Editorial
First Published: in Kommunist. Ezenedel'nyi zurnal ekonomiki, politiki i obsenstvennosti. Organ Moskovskago Oblastnogo Byuro RKP (bol'sevikov) [The Communist. Weekly Magazine for Economics, Politics and Social Questions. Organ of the Moscow District Office of the RCP(B)], No. 3, May 16, 1918.
Source: Internationalist Communist Tendency.
Online Version: Marxist Internet Archive 2021
HTML Markup: Zdravko Saveski
The time of the ultimate test for the workers' revolution has come upon us. Terrible battles against its mortal enemies are fast approaching. The anguish of imminent losses and miserable worry for tomorrow has set our hearts trembling. Yet, at the same time, in the heart of the proletariat, awareness of its strength and determination is growing; the sickly time of concessions is over, we are entering anew into open struggle against our enemies, overcoming temporary and partial setbacks, advancing towards a near victory. What has altered in the political situation since the start of May, and what changes have really taken place? The right-wing majority of the Party, the part most rotted by the gangrene of opportunism, declares that there have been no changes or that they have been negligible.
Two immense changes revealed themselves at the end of April and the beginning of May: firstly, the change in attitude on the part of German imperialism regarding Russia and the classes that clash with it; secondly, the change in attitude on the part of our class enemy, the Russian bourgeoisie.
For German imperialism, the change consists in this: a shift from the policy of slowly suffocating the Russian Revolution to slitting its throat directly. German imperialism is still struggling in two ways against the red danger in Russia; it continues its military occupation and locks the Soviet Republic in an iron vice by occupying the most important military and economic zones; at the same time, it directs its weapons against the workers' revolution, that is, its internal class enemies, and thus races to restore the bourgeois order in Russia.
But before 28 April 1918, it relied on the petty-bourgeois enemy of the Russian Revolution, evidently taking advantage of the national interest. It invaded the Ukrainian provinces disguised as the petty-bourgeois and nationalist Rada. Since 28 April, it has abandoned this game; the Rada was dissolved; German imperialism has since relied directly on the principal forces of the counter-revolution: the landowners, the big capitalists and the kulaks. It formed a new government which posed as "Ukrainian" and opposed the Soviet Republic as an alternative State power, that of "independent" Ukraine. In reality, this new power, composed of representatives of the (non-nationalist) counter-revolutionary parties, is nothing but the executive committee of the ruling classes of all of Russia. Ukraine is becoming part of a united Russia. It is therefore not a case of "Great Russia" and "Ukraine" opposing each other, but rather of two regions in a single country, two governments and class relations opposing each other.
Two class dictatorships oppose each other, since in Ukraine there is now a dictatorship of the Hetman Skoropadskyi[1] protected by German bayonets. The class character of this dictatorship is the domination of landowners and big capital.
Since then, Russia has been split in two: into Red Russia and White Russia. At first glance, it is obvious that the two regions thus constituted cannot live side by side. One must consume the other. Here in fact the two class forces which are mortal enemies are incarnated in two different powers.
From that moment on, Ukraine will become something worse than the Vendée.[2] It will not be as in the regions of Don or Kuban,[3] where dispatches of White Guards and battalions of officers formed alongside peasant Cossacks and the free and armed labourers, the latter ending up hunting the former. It will not be as in Don, where Tsarist generals were forced to pretend to establish the republic and disguise themselves as democrats. This is the fortified camp of the counter-revolution protected by German bayonets. All the forces of the Russian counter-revolution concentrate on it freely. The officers, the pupils of the military schools, the saboteurs, the capitalists, the former grand dukes, all of them will come together there and form their battalions freely and in total security.
What has led the German imperialists to form a White government in Russia like that of Finland at all costs?
Their position on the Russian and Western Front has pushed them to it. In the West, the outcome of the war remains undecided despite all their efforts. They have long, hard battles still to fight. The more difficult the struggle on foreign fronts, the more tensions, both economic and political, in their own country. They need to secure bread and raw materials for themselves; they need to put an end to the "contagion" of the German farmers affected by the Russian Revolution; they need to avoid the possibility of a military intervention as a result of the repercussions of the Russian Revolution itself in the West and the creation of a Red Army.
Furthermore, in order to achieve all of this, they had to make use of their mortal enemies and support them with bayonets against the Revolution. In order to aid the former, could they steal Ukrainian bread and raw materials for German gain? The petty-bourgeois Rada made the error of failing to completely restore the apparatus of State oppression and economic exploitation, which they neither knew that they had to, nor could do. But who knew better than the landowners and capitalists how to organise State oppression and economic exploitation? Who hated the workers revolution the most profoundly, fearing for their lives, if not the landowners and the bourgeoisie? So, at the defining moment, the Prussian junkers and the capitalists could rely on them and thus allied themselves with Russian capitalists.
However, the situation on the Eastern Front also pushed the Germans to take certain decisive steps. The expansion of the Soviet Republic has ended. The iron circle of its enemies has tightened from Fort Ino[4] to the Kuban; maybe it will soon reach the Caspian Sea? The North is cut off from its supply of bread, coal, probably iron and petrol as well as its access to the main seas. Now, it is easy to attack it, and easy to break its political relations with it and to rely on Pavlo Skoropadskyi, the successor to the Romanovs.
Such is the immediate tactical plan of the German imperialists, such are their hopes. And as for their friends and agents, the Russian landowners and capitalists, such are their plans and perspectives!
They too have "changed their orientation". Now, the Kiev newspapers sing the praises of the Germans just as they previously did for the "Allies". At the same time, it is true that the centre of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) washes its hands of it; they claim neither involvement nor responsibility. It is not just isolated members of the Kadets who collaborate with the Germans at their risk and peril.[5] It is very probably that these individuals will try at the same time to manouvre with the Allies by persuading them that the Russian bourgeoisie has concluded its "Tilsit Treaty"[6] for the sole purpose of defeating Germany. One thing is now clear: in recent times, the majority of the bourgeoisie has abandoned its dreams of a great power allied to the countries of the Triple Entente. It has changed its political line and replaced its orientation towards a great Russian imperialist power with an internal policy of class domination. Against the workers, even with the Germans - this is its new slogan. Thus, it copies the policy of the French bourgeoisie of 1870[7] and its declaration reveals a great change: the sudden deterioration of the class position of the bourgeoisie and the inevitability of decisive battles.
The clearer the positions of German imperialism and the Russian bourgeoisie, the clearer those of the workers and peasants. After October, it was already clear for the great mass of workers. Now, the last vestiges of class collaboration inside the proletariat have been crushed. The bourgeoisie has thrown down a fatal challenge. Since then, only madmen or traitors and cowards among the working class can speak of reconciliation or a united democratic front. If fatigue and indifference could previously be detected amongst the workers, now the whole proletariat must prepare itself for bitter struggle. Surrender is impossible. The occupation of Ukraine by the Germans and Haidamacks was accompanied by such massacres of workers, such floods of bourgeois terror, that a week or two after the occupation, the workers in the most backwards regions and those supporting the Mensheviks began to revolt in order to pass over to the Bolsheviks. The occupation "educated" the Ukrainian peasants in the same way. It also served indirectly as a lesson to the peasants of neighbouring governments. After receiving the news of the approach of the German troops, the peasants of the Kursk region stood by entire villages, weapons in hand.
The restoration of Ukraine, the formation of a centre of "White Russia" led to a sudden exacerbation of class contradictions. Maybe Hetman Skoropadskyi will at first be master of the terrain. He will try to contain the popular insurrection to aid the German bayonets and the restoration of the State and economic oppression. But the rising of the insurrection is inevitable given the impossibility of overcoming economic distress during a civil war.
This will push Hetman Skoropadskyi and his stooges to rapidly launch a decisive military attack on the North. Just as it is important for the German imperialists to crush the Russian Revolution before its flame spreads to Central Europe, it is important for the occupiers and their Russian servants to crush the revolutionary centre before insurrection erupts in the South and the German army putrefies in Ukraine. Indeed, staying in the trenches is one thing, but staying in confinements in an occupied country in the middle of a revolution is much more dangerous. Staying passive in the trenches leads to demoralisation, but the goal of the class remains hidden and it is especially easy there to maintain discipline. Being a police force in a country that is not waging a war is one thing, but being a force directed against the struggle of the workers and peasants demoralises ten times quicker. This therefore requires decisive action against the Bolshevik oasis whose corrupting influence obliges them to deploy numerous forces.
A decisive collision is inevitable. Lately the Soviet and German troops have never left the front line. Now, the battles will recommence all along this line. The demands of the restitution of Ino and the occupation of Crimea and Taganrog are the premises of the attack by German imperialism and the Russian bourgeoisie against Soviet power.
Previously, the Soviet power arranged a "truce" conceding to German demands by sawing off the branch on which they were perched. Now, this possibility has disappeared. Without accepting battle and without calling the masses to it, there are only two possible outcomes: either surrender immediately to the other power, or, in the fashion of the Rada, become a keeper of seals that endorses all the counter-revolutionary demands of German imperialism.
Today, all the attempts to "manouvre" will in reality only lead to the Soviet Republic's immediate submission to German and Russian Capital. All their demands, even partial ones, will be pernicious. The new occupations, the abandoning of the nationalisation of trade and banks, and all sorts of measures will be steps towards transforming Soviet Power into a Ukrainian Rada: this is what the result will be of the immediate demands of German imperialism. They will all deplete the forces of the working class, reinforce the positions of the bourgeoisie and bring about the defeat of the Revolution.
The orientations of the Soviet policy of our Party must be rectified. In waiting for battle, we must put an end to the policy of hiding our faces and making concessions that disorganise the Revolution. We must openly call the masses to stand up against German imperialism and its stooges in the Kadets and Octobrists; we must organise the struggle against them.
So, should we openly declare a rupture? Those who want to "scare" us with this are missing the point. A rupture is inevitable even to our defending body. In order that the masses understand clearly what they must struggle for and what forces are directed against them, we must reveal all the intentions of Guillaume and Skoropadskyi. It can only be done by demanding that they explicitly define their attitude towards the Soviet Republic, their peremptory demands and the essential features of their policies. Aside from mass propaganda for a civil war, aside from military measures (concentration of available troops, evacuation of central administrations, preparation for a partial mobilisation), the foreign policy of the Soviet Republic must immediately forego the moral and indolent sermons of Chicherin,[8] which sound like lamentations of the flagellants. We must reveal the secret plans of the enemies of the Russian Revolution.
Our immediate task is to organise the struggle of the worker and peasant masses against the counter-revolutionary war of the Germans and the "White" Russians. All policies of the Party and of the Soviet Power must be directed explicitly towards preparing for clandestinely organising an insurrection in occupied and threatened regions.
It is important to emphasise the necessity of rectifying and properly defining our internal policy. Hesitations on the economic policy, the rejection of state socialism, propaganda for a state capitalism and the prioritisation of morally perfecting the workers instead of taking decisive measures in organising the economy: all this must be renounced immediately. We have no need to deviate from the path of revolution. Our relations with German financial capital, which the comrades of the right feared we would aggravate through our nationalisations, are broken. As for the Russian bourgeoisie, they want as of now to start constructing a state capitalism with the German generals and not with the right wing of the Bolsheviks. Currently, it would be absurd to hinder the workers from organising production and allow these "capitalist lords" to retain the right to dispose of their "assets". The factories must become workers' factories, belonging entirely to the proletariat, and only under this condition can our homeland become the veritable socialist homeland for which the worker will be willing to shed his last drop of blood. State capitalism, however beneficial this appears to Comrade Lenin, is not socialism, and the state capitalist homeland is not the socialist homeland. When the time comes for decisive combat, the worker must know what it is that he is fighting for.
We must snatch from the hands of the bourgeoisie the final keys to production; they must be expropriated entirely, even if this means their private possessions; we must take the most decisive measures against them and make them unable to administer the territory or attempt a restoration (for example, in the cities near the front, we must take all better or lesser known "public persons" as hostages, and thus liquidate all possible basis for a Skoropadskyi-Vassilenko[9]-Lizogub[10] regime).
This is what our Party and the Soviet power must do. This is what we call for the workers and peasants to do. It is the masses themselves that must prepare for the struggle since the authorities have sunk into their policy of retreat and will not be able to provide the necessary momentum. Workers, learn to shoot, demand weapons, form your battalions and your regiments! Conscious proletarians, awake for the insurrection all those who slumber in the "truce"! Propagandise for partial mobilisation, demand this organisation of the Soviet power! Organise cells in advance in the regions neighbouring the front, hide your guns where the German feldwebels will never find them even with the help of magnetic needles! Take care of the organisation of the future printing presses, and in particular equip yourselves with German characters! Demand immediate passage of the factories to the management of organisations of the working class, the immediate expropriation of the bourgeoisie, and their expulsion!
Everywhere, in the streets, at the crossroads, on the barracks, in the factories, tell them that the enemy is approaching, that it will take away everything you have won and that it will not even allow you a morsel of bread; as the Ukraine shows. The famine, ruin and oppression in the occupied regions will be ten times worse than the worst ailments that the working class currently suffers because of the lack of bread in the Southern Province.
The working class and the poor peasants have no choice but to take up arms. And whatever fate promises us at the beginning of struggle, its outcome is certain. The reinforcement at the back of the class struggle, the disarray of the German troops and the global revolution that approaches nearer and nearer, all of this will come quicker if the struggle in Russia is firmer, all of this will inevitably lead to the final victory when the red flag flies like a flame over the palaces, the banks and the prisons of the whole world.
Notes
[1] Pavlo Petrovich Skoropadskyi (1873-1946): Ukrainian nationalist, aristocrat and Russian imperial army general, he led the coup d'état of the 29 April 1918 against the Central Rada and declared himself head (Hetman) of the Ukrainian government. He was supported by the German army, whose provisions he later undertook to supply, a promise on which his administration struggled to deliver. His government was orientated towards a pro-monarchist tendency. Deprived of German support, he was overthrown on the 14 December by Symon Petliura (1897-1926), who restored the Ukrainian People's Republic, under the direction of a Directorate of Ukraine made up of five members led by Volodymyr Vynnychenko (1880-1951). Skoropadskyi ended up settling permanently in Germany.
[2] Reference to the Civil War in France during the French Revolution, chiefly in the regions in the West of the country, of which the Vendée remains emblematic, and particularly given that it was in this territory where the insurrection broke out against the mass uprising in 1793. The battles would last until 1796.
[3] The Don and the Kuban are regions of Cossack predominance which would generally be areas of opposition to the Soviet power during the Civil War. For an overview of these events, see: Jean-Jacques Marie, The Russian Civil War, 1917-1922.
[4] Fortified construction situated on the border of Finland, which at the same time defended Kronstadt and the outskirts of Petrograd.
[5] In April 1918, numerous elements of the Kadet Party in Ukraine came to the conclusion that only the Germans were capable of putting an end to the anarchy in the country and so were ready to cooperate with them. In particular, seven Kadets joined the Skoropadskyi government at this time.
[6] It was at Tilsit, a small city in Eastern Germany that has now become Sovetsk in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad (formerly Köningsberg), that the Treaty between Tsar Alexander I and Emperor Napoleon I was signed on the 7th of July, which put an end to the war of the Fourth Coalition of Europe against France. Russia would still grudgingly apply the secret engagements of the agreement concerning the continental bloc against England, considering them appropriate.
[7] The author evokes here the agreement made, scarcely had the last battles ended, between the bourgeoisies of France and Germany against the Paris Commune (1871). Chancellor Bismarck notably allowed a rapid retreat of prisoner soldiers for them to be sent to the government of Versailles which repressed the revolutionary movement in Paris.
[8] Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin (1872-1936): son of a diplomatic aristocrat, a bright student, he was himself an archivist at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the tsarist government until his resignation in 1903. He then joined the ranks of the Russian Social Democracy alongside the Mensheviks, notably in their Berlin section when he was in exile there. In England during the First World War, his positions drew closer to those of the Bolsheviks. Arrested at the end of 1917, he was exchanged for the British ambassador Sir George Buchanan. Returning to Russia in 1918, he conducted, alongside Sokolnikov, the second delegation to Brest-Litovsk which concluded the treaty, before replacing Trotsky as the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. For many of the Bolsheviks, his nomination was a sign that the hopes of internationally expanding the Revolution were vanishing and that it was now necessary to concentrate on reinforcing revolutionary Russia itself through mediations in classical diplomatic relations. He would later be the signatory from Soviet Russia of the Treaty of Rapallo with Germany in 1922.
[9] Mykola Prokopovitch Vasylenko (1866-1935): Ukrainian historian and politician, member of the Kadet Party of Kiev, Vice President of the central Rada after the Revolution in February 1917, he contributed to the installation of the first Skoropadskyi cabinet, in which he was Minister for Religious Affairs as well as the interim president of the Council of Ministers. In the second cabinet, from the 4 May 1918, he was Minister for Education. He refused to emigrate after the reoccupation of Ukraine by the Red Army and retreated to his scientific activity (elected in July 1920 to the Academy of Sciences). Nevertheless, he was arrested in 1923 and condemned to 10 years in prison in 1924, but he had hardly begun his journey to Orenburg when it was rapidly annulled (February 1925).
[10] Fedir Andriyovych Lyzohub (1851-1928): Ukrainian politician, "Octobrist" before the Revolution, president of the second Skoropadskyi cabinet as well as Minister of Internal Affairs until November 1918. He died in exile in Belgrade.