Lenin and the Russian workers' Revolution Fighting for internationalism

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What did Lenin really for? In previous parts series, Andrew Hornung described his ideas and activity up to 1912. In this third article they look at Lenin's ideas on the right of nations to self-determination and on the First World War.

analysis and realism with rigid adherence to principle." of hrilliant articles which whnle litarature of MaryMuch of Lenin's theoretical work at this time was focused on the național and colonial question. One of Lenin's major contributions to Marxism was his clarification of this. Russia had rightly been called the 'prison house of nations' with non-Russian nationalities outnumbering Russians in the Tsar's empire. What policy should Russian Marxists adopt towards Russia's subjęct nations?

They took a 'consistently democratic' stand, advocating self-determination for nations and for fragments of peoples who felt nationally oppressed. The preservation of existing state boundaries was no concern of the working class.

Lenin insister that the road to international working class unity lay through the fullest rights of nations to a separate existence at will. National oppression poisoned the relations of workers in both the oppressed and oppressor nations. It was imperative that the revolutionary party of the oppressor nation accept and fight for the national rights of the oppressed nations. Conversely, the revolutionary parties of the workers of the oppressed nations and peoples would oppose the chauvinism and narrow national exclusivenéss of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie of their nations, fighting in this waj for international working class unity.

In contrast to this, the Marxists of that other prison house of nations, the Austrian Empire, redefined the right to self-determination of nations as the right ter main multil fanadam within the borders of the exisung state, wnicn were dim ma -m a the the one regarded as sacrosanct. Lenin pointed out that this policy of 'cultural' national autonomy' merely perpetuated nationalism, and in no way helped international working class unity.

Lenin wrote a number of pamphlets and articles to combat the Austrians on the right and also an ultraleft tendency personified maintained that, for example, recognition of Poland's right to self-determination was a retrograde step because Poland and Russia had been economically integrated.

This question eventually fused with the problem of he world-wide struggle against imperialism. Lenin demonstrated that it was precisely in the period of he highest stages of captalism that there would be * whole wave of wars of national liberation against imperialism. He argued that revolutionaries everywhere, and especially those in the imperialist countries, must support the oppressed nations and stand for their right to break out of the empires which oppressed them and set up their own states.

Admitting that political independence would limited by the imperialist world economic relations now dominant, Lenin argued that the answer to the economic domination of imperialism was workers' revolution on a world scale, but consistent democracy on the national question was an irreplaceable part of the programme of socialism. His writings of that time are full of denunciations of those who dia not understand that the right of nations to self-determination would still be a vital issue even after the socialist revolution:

Today, when the Stalinist USSR, with about half its population non-Russians, is the largest prison-house of nations on earth, and the lack of national self-determination is a dominating feature of life in countries like Poland, the national question is once again one of the most explosive issues in Russia and Eastern Europe. Lenin's policy on the national question will play a powerful role in the political revolution against Stalinism there.

The national question took on new sharpness as World War 1 loomed.

Lenin had participated in the congresses of the international socialist movement, though he had concentrated heavily on Russian affairs. Now, in 1914, when the World War broke out, the whole international socialist movement splintered: into nationalist sections. Instead of, the international brotherhood of the working class against war to which the International had repeatedly pledged itself, the outbreak of war produced fratricidal slaughter.

The same artillery fire that lit up the corpse-littered battlefields now highlighted the real situation within the international labour movement, which had become rotten with careerism and reformism. Social •Democrats became "social chauvinists' overnight, supporting their national governments in the. war. Jules Guesde, a leader of the French socialists, even became Minister of War.

Russia was one of the few countries where the majority of socialists did not Lenin enring fatherland' nere a si kanan wing emerg Plekhanov.

For Leni crushing ar blow was th man Socia which also representing ion voters, w ively to cha shocked Le fact that Kai revered 'PoI and the ma: had regarder for the pre cades, refus words of the left, led by I Karl Liebl enemy Is a the imperial civil war' began to rat: renegades.

Kautsky's masked by disarmament drew from L ombined concre.

'defend the though even anial chian arimint ed, headed by in the most id unexpected le fate of Ger1 Democracy, supported the var. This party, ; over four millvent over massuvinism. What enin. was the rl Kautsky, the ›e of Marxism' n whom Lenin d as his teacher vious two deed to echo the з revolutionary luxemburg and knecht: 'The t home! Turn list war into a Instead, he ionalise for the betrayal, chatter about t conferences, enin a number exposed the social chauvin- R5 Д ДАИ ISUO who i-da isolaadion thnan schn had been pillars of 'Marxist orthodoxy' during the debates with the 'revisionists' like Bernstein.

Now Lenin turned to a complete examination of the whole of the preceding period of the Marxist labour movement. He set about digging down to the very roots of the rottenness that had corrupted both the theory and practice of the parties of the Second International.

He bitterly rejected and combatted the shallow programme of the Kautskys that after the war they should "reconstruct the Second International' He exposed how the daily life of the Second International parties had led them gradually to accommodate and intermesh with the bourgeois state, much as the liquidators had tended to in Russia. He reworked his way through the ТА ДІАЛЮТАЛТІ АТАРТА _vTITAT ism, relating it to the whole experience the elass vusumunan WWUI"

He uncovered and, in a series of famous pamphlets like "The State and Revolution' (1917), proved that the 'orthodox' Marxists like Kautsky had for years falsified, vulgarised and bowdlerised the real teachings. of Marxism on the state, the class struggle and the proletarian revolution. Implacably Lenin struggled to understand, expose. and eliminate from the labour movement the baseness, loathsomeness and vileness of social-chauvinism and 'Kautskyism,.

This was the only way to cleanse the labour inovement and rebuild a working class international on firmer foundations. Gradually, small groups of revolutinnariac haran tn mobo contact and prepare the revival. A conterence OI notional • A revolutionary socialists was held in Zimmerwald in Switzerland in 1915, and another in Kienthal in 1916.

While the ravages of war seemed to stifle all political life, its very barbarism and the conditions it imposed on the working masses both at the front and at home provided the leaven for revolution. As Engels, predicting the world war as long before as 1887, had said: 'Ficht tn ten million transe. soldiers will mutually massacre one another and in so doing devour the whole of Europe... Only one result is absolutely certain: general exhaustion and the establishment of the conditions for the ultimate victory of the working class"

In Russia at the outbreak of war what had been a growing movement of the working class was suddenly stifled. The Bolshevik •deputies in the Duma were arrested for opposing the war. But within a short period, the collapse, the slaughter, the famine of the war revived the movement of opposition of the working class.

On Feb. 22 1917 a wage dispute at the giant Putilov oft & lin kett wrad a piked the week had generated a mass movement of striking workers supported by mutineering troops and sailors. The slogans demanding higher wages were soon replaced by ones demanding 'Bread' "Down with the autocracy, and 'down with the war'.

The leadership of the movement was quickly taken over by the leaders of the Left in the old Duma, Kerensky, Chkheidze and Skobolev. The Soviet that had been so important in the revolution of 1905 was reborn., And, as a symbolic portent of the coming situation of dual power, it met in the Tauride Palace (the parliamentary buildings) on the 27th, the day the Tsar dissolved the Duma.

A Provisional Government was soon called into office with Prince Lvov as Prime Minister. But on the same day the Soviet issued its Order No.1 urging the setting up of more Soviets, particularly in the army and navy, and instructing workers, soldiers and sailors not to obey any orders unless countersigned by the Soviet.

Lenin arrived in Russia, in Petrograd itself, in April. He was greeted by Chkheidze, then the chairwarned teei about the warnea Lenin dangers of disunity now that the democratic revolution could be fulfilled. But Lenin ignored these pompous, yet anxious, words.

He turned to the people gather around and announced: "Dear comrades, soldiers and workers. The piratical imperialist war is beginning to become a civil war throughout Europe... The Russian revolution accomplished by you has prepared the way and opened up a new epoch. Long live the world-wide socialist revolution"

The Bolshevik leaders there at the Finland Station to meet him were shocked at what Lenin had said. Some of them must have thought he had gone mad or — as indeed he had - gone over to Trotsky's view that the Russian revolution must take the course of combining the democratic and socialist revolutions under the leadership of the working class.

Lenin, who had the marvellous capacity to combine concrete analysis and realism in every situation with rigid adherence to principle, had seen the possibilities of full proletarian victory. Really, he merely developed previously worked-out ideas on the motive forces of the Russian Revolution to their logical conclusion.

Continued next week

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November