgeois republic and its parliamentary system, but the kind of authority represented by the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Councils of Workers' Delegates of 1905 and 1917.
There is a third reason: Life and the Revolution have already established in a concrete way (although in a form which is still weak and embryonic) a new type of authority which does not seem to be authority in the proper sense of the word. It is a question of the masses taking action and no longer of leaders indulging in theories.
Authority in the usual sense of the word is the power exercised over the masses by a group of armed men distinct from the nation. The new authority, which is now in process of being born, is also a real authority, because we, too, need groups of armed men necessary to preserve order, necessary to crush out ruthlessly all attempts at a counter-revolution, all attempts at keeping in power a Czarist, bourgeois government. But our newly-born authority isn't authority in the proper sense of the word, because those groups of armed men found in many parts of Russia are the masses themselves, the whole nation, not simply groups allowed to rule above the nation, not groups distinct from the nation, privileged individuals practically immovable.
Let us look forward, not backward; let us look away from the democracy of the usual bourgeois type, which enforces the domination of the bourgeoisie by means of an antiquated, monarchistic machinery of government, the police, the army and the bureaucracy. Let us look forward to the advent of the newly-born democracy, which has already ceased to be a democracy, for democracy means, the people's authority and the armed masses of the nation could not exercise an authority over themselves.
The word democracy cannot be scientifically applied to the Communist Party. Since March, 1917, the word democracy is simply a shackle fastened upon the revolutionary nation and preventing it from establishing boldly, freely and regardless of all obstacles a new form of power: the Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates, harbinger of the abolition of every form of authority.
There is a fourth reason: the international position of Socialism. Its position is no longer what it was between the years 1871 and 1914, when Marx and Engels adopted as a makeshift the inaccurate, opportunistic word "Social Democracy."
In the days after the defeat of the Paris Commune what was mostly needed was slow work of organization and enlightenment. Nothing else was possible. Anarchists were then, as they are now, theoretically, economically and politically wrong. The Anarchists, who did not understand the world situation, selected the wrong moment: the workers of England had been perverted by imperialistic gains, the Commune had been beaten in Paris, the National bourgeois movement was victorious in Germany, and feudal Russia was still sleeping the sleep of centuries. Marx and Engels gauged the hour accurately; they understood the international situaiton; they saw that the Social Revolution would have to go slowly at first.
We must in turn understand the peculiarities and the duties of our day. Let us not imitate the pseudo-Marxianists of whom Marx himself said: "I sowed dragons' teeth and I reaped fleas."
The natural development of Capitalism, evolving into Imperialism has brought forth an imperialistic war. This war has brought mankind to the brink of destruction, jeopardized all civilization, ruined and brutalized millions of human beings. There is no way out of it except through a proletarian revolution. And just when that revolution is beginning, when it is taking its first steps, awkward, weak, diffident, leaning too much as yet on the bourgeoisie, at that moment the majority of the Social Democratic leaders, of the Social Democratic parliamentarians, of the Social Democratic papers, in a word all those who could spur the masses to action, or at least the majority of them are betraying Socialism, are selling Socialism, are going to fight the battles of their national bourgeoisie.
The masses are distracted and baffled by talk and deceived by their leaders. And should we aid and abet that deception by retaining the old and worn out party name, which is as spent as the second International?
It may be that many workers understand the real meaning of Social Democracy, but we must draw the line between what it means objectively and what it means subjectively.
Subjectively those workers are Social Democrats, true leaders of the proletarian masses. Objectively, the world situation is such that the old name of our party helps fool the masses and retards the onward march. Every day, in every paper, in every parliamentary group, the masses see leaders, that is, people whose voice carries farther, whose acts are in evidence, who call themselves Social Democrats and Socialists, and who join hands with the betrayers of Socialism, the social-patriots, who are trying to cash the promissory note issued by the Social Democracy.
Are there any reasons against the new names? Shall we mix with the communistic Anarchists? Why are we not afraid of mixing with the social-nationalists, the social liberals, the social patriots? The laboring masses, some say, are accustomed to their Social Democratic Party, they love it. That is the only reason for retaining the old name and this reason goes counter to the teachings of Marxism, disregards the revolutionary tasks of to-morrow, the objective position of Socialism the world over, the shameful fiasco of the second International, and the injury done to the cause of millions of proletarians who are "also Social Democrats." This reason is based solely on laziness and love of routine. We want to recast the world. We want to end this world war waged by imperialists in which millions of people are involved and millions of dollars are invested, a war which cannot be ended in a truly democratic way without the greatest proletarian revolution in history.
And here we are hesitating. Here we are, keeping on our backs the same old dirty shirt. It is high time we should cast off the dirty shirt and put on a new, clean one.
- ↑ Victor Berger is against America's participation in the war, but he it still a social-patriot in the meaning of Lenin's term, having repeatedly justified the majority government Socialists of Germany, advocated three years ago the American invasion and conquest of Mexico and urged a larger navy for "national defence." His attitude against America's participation in the war is determined by peculiar motives of hit own, having nothing in common with revolutionary international Socialism.—L. C. F.
- ↑ The declaration of war on August 4. 1914, swept organized Socialism into a support of the government, in Germany, France, Austria and England. After a year of war the majority Socialists retained their pro-government attitude, and the minority determined upon initiating some sort of international action. The Socialist Party of Italy, which opposed Italy's entry into war and after war was declared acted and still acts against it, on May 15, 1915, decided through its Executive Committee to take the initiative in calling an international conference of Socialist parties or groups and labor organizations opposed to the war and of whom it could be assumed that they would favor common action in resuming and carrying on the proletarian class struggle against the war. The Conference met in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, September 15, 1915. Italy, Russia, Rumania and Bulgaria were officially represented by party delegates; from Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland only groups or minorities were represented. The majority of the delegates agreed on a 60cial-pacifist resolution, a resolution obviously a compromise and which did not break completely with the dominant Socialism. A minority, however, dissatisfied with the spirit and resolution of the Conference, broke away and adopted a revolutionary declaration of their own. Shortly after, another Conference was held at Kienthal. Another "Zimmerwald" Conference was held in Stockholm, September 5–7, at which the Independent Socialist Party of Germany, which had refused to meet in the Stockholm Conference together with the Government Socialists of Germany, the Austrian minority, etc., and the Socialist Propaganda League of the United States were represented. The resolution adopted was much more radical than the one adopted at Zimmerwald. The Government Socialists were completely condemned: "Only a peace won and shaped by the Socialist proletariat through decisive mass actions can permanently prevent the renewal of the world-wide massacre. A capitalistic peace, no matter how it might be shaped, would lead to die shifting upon the shoulders of the working masses of the immense war debts in every country. … The only guarantee against a return of the world war is the social republic. … The hour has struck for beginning the great common battle in all countries for the bringing of peace, for the liberation of the peoples through die Socialist proletariat. The means for this is the international mass strike."—L. C. F.
- ↑ When the "minority" in the German Social Democracy, captained by Kautsky and Haase, broke away and organized the Independent Socialist Party, Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and others refused to join the new party, considering it moderate and compromising, and organized in a group of their own, a sort of German expression of theoretical Bolshevism.—L. C. F.
- ↑ Since April, 1917, The New International, edited by Louis C. Fraina, succeeded The Internationalist. It is the official organ of the Socialist Propaganda League, the American organization of the Sociaism of the "left." The New International favored the cause of the Bolsheviki months before their triumph, at a time when the Socialist Party paper, the New York Call, was editorially stigmatizing the Bolsheviki and Lenin as "anarchists" while the Socialist Propaganda League was the only American Socialist organization to approve and agitate for the armistice proposal issued by the Soviet government in November, 1917.—L. C. F.
- ↑ In February, 1918, the Bolsheviki, formerly simply a faction of the Social Democratic Labor Party, organized independently as the Communist Party.—L. C. F.