Tag archive: turning the imperialist war into a civil war. On the issue of the slogan “let’s turn the imperialist war into a civil war” Transformation of the modern imperialist war into a civil war
Lenin's dream ("Let's turn the imperialist war into a civil war" ", August 14 . ) came true - the world war turned into civil strife in Russia. In November 18, some countries deservedly gained the laurels of victory and the economic benefits that they brought. Others "covered their heads with ashes" in mourning their defeat. Only Russia found itself in a strange position. From August 14 to February 17, she actively waged war in the camp of the victors, suffering losses and winning victories; from February 17 to October of the same year, Russia tried to hold the front, and she succeeded, which allowed her to maintain the chances of be in the winning camp. Between October 17 and March 18, the Bolsheviks not only failed to hold the front, but also concluded a “obscene peace” (as defined by Lenin) in Brest, according to which Russia lost an area of 1 million sq. km with a population of 56 million people, where included the Baltic states, part of Belarus and the Kara region in Transcaucasia. Poland, Finland and Ukraine were recognized as independent states. From the latter, 89% of coal production “left” for the zone of German-Austrian occupation. Russia had to pay an additional 6 billion marks in indemnity.
The “massive”, as Lenin put it, terror on the part of the Bolsheviks and the total plunder of property (“Red Guard attack on capital”) aroused indignation among a significant part of the country’s population. Already in April - May 18, 130 major armed uprisings occurred in Central Russia alone. During the summer of 18, red punitive units captured 50 thousand in the Tver province, 55 thousand in the Ryazan region, and 3 thousand rebel peasants in the Moscow province, with whom the Soviet government dealt harshly. At this time, Latsis wrote: “Extraordinary commissions mercilessly dealt with these critters in order to discourage them forever from rebelling.” In total, during the years of the civil war, the total number of peasant rebels, as well as armed deserters from the Red Army, amounted to more than 3.5 million people. In the south and east of the country, volunteer officers and atamans received hundreds of thousands of fighters. One of the most terrible civil wars in history began.
The Bolsheviks were opposed by various forces. This is the white movement, which advocated the rule of law and democratic self-determination of the people; these are also the legionnaires of the Czechoslovak Corps, who considered the Bolsheviks to be traitors to the pan-Slavic cause of the fight against the German-Austrian bloc; these include various regions of the Cossack troops that became independent, as well as all kinds of peasant formations like the army of the anarchist Makhno, who, however, either fraternized with the Bolsheviks or fought against them.
To fight their opponents, the Bolsheviks, forgetting their recent “pacifism”, began to create a regular army. While Soviet Russia had peaceful relations with Germany and Austria-Hungary, in the ranks of its armed forces and punitive agencies there were numerous internationalists from among prisoners of war Germans, Austrians, Czechs and Hungarians. Their presence in the armed detachments of the Bolsheviks was noted already during the October Revolution. The following lines from the telegram of the head of the Finnish branch of the German General Staff Bauer refer to December 17: “According to your instructions. On November 29, Major Von-Belcke was sent to Rostov by the Intelligence Department, who established reconnaissance there for the forces of the Don Military Government. The major also organized a detachment of prisoners of war, who took part in the battles. In this case, prisoners of war, according to the instructions made by the July meeting in Kronstadt with the participation of: Mr. Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Raskolnikov, Dybenko, Shishko, Antonov, Krylenko, Volodarsky and Podvoisky. dressed in Russian soldiers' and sailors' uniforms."
Former prisoners of war had a noticeable influence on the course of events at the initial stage of Soviet power. This is evidenced by the fact that more than 200 thousand foreigners served in the Red Army, united in more than 500 different international detachments, companies, battalions, legions, regiments, brigades and divisions. Their presence allowed the Bolsheviks to establish a military punitive apparatus, with the help of which the rest of the population was mobilized. Even the departure of most of the foreign fighters to their homeland in November-December 18 in connection with the end of the World War could not have a noticeable impact on the already running machine. Since the spring of 18, the Bolsheviks began to mobilize the population (primarily peasants and former officers) through harsh coercion, when evasion was considered a serious crime and punishment was borne not only by the evading conscript himself, but also by his entire family. Often long lists of hostages taken as deserters were published in the newspaper "Red Warrior".
Thus, 83.4% of the 5.5 million Red Army soldiers were called up for 20 years. At the very “heyday” of the white movement in 19, it was able to oppose the Red Army with about 600 thousand bayonets and sabers, which were dispersed across various regions of Russia - the North Caucasus, Siberia, the Baltic states, Central Asia and the Russian North. As a result of fierce fighting, the armed forces of the white movement were defeated and their remnants retreated outside the country. Summing up the results of the civil war in Russia, the historian Shambarov rightly, in my opinion, comes to the conclusion that “the Bolsheviks in 1917 seduced Russia, mainly with promises of an immediate exit from the “imperialist massacre.” Soviet literature often tried to justify this “plus” all the deprivations of the revolution and the civil war. Yes, the world war was brutal, due to the grinding of manpower, Russia lost about 2 million people in it (although this number includes not only those killed, but also the wounded of the Revolution and the civil war). the country from the “slaughter,” according to various estimates, 14-15 million lives were lost, plus... 2 million emigrated.”
Unfortunately, Lenin succeeded in this trick...
Today, the superficial and frivolous attitude towards the impending world war that we see both in the left (primarily the Bolshevik left) and in the working class environment is of great concern. The Kerch conflict of November 25, 2018 between the Russian government and Ukraine, the subsequent introduction of martial law in Ukraine, the mutual pull-up of troops, the build-up of all kinds of weapons in the Donbass region - it’s as if we are watching all this on TV. The guns are already resting on the sides of the working people of our countries, and we still think that war is somewhere far away, not at home.
Meanwhile, there are many signs last stage of preparation wide regional war. Yes, so far the Ukrainian and Western oligarchies have not officially declared war on Russia, but we know very well that it is not necessary to declare war in order to start fighting. For 100 years, imperialism has shown that in wars more often crawled in, than they attacked with all their might at once with preliminary diplomatic notes. Regional wars flared up gradually, and the positional war in Donbass, now in its fifth year, is just such a smoldering ember that can quickly be inflated to the scale of half of Eurasia.
Bolshevik Magazine, No. 1, 1934, pp. 96-120
The teachings of Lenin - Stalin on the wars of the imperialist era and the tactics of Bolshevism
A. Ugarov
Imperialism, being the highest and final stage of capitalism, takes the contradictions inherent in capitalism to the extreme, to the utmost acuteness and tension, and puts a revolutionary assault on capitalism on the order of the day. In the context of imperialism, “the proletarian revolution became a matter of immediate practice,” “the old period of preparation of the working class for revolution has rested and developed into a new period of direct assault on capitalism”(Stalin, “On the Foundations of Leninism”). The XIII Plenum of the ECCI set before the Communist Parties the task of quickly preparing for decisive revolutionary battles.
And the October Revolution. But its lessons do not become less relevant. Moreover, their relevance is increasing.
The reason is simple: firstly, the contradictions that the world communist revolution, begun by the Russian October Revolution, but strangled by world capitalism, its three main forces, fascism, Stalinism and bourgeois democracy, have not been resolved; secondly, a new period of the rise of capitalism has come to an end, when the features of its new general crisis are taking shape, when the question of “who will win” will arise again. No matter how distant the experience of this first worldwide attempt to overthrow capital, it remains, if not the only one, then, in any case, the main one. And returning to it is a necessary condition for a new attempt to be crowned with success. Therefore, on the eve of future revolutionary storms, celebrating the next anniversary of the leader of the October Revolution, we will draw attention to the main feature of Leninism, its internationalism.
Internationalism, of course, was understood by the Bolsheviks not in the philistine sense such as “there are no bad nations”, “all people are brothers”, etc. Like all Marxists, Russian revolutionary social democrats of the early twentieth century understood it in the sense that the overthrow of the world capitalist system is the common cause of the entire world working class.
Already in the program adopted at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, from which Bolshevism originated, it was said:
“The development of exchange has established such a close connection between all the peoples of the civilized world that the great liberation movement of the proletariat should have become, and has long since become, international.
Considering itself one of the detachments of the world army of the proletariat, Russian Social Democracy pursues the same ultimate goal to which the Social Democrats of all other countries strive.”(“CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee”, 8th edition, publishing house of political literature, M. 1970, vol. 1, p. 60).
That is, as can be seen from the first sentence of the above quote, it was not at all about fidelity to a beautiful but abstract idea, but about a completely practical understanding of the fact that the overthrow of capitalism, which has become a world system, is just as impossible within national borders as it was impossible in a single city block. The situation with the understanding of this fact was extremely confused by the efforts of Stalin’s agitprop, which, for the sake of preserving the power of the Stalinist bureaucracy and for the sake of giving it (for the stated purpose) a “socialist” image, pulled quotes from Lenin taken from the international context in order to attribute to him the non-existent theory of “socialism in one country."
At the same time, the statements of the same Lenin in these same articles, or in works of the same time, which directly stated the impossibility of national socialism, were completely ignored. We will dwell on these elementary Marxist truths of that era, presented in Lenin’s works.
The Russian Revolution turned out to be the intersection of two historical processes, national and global, a reflection of which are all disputes about the nature of both the revolution itself and the society that emerged from it. By 1917, Russian society had long been ripe and overripe for a bourgeois revolution. At the same time, the general crisis of capitalism, which found its expression in the world war, raised the historical question of the exhaustion of the capitalist stage in the life of mankind, simultaneously creating objective conditions for the proletarian revolution with the goal of overthrowing capitalism and beginning the transition to communism. This intersection was superimposed by the fact that, frightened by the scale of the labor movement, the Russian bourgeoisie did not want to carry out its own revolution. And this task also had to be taken on by the working class. But, given the global crisis of the entire capitalist system, the Russian working class naturally had reason to hope that the workers of advanced countries, in turn, would make their own revolution and help the workers of more backward countries, incl. and Russia, begin to build socialism, without stopping at the long stage of capitalist development.
Based on this Lenin and sets the following tasks in the fall of 1915: “The task of the Russian proletariat is to complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia in order to ignite the socialist revolution in Europe. This second task has now come extremely close to the first, but it still remains a special and second task, for we are talking about different classes collaborating with the proletariat of Russia, for the first task the collaborator is the petty-bourgeois peasantry of Russia, for the second - the proletariat of other countries.”(V.I. Lenin, PSS, t.27, pp.49-50).
Already here lies the turn that came as a surprise to the “old Bolsheviks,” who, after the February revolution, still thought in the categories of 1905 and were going to establish a “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” to carry out a bourgeois revolution. Lenin, like Trotsky, saw in the global crisis associated with the war an opportunity to combine, thanks to the help of the international proletariat, the tasks of the national bourgeois and international socialist revolution. Before leaving for Russia in early April 1917, Lenin writes "Farewell letter to Swiss workers". He notes:
“Russia is a peasant country, one of the most backward European countries. Socialism cannot immediately win in it. But the peasant character of the country, with the enormous remaining land fund of the noble landowners, based on the experience of 1905, can give enormous scope to the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia and make our revolution a prologue to the world socialist revolution, a step towards it.”(V.I. Lenin, PSS, vol. 31, pp. 91-92).
In his short speech at the opening of the April Conference, Lenin states: “The Russian proletariat has the great honor of starting, but it must not forget that its movement and revolution constitute only part of the worldwide revolutionary proletarian movement, which, for example, in Germany is growing stronger and stronger every day. Only from this angle can we determine our tasks.”(ibid., p. 341). On the same day, in the Current Situation Report, he justifies his “bias” on a global scale: “...we are now connected with all other countries, and it is impossible to break out of this tangle: either the proletariat will break out as a whole, or it will be strangled”(ibid., p. 354). Concluding his report, which is mainly devoted to the necessary steps of the revolution, he emphasizes: “The complete success of these steps is possible only with a world revolution, if the revolution strangles the war, and if the workers in all countries support it, therefore taking power is the only concrete measure, this is the only way out.”(ibid., p. 358).
The understanding of the impossibility of winning even a socialist revolution, not to mention building a socialist society in a single country, especially one as backward as Russia, runs through all of Lenin’s works, right down to the very last - “Less is better”. Not sure that he will be able to return to active work, he writes about what worries him: “Thus, we are now faced with the question: will we be able to hold out with our small and minute peasant production, with our ruin, until the Western European capitalist countries complete their development towards socialism?”(ibid., vol. 45, p. 402).
No illusions! And the same alarm sounds in him "Letter to the Congress" where he is concerned about one issue: the stability of the party leadership, the need to avoid its split during the period of painful anticipation of revolution in developed countries. And the fact that if the revolution is delayed, a split is inevitable due to the internal development of the country, Lenin understands perfectly:
“Our party relies on two classes and therefore its instability is possible and its fall is inevitable if an agreement could not take place between these two classes. In this case, it is useless to take certain measures or even talk about the stability of our Central Committee. No measures in this case will be able to prevent a split » (ibid., p. 344).
Only impenetrable dogmatism and reluctance to give up illusions force today’s Stalinists to again and again bring to light Lenin’s words about “building socialism”, completely ignoring those quotes of his where he directly speaks about the victory of the international revolution, like necessary condition of this “construction”.
But this condition was reflected not just in his speeches, but directly in the program of the RCP (b), adopted in the spring of 1919. Those. in the main official party document, where every word is carefully weighed. This is not a speech at a rally, where, for the sake of inspiring listeners, one can shout about “building socialism” without specifying when and under what conditions it is possible. The program speaks of the social revolution as “upcoming,” and Lenin defended this description against Podbelsky’s attacks, pointing out that “in our program we are talking about social revolution on a global scale” (ibid., v. 38, p.175). In a programme Russian communists, i.e. Bolsheviks, speech about national The social revolution is not even underway!
In the Political Report of the Central Committee to the Seventh Congress of the RCP (b), Lenin said: “International imperialism, with all the might of its capital, with its highly organized military equipment, which represents the real strength, the real fortress of international capital, could in no case, under any conditions, coexist next to the Soviet Republic, both in its objective position and in the economic interests of that the capitalist class, which was embodied in it, could not due to trade ties and international financial relations. Here conflict is inevitable. Here is the greatest difficulty of the Russian revolution, its greatest historical problem: the need to solve international problems, the need to cause an international revolution, to make this transition from our revolution, as a narrowly national one, to a world one.”(ibid., v. 36, p.8). And a little further: “If you look at the world-historical scale, there is no doubt that the final victory of the revolution, if it had remained alone, if there had been no revolutionary movement in other countries, would have been hopeless... Our salvation from all these difficulties - I repeat - in the pan-European revolution"(ibid., vol. 36 page 11).”
“Salvation... of the pan-European revolution” did not come, the split that Lenin feared occurred, and the party of the proletariat was destroyed. There was only one thing he was wrong about. The gravedigger party of the proletarian power turned out to be not the party of the peasants, but the party of the bureaucracy, whose bourgeois nature inevitably resulted from the bourgeois character of the Russian revolution, which failed to fulfill the task of developing into a world socialist one.
The ability to face the truth, not to create the illusion that a revolution can be won without something fundamentally important, is an absolutely necessary thing for a Marxist if he wants to achieve results. And we still need to learn this skill for a long time from Lenin.
The October Revolution occurred in the midst of a world war, when the internationalism of most parties of the Second International was abandoned for the sake of “defense of the fatherland.” Therefore, along with the concept of the impossibility of national socialism in the internationalist approach Lenin The most important issue is occupied by the issue of revolutionary defeatism, which is a particular but extremely important example of the preservation of the class independence of the proletariat in relation to the bourgeoisie.
The tactics of revolutionary defeatism, the tactics of transforming an imperialist war into a civil war, were directly derived both from the general necessary condition for the class independence of the proletariat and from the specific decisions of the congresses of the Second International:
“The opportunists thwarted the decisions of the Stuttgart, Copenhagen and Basel congresses, which obligated socialists of all countries to fight against chauvinism under any and all conditions, obliging socialists to respond to any war started by the bourgeoisie and governments by intensified preaching of civil war and social revolution.”(ibid., vol. 26, p. 20), proclaims the Manifesto of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) written by Lenin. "War and Russian Social Democracy".
And further: “The transformation of the modern imperialist war into a civil war is the only correct proletarian slogan, indicated by the experience of the Commune, outlined by the Basel (1912) resolution and arising from all the conditions of the imperialist war between highly developed bourgeois countries”(ibid., p. 22).
This is the meaning of revolutionary defeatism: to use the defeat of your government to turn the mass mutual beating of each other by the working people on the fronts of the imperialist war, into a war of these working people against their bourgeois governments, for their overthrow and the establishment of the power of the working people themselves, which will put an end to all wars and capitalist exploitation.
Of course, we are not talking, and never have been, about somehow helping the military enemy for the sake of defeatism. And bourgeois propaganda often interprets this issue exactly this way, presenting the Bolsheviks as “German spies.” Just like in Germany, “Russian spies” were considered Karl Liebknecht And Rosa Luxemburg
. Such an accusation is absurd, since the principle of revolutionary defeatism comes from the reactionary nature of all the warring parties and, therefore, it makes no sense to help another imperialist state in return for “our own.”
And, by the way, it was precisely this parody of revolutionary defeatism that, shortly before Germany’s attack on the USSR, the Stalinist regime imposed on the French Communist Party. Communist deputies were forced, under the conditions of fascist occupation, to switch to a legal position and begin receiving voters. They were all shot after June 22, 1941! As well as the party activists who communicated with them. There was also a request for permission to publish L'Humanite legally. Fortunately for the PCF, the fascists did not agree to this. But it is Stalin’s followers who will be ready to tear me to pieces for the position of defeatism in the Second World War, which will be discussed below.
The point is to continue and strengthen the workers’ struggle for their rights and, ultimately, for their power, despite the accusations of patriots that by doing so they are “weakening the front” and “contributing” to military defeat. Yes, they contribute, but precisely through this struggle, and nothing else! Lenin explains these points quite clearly: “The revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot help but desire the defeat of its government. ... “Revolutionary struggle against war” is an empty and meaningless exclamation, to which such masters are the heroes of the Second International, if by it we do not mean revolutionary actions against their government and during the war. It only takes a little thought to understand this. And revolutionary actions during the war against one’s government, undoubtedly, indisputably, mean not only the desire for defeat, but in fact also assistance in such defeat. (For the “astute reader”: this does not mean at all that it is necessary to “blow up bridges”, organize unsuccessful military strikes and generally help the government defeat the revolutionaries)”(ibid., p. 286). With these words Lenin, in his article "On the defeat of one's government in the imperialist war", pounces on the initially half-hearted position Trotsky.
The point is to corrupt the army of “your” imperialist power with your propaganda (and this is a condition for revolutionaries of all (!) countries), proving the senselessness and criminality of this war from all sides. The most complete result of such propaganda was the fraternization of soldiers of the armies at war with each other.
“The proletarian can neither inflict a class blow on his government, nor extend (in fact) a hand to his brother, the proletarian of a “foreign” country at war with “us,” without committing “high treason,” without contributing to defeat, without helping the disintegration of “his own.” imperialist "great" power"(ibid., p. 290).
The most striking example of the effectiveness of the latter was Bolshevik propaganda in relation to the German army. In Russia the German army seemed to be the victor, but it was here that the revolutionary example of Russian workers and soldiers had the greatest effect. The units transferred from Russia to the western front turned out to be completely ineffective, accelerating Germany’s defeat in the war and the revolution in it.
Revolutionary defeatism is not just a revolutionary phrase. This is a practical position, without which it is impossible (impossible!) to separate the working class from the ideological and political influence of “their” bourgeoisie: “ Supporters of the slogan “no victories, no defeats” actually stand on the side of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, “not believing” in the possibility of international revolutionary actions of the working class against their governments, not wanting to help the development of such actions - a task that is undoubtedly not easy, but the only one worthy of the proletarian , the only socialist task. It was the proletariat of the most backward of the warring great powers that had, especially in the face of the shameful betrayal of the German and French Social Democrats, in the person of its party, to come out with revolutionary tactics, which are absolutely impossible without “contributing to the defeat” of their government, but which alone leads to European revolution, to the lasting peace of socialism, to the deliverance of humanity from the horrors, disasters, savagery, bestiality that reigns today"(ibid., p. 291).
It was the transition “in practice” to the policy of defeatism, “promoting” it, that led to revolutions in Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. But the absence of a political force to defend it turned out to be a disaster for the world proletariat during the Second World War. The chauvinistic, jingoistic frenzy contributed to the start of both the first and second world wars. It is very difficult to reverse it, especially for a revolutionary minority operating underground. However, when, taught by the bitter experience of war, the working people, both in the rear and at the front, themselves over time begin to intuitively realize the correctness of this approach, then without a revolutionary vanguard they can fall into the hands of completely different ideologists and practitioners. 2 million citizens of the USSR, a state-capitalist imperialist power, during the Second World War, if they did not fight on the side of Nazi Germany, then, in any case, were listed in collaborationist military units. And far (very far!) not everyone was anti-communists and enemies of socialism. Many bought into the “socialist” phraseology of General Vlasov. The same thing happened in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. And how many soldiers, workers and peasants of the USSR were there who would have been happy to oppose the Stalinist regime, but who had enough understanding that it was pointless to do this under the flag of fascism?!
The potential for the tactics of revolutionary defeatism in our country was very great, but there was no political force - the Bolshevik Party was wiped out almost completely. Worse, few among her understood the capitalist nature of the USSR. Indicative in this regard is the example of the Trotskyists, the only, at least relatively numerous, anti-Stalinist political force in the labor movement. Operating in Europe, it also had the human potential for revolutionary propaganda to transform the imperialist war into a civil war. In particular, in France and Italy. Here, even many ordinary Stalinists, even participating in a completely patriotic resistance movement, hoped that after the end of the war they would be able to use their organization and authority for the socialist revolution. Not so! Thorez, Tolyatti and Co., who arrived from Moscow, quickly put everything “in place,” imposing the continuation of the policy of the anti-fascist Popular Fronts even after the defeat of fascism.
And if some part of the working class still had revolutionary sentiments, the Trotskyists helped overcome them with their slogan of “unconditional defense of the USSR.” If the USSR is a workers' state, then it is necessary to protect both it and its allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. This logic finally gave way to hopes for a new revolutionary wave as a response to the second world imperialist war. The world working class found itself subordinate to the tasks of its national capitalist detachments. Only a few representatives of the Trotskyist Fourth International, as well as representatives of the Italian communist Left, took revolutionary positions, but remained practically isolated. Without revolutionary defeatism, as well as without the defeat of Stalinism, the continuation of the world revolution begun in October 1917 was impossible.
“The “unconditional defense of the USSR” turns out to be incompatible with the defense of the world revolution. The defense of Russia must be left as a matter of special urgency, since it binds our entire movement, puts pressure on our theoretical development and gives us a Stalinized physiognomy in the eyes of the masses. It is impossible to defend the world revolution and Russia at the same time. Either one or the other. We stand for world revolution, against the defense of Russia, and we call on you to speak out in the same direction [...] in order to remain faithful to the revolutionary tradition of the Fourth International, we must abandon the Trotskyist theory of defense of the USSR; We are thus carrying out in the International the ideological revolution necessary for the success of the world revolution.” These are quotes from the "Open Letter to the Internationalist Communist Party" dated June 1947. The party operated in France, affiliated with the Fourth Trotskyist International and included both those who shared the Trotskyist theory of a “deformed workers’ state” and those who already understood the capitalist nature of the USSR. Among the latter were the authors of this letter - Grandiso Muniz, Benjamin Pere Karl Liebknecht Natalia Sedova-Trotskaya, widow Leon Trotsky.
However, it was already too late. Taking advantage of its victory in the Second World War, capitalism completed the redistribution of the world, united most of the world market under the auspices of the United States and a smaller part of the USSR, thereby providing the conditions for the collapse of the world colonial system and the inclusion of its countries in the system of the world capitalist market. In short, capitalism created the conditions for its transition to a higher stage of its development, which lasted 60 years, and which begins to burst at the seams again, preparing new big and small wars. This was a period of prolonged counter-revolution on all fronts. But the growing crisis, economic, military, political, ideological, again requires revolutionary leadership. And this leadership must be formed fully armed with the entire revolutionary experience of the past, and the experience of Bolshevism in the first place. And the center of this experience has been and will be the emphasis on the world socialist revolution and the political class independence of the proletariat, the most integral part of which is the categorical rejection of any form of patriotism and revolutionary defeatism. 10.08.2019
Magazine "Golden Lion" No. 149-150 - publication of Russian conservative thought
Yu.V. Zhitorchuk
Candidate of Physics and Mathematics sciences
“National Pride” of Great Russian Ulyanov
during the First World War
“No one is to blame if he was born a slave; but a slave who not only shuns the aspirations for his freedom, but justifies and embellishes his slavery (for example, calls the strangulation of Poland, Ukraine, etc. “defense of the fatherland” of the Great Russians), such a slave is a lackey that evokes a legitimate feeling of indignation, contempt and disgust and boor" (Lenin, - "On the national pride of the Great Russians").
The development of an imperialist war into a civil war.
For Lenin, revolution is the main, all-consuming goal of his entire life. And the war that broke out in 1914 provided a real chance for its implementation, a chance that the future leader of the world proletariat did not want to lose under any circumstances.
“The transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war is the only correct proletarian slogan, indicated by the experience of the Commune, outlined by the Basel (1912) resolution and arising from all the conditions of the imperialist war between highly developed bourgeois countries. No matter how great the difficulties of such a transformation may seem at one moment or another, socialists will never give up systematic, persistent, unwavering preparatory work in this direction, once war has become a fact” (Lenin, “War and Russian Social Democracy”).
However, an imperialist war on its own will not develop into a civil war. For this to happen, the soldiers need to turn their bayonets against their own government. But this can only be achieved if the war causes significant difficulties for the lives of working people, and these difficulties could increase many times over precisely if the country were defeated in the war. Therefore, socialists must do everything to ensure the defeat of their government:
“Revolution during war is a civil war, and the transformation of a war between governments into a civil war, on the one hand, is facilitated by the military failures (defeat) of governments, and on the other hand, it is impossible to actually strive for such a transformation without thereby contributing to defeat...
The revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot help but desire the defeat of its government...”
Of course, in principle, Lenin proclaimed the slogan of defeat not only the tsarist, but also all other governments participating in the First World War (WWII). However, he cared little whether the socialists of Germany, England and France would support his call with their practical actions. In addition, only one of the warring parties can suffer defeat in a war. Therefore, the defeat of Russia, and therefore the Entente, in practice means a military victory for Germany and the strengthening of the Kaiser’s government. But Lenin is in no way embarrassed by this circumstance, and he insists that the initiative for defeatism should come precisely from the Russian Social Democrats:
“...The last consideration is especially important for Russia, because it is the most backward country in which a socialist revolution is directly impossible. That is why Russian Social Democrats had to be the first to come up with the theory and practice of the slogan of defeat” (Lenin, “On the defeat of their government in the imperialist war”).
Of course, Lenin, with all the odiousness of his position, could not publicly proclaim that Russia’s defeat in the war was a good thing for Russia. And therefore he went on and on about how such a defeat would be the least evil for her:
“Russia’s victory entails a strengthening of the world reaction, a strengthening of the reaction within the country and is accompanied by the complete enslavement of the peoples in the already captured areas. Because of this, the defeat of Russia, under all conditions, seems to be the least evil” (Lenin, “Conference of Foreign Sections of the R.S.-D.R.P”).
Moreover, Lenin repeats this thought many times, accompanying it with the most categorical incantations:
“For us Russians, from the point of view of the interests of the working masses and the working class of Russia, there cannot be the slightest, absolutely no doubt that the least evil would be now and immediately - the defeat of tsarism in this war. For tsarism is a hundred times worse than Kaiserism” (Lenin, “Letter to Shlyapnikov 10/17/14.”
So Lenin, behind a very elegant and somewhat intricate verbal formula, hides his idea about the desirability of the defeat of Russia and, accordingly, the victory of a more progressive Kaiserism.
Lenin and Plekhanov - two tactics of socialists during the First World War.
1. Lenin's position.
Lenin, of course, was never a pacifist, out of principle, protesting against any war and its atrocities. On the contrary, he directly stated the necessity and progressiveness of civil wars, despite the blood, atrocities and horrors that usually accompany such wars:
“We fully recognize the legality, progressiveness and necessity of civil wars, that is, wars of the oppressed class against the oppressor, slaves against slave owners, serfs against landowners, wage workers against the bourgeoisie...
History has repeatedly witnessed wars that, despite all the horrors, atrocities, disasters and suffering inevitably associated with any war, were progressive, that is, they benefited the development of mankind, helping to destroy especially harmful and reactionary institutions (for example, autocracy or serfdom ), the most barbaric despotisms in Europe (Turkish and Russian)” (Lenin, “Socialism and War”).
But in addition to civil wars and revolutions, Lenin also recognized the legality and progressiveness of defensive wars. Moreover, in this case it was completely indifferent to him who attacked whom first. According to his ideas, in any case, the oppressed side was right:
“Socialists recognized and now recognize the legality, progressiveness, justice of “defense of the fatherland” or “defensive” war. For example, if tomorrow Morocco declared war on France, India on England, Persia or China on Russia, etc., these would be “just”, “defensive” wars, regardless of who attacked first, and every socialist would sympathize the victory of the oppressed, dependent, incomplete states against the oppressive, slave-owning, predatory “great” powers” (Lenin, “Socialism and War”).
This is where another break between the Bolsheviks and most other social democratic movements occurred. Since Lenin declared the war reactionary and predatory on the part of all its participants, and Plekhanov declared its defensive, and therefore fair and progressive nature on the part of Russia. But from recognizing the war as predatory, one tactic of the labor movement followed, and from recognizing it as defensive, a completely different one. However, Plekhanov’s point of view automatically postponed the possible beginning of the revolution in Russia indefinitely, which for Lenin, regardless of the degree of correctness of his theses, was absolutely unacceptable:
“In Russia, not only bloody tsarism, not only capitalists, but also some of the so-called or former socialists say that Russia is waging a “defensive war,” that Russia is fighting only against the German invasion. Meanwhile, in reality, the whole world knows that tsarism has been oppressing more than a hundred million people of other nationalities in Russia for decades, that Russia has been pursuing a predatory policy against China, Persia, Armenia, Galicia for decades...”
Something is clearly wrong with Lenin’s logic here. After all, even if Russia really oppressed hundreds of millions of people and previously waged wars of conquest, it does not follow from this fact that another stronger predator cannot attack Russia itself and try to enslave it:
“...Neither Russia, nor Germany and no other great power have the right to talk about a “defensive war”: all the great powers are waging an imperialist, capitalist war, a predatory war, a war for the oppression of small and foreign peoples, a war in the interests of the profit of capitalists, who from horrific suffering of the masses, they are beating out the pure gold of their billion-dollar incomes from the proletarian blood” (Lenin, “Speech at the International Rally in Bern”).
In his polemical fervor, the future leader of the world proletariat did not stop from directly insulting the most prominent theorist of Marxism, the founder of the first Russian Marxist organization, Plekhanov, hanging political labels on him:
“Let Messrs. Plekhanov, Chkhenkeli, Potresov and Co. now play the role Marxist-like lackeys or buffoons under Purishkevich and Miliukov, bend over backwards to prove Germany’s guilt and the defensive nature of the war on Russia’s part—the class-conscious workers did not and do not listen to these buffoons” (Lenin, “On a Separate Peace”).
In the dispute that broke out between Russian socialists, Lenin’s main argument was the thesis according to which all the key participants in the war were essentially bandits and robbers:
“The main, fundamental content of this imperialist war is the division of spoils between the three main imperialist rivals, the three robbers, Russia, Germany and England” (Lenin, “Bourgeois Pacifism and Socialist Pacifism”).
The only exception was made only for Serbia:
“The national element in the present war is represented only by the war of Serbia against Austria. Only in Serbia and among the Serbs do we have a national liberation movement spanning many years and millions of national masses, the continuation of which is the war of Serbia against Austria...
If this war were isolated, i.e. not connected with the pan-European war, with the selfish and predatory goals of England, Russia, etc., then all socialists would be obliged to wish the success of the Serbian bourgeoisie” (Lenin, “The Collapse of the Second International”).
But the main robber and villain in the imperialist war, according to Lenin, was Russia.
“The reactionary, predatory, slave-owning nature of the war on the part of tsarism is even more obvious than on the part of other governments” (Lenin, “Socialism and War”).
What was the robbery and robbery that, according to Lenin, was carried out by the tsarist government during WWII? It turns out that the predatory plans of Nicholas II extended to Galicia, Armenia and Constantinople:
“Russia is fighting for Galicia, which it needs to own especially to strangle the Ukrainian people (except for Galicia, this people does not and cannot have a corner of freedom, comparatively of course), for Armenia and for Constantinople, then also for the subjugation of the Balkan countries” (Lenin, "About a separate peace").
Here the question arises: did Tsarist Russia have a desire to take control of Constantinople and the Straits? Yes, such a desire periodically arose among the Russian tsars. Only this desire arose not at all because they wanted to expand the boundaries of the empire, including new peoples and countries. By and large, Russia did not always know what to do with its own land. Alexander II actually sold Alaska to the Americans for next to nothing. And having freed Bulgaria from the power of the Turks, Russia did not even try to annex it, although it could well have done so in 1878. The Straits themselves, in general, were not needed by Russia. She needed freedom of navigation for Russian ships from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and a guarantee that English and French military squadrons would not enter the Black Sea again, as was the case during the Anglo-French aggression of 1854.
However, despite the desire of the Russian tsars to get the Straits, it would be the height of stupidity to claim that it was because of them that Russia got involved in the war with Germany. The Straits just weren't worth it. After all, Nicholas II, Stolypin, and Sazonov did everything to ensure the peaceful development of the empire for as long as possible. Russia, unlike Germany, was not preparing for a serious war, and that is why it did not stock up in advance the number of cartridges, shells, cannons and even rifles necessary to fight it. Another thing is that already during the war in 1916, the tsar concluded a secret agreement with the allies on the transfer of the Straits to Russia after the victory over Germany. The meaning of this agreement was that gaining control over the Straits, at least to some extent, was supposed to compensate the empire for the enormous losses that the Russian people suffered to curb the German aggressors, but it does not at all follow from this that the Straits were at least to some extent were at least the reason for Russia's entry into the war.
Lenin calls the next “robbery” goal of the tsarist government the desire of St. Petersburg to rob Turkey, seizing Armenia from it and enslaving the freedom-loving Armenian people. You might think that Vladimir Ilyich did not know that for decades the genocide of the Armenian civilian population was systematically carried out in Turkey, that in 1909 the Turkish authorities organized a new massacre of Armenians, that during WWII alone the Turks killed and tortured more than a million Armenians. So why couldn’t Nicholas II take under his protection fellow believers who were being brutally persecuted for their religious beliefs?
This is how the famous Armenian public figure and writer Ter-Markarian described the events of those years in his book “How It Was”:
“For the sake of historical justice and the honor of the last Russian Tsar, one cannot remain silent that at the beginning of the described disasters of 1915, on the personal orders of the Tsar, the Russian-Turkish border was slightly opened and huge crowds of exhausted Armenian refugees who had accumulated on it were allowed onto Russian soil.”
Following Lenin’s logic, the Russian “despot,” opening the border for exhausted refugees, dragged the free Armenians who trusted him into the prison of the peoples. After all, how could the not-so-bloody Lenin then believe in the nobility of the “bloody” Nicholas?
Next in this series of Leninist accusations is Galicia, which tsarism tried to acquire, allegedly for the final strangulation of the freedom of Ukrainians. So the Bosnian Serbs sought to get out from under the rule of the Austrians and unite with Serbia, as a result of which the Austro-Serbian war arose, which Lenin, by the way, classified as fair. But the Rusyns and Hutsuls, by the will of fate, torn away from their homeland by the conquerors and subjected to national oppression in Austria-Hungary, could not possibly want to unite with the Little Russians. The logic turns out strange.
And finally, concluding his accusatory tirade, Lenin finally becomes confused in his own arguments:
“Tsarism sees in war a means of diverting attention from the growing discontent within the country and suppressing the growing revolutionary movement” (Lenin, “Socialism and War”).
But Lenin himself repeatedly wrote that the difficulties of war caused discontent among the working people and a surge in revolutionary sentiment. Nicholas II was already convinced of this by the experience of the Russian-Japanese War, which grew into the revolution of 1905. So how could the tsar start a war to suppress the growing revolutionary movement, if the war threatened to turn into a new, even more formidable revolution? In addition, the years preceding WWII, the so-called reaction, tsarism drove the Russian revolutionary movements deep underground, from which it emerged precisely thanks to the outbreak of the war. So, Vladimir Ilyich’s reasoning clearly doesn’t add up.
2. Plekhanov’s position.
Plekhanov contrasted Lenin’s thesis about the need to achieve the defeat of the tsarist government in the war with Germany and the development of an imperialist war into a civil war with the logic of a Russian social patriot:
“First the defense of the country, then the fight against the internal enemy, first victory, then revolution” (Plekhanov, “On War”).
At the same time, Georgy Valentinovich called for the unity of all Russian patriotic forces for the defense of the country, proposing:
“Reject as unreasonable, more like crazy, every outbreak and every strike that could weaken Russia’s resistance to enemy invasion” (Plekhanov, “Internationalism and Defense of the Fatherland”).
For Plekhanov, the war declared by Germany is a real threat to the national security of Russia, and, therefore, from his point of view, WWI is a domestic, deeply people's war:
“From the very beginning of the war, I maintained that it was a matter of peoples, not governments. The Russian people were in danger of falling under the economic yoke of the German imperialists, unfortunately supported by the vast majority of the working population of Germany. Therefore, while waging war, he defended his own vital interests” (Plekhanov, “War of Nations and Scientific Socialism” Unity No. 5 1917).
In this regard, the Menshevik leader clearly formulates the goal of the Russian proletariat in the war with Germany:
“I never said that the Russian proletariat is interested in the victory of Russian imperialism and never thought so. And I am convinced that he is interested in only one thing: that the Russian land does not become the subject of exploitation in the hands of the German imperialists. Ah, this is something completely different” (Plekhanov, “More about the war”).
During WWI, the slogan of defending the fatherland was extremely popular in Russia, and this circumstance greatly worried Lenin, forcing him to make fun of a concept that is sacred to every Russian person:
“What is defense of the fatherland, generally speaking? Is this any scientific concept from the field of economics or politics, etc.? No. This is simply the most common, commonly used, sometimes simply philistine expression denoting the justification of war. Nothing more, absolutely nothing!” (Lenin, “On the caricature of Marxism”)
To this Plekhanov replies:
“The Fatherland is that vast land inhabited by the working masses of the Russian people. If we love these working masses, we love our fatherland. And if we love our fatherland, we must defend it” (Plekhanov, “Speech in the Petrograd Soviet on May 14, 1917”).
“We do not wish for Russia to defeat Germany, but for Germany not to defeat Russia. Let Rabochaya Gazeta tell us directly: “It doesn’t matter if the German yoke falls on the Russian neck.” This will be a thought worthy of the most decisive censure from the point of view of the International... But this thought, and only this thought, will give us a logical key to the reasoning of the author of the article, only it will explain to us his fears” (Plekhanov, “The Alarming Concerns of One Smart Newspaper” ).
Nevertheless, Lenin cannot even imagine that civilized Germans are capable of enslaving Russia, even if they capture Petrograd:
“Suppose the Germans even take Paris and St. Petersburg. Will this change the nature of this war? Not at all. The goal of the Germans, and this is even more important: a feasible policy in the event of a German victory will be the taking away of the colonies, domination in Turkey, the taking away foreign regions, for example, Poland, etc., but not at all establishing foreign oppression over the French or Russians. The real essence of this war is not national, but imperialist. In other words: the war is not because one side is overthrowing national oppression and the other is defending it. The war is going on between two groups of oppressors, between two robbers over how to divide the spoils, who should plunder Turkey and the colonies” (Lenin, “On the Caricature of Marxism”).
From the height of history, it is funny and sad to read such Leninist opuses. And it remains completely incomprehensible why Vladimir Ilyich was so sure that the Germans could not turn part of Russia into their colony, but would be content only with the enslavement of Turkey, Serbia or Poland? Most likely, Lenin hated tsarism so much that without any regret he would have replaced it with the complete subordination of Russia to the will of the Kaiser. Just like how our home-grown democrats now hate everything truly Russian and want to subordinate Russia to the will of their overseas masters.
In any case, all subsequent events in world history refuted Lenin’s point of view that Germany had no aggressive intentions towards Russia. After all, German Nazism began to emerge at the end of the 19th century, long before Hitler’s Mein Kampf. At the same time, the ideas of the Drang nach Osten campaign, which were shared by both the Kaiser and his generals, were resurrected again. Therefore, the territorial claims of Germany presented to the Soviet government in Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 did not arise on their own out of nowhere, but were the natural result of aggressive plans conceived in Berlin long before August 1914. So life itself proved Plekhanov right in his dispute with Lenin. And if modern communists declare that they are patriots of Russia, then they are obliged to recognize the validity of the position of the first Russian Marxist - Plekhanov - on this issue and condemn antinational the nature of Lenin's doctrinaireism.
About the national pride of Great Russian Ulyanov.
“Nowhere in the world is there such oppression of the majority of the country’s population as in Russia: Great Russians make up only 43% of the population, that is, less than half, and all the rest are powerless, like foreigners. (Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination”).
In order to make sure that Lenin is clearly disingenuous here, trying to denigrate Russia, it is enough to turn to his work “Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism”, from which it follows that in England, residents of metropolises accounted for only 11%, and in France - 42% of the total number of inhabitants of these countries, including the aborigines of the colonies. So Russia did not hold the palm of world primacy in the issue of enslaving foreigners.
However, it is categorically impossible to agree with the figure cited by Lenin, according to which 57% of the population of Russia were foreigners. The fact is that back at the beginning of the 20th century, RUSSIANS meant all the nationalities of the East European Slavs: Great Russians, Little Russians, and Belarusians. Accordingly, in the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia it was written:
“The Russian language is divided into three main ADVERBS: a) Great Russian, b) Little Russian and c) Belarusian.”
The same encyclopedia indicates that the percentage of the Russian population according to the 1897 census was 72.5%. That is, before Lenin’s opuses, it was the Russians who were considered a nation, and not the Great Russians, Little Russians or Belarusians, who were listed only subnational groups. However, in this situation, it was very difficult for Lenin to substantiate one of his cornerstone theses:
“Russia is a prison of nations” and call for self-determination of Ukrainians and Belarusians.
In this regard, Lenin absolutely unfoundedly and without evidence stated that by the beginning of WWII, Ukrainians and Belarusians had allegedly reached such a stage of national community that they were already formed nations, oppressed by the nation of the Great Russians:
“For Ukrainians and Belarusians, for example, only a person who dreams of living on Mars could deny that the national movement has not yet been completed here, that the awakening of the masses to the possession of their native language and its literature - (and this is a necessary condition and concomitant of the full development of capitalism, complete penetration of exchange down to the last peasant family) is still happening here” (Lenin, “On the Caricature of Marxism”).
In essence, this was a direct call for the secession of Ukraine and Belarus from Russia. At the same time, Ulyanov completely ignored the fact that the ancestors of the Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians before the Tatar-Mongol invasion were a single people with a single language and a single culture. And then the once united people were artificially divided for four hundred years and subjected to national enslavement by foreign conquerors.
Muscovite Rus' was the first to throw off the foreign yoke, and in 1648 Little Russia also rebelled against the Polish invaders. However, in June 1651, the rebels suffered a severe defeat near Berestechko. Being in a critical situation, Hetman Bogdan Khmelnytsky turned to the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich with a request to be granted Russian citizenship. In the fall of 1653, the Zemsky Sobor, held in Moscow, decided to include Little Russia into the Moscow state, and on October 23, 1653, the Moscow government declared war on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which lasted for 13 years, during which Russia defended the independence of Left-Bank Ukraine.
On January 8, 1654, a senior council was held in Pereyaslav. During a public ceremony, the hetman and the Cossack elder swore on the cross that “so that they may be with the land and cities under the royal great hand relentlessly”. Despite this oath, the Ukrainian hetmans repeatedly violated it and betrayed their tsar. In connection with the regular perjury of the hetmans, Catherine II in 1764 abolished both the hetmanship and the autonomy of the Zaporozhye Cossacks.
In order to be convinced of the fallacy of Lenin’s ideas about the three formed nations of the East European Slavs, it is enough to answer the question when the differences between the Great Russians and Little Russians were greater: at the time of their reunification, or at the beginning of the 20th century? Over the course of two and a half centuries, have these groups moved closer or moved away from each other? Indeed, throughout this entire period of time, there was a process of linguistic and cultural rapprochement of the parts of the ancient Russian people that were once forcibly separated from each other. Suffice it to recall the number of so-called mixed marriages between representatives of the three Russian nationalities. Or that the greatest Ukrainian writer Gogol was at the same time an outstanding Russian writer.
However, among the Ukrainian elite there have always been and still are a sufficient number of adventurers who wanted to seize power and independently rule the independent country, be it Vygovsky, Mazepa, Skoropadsky, Petliura, Kravchuk or Yushchenko. Much more significant is the question of whether national oppression of the Little Russians by the Great Russians actually existed in tsarist Russia, and if it existed, then in what way was this oppression expressed? Lenin answered this question as follows:
“The dispute is about one of the forms of political oppression, namely: the forcible retention of one nation within the state of another nation” (Lenin, “Results of the Discussion on Self-Determination”).
“The proletariat cannot help but fight against the forcible retention of oppressed nations within the borders of a given state, and this means fighting for the right of self-determination. The proletariat must demand freedom of political secession of colonies and nations oppressed by “its” nation...
Neither trust nor class solidarity is possible between the workers of an oppressed and oppressing nation” (Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination”).
But with the same success one could speak of forcibly detaining, say, Novgorodians or Pskovites. After all, the independent Novgorod Republic, with its traditions of veche democracy and unique culture, existed for more than 300 years from 1136 to 1478, when Ivan III forcibly subordinated it to Moscow. And in 1570, Ivan the Terrible again went on a campaign against Novgorod and committed a bloody pogrom there, executing more than one and a half thousand noble residents of the city and finally enslaving the Novgorodians. And the dialects of northern Rus' are quite different, for example, from the dialects of the Kuban or Don Cossacks. So why not, on this basis, declare the Novgorodians a nation forcibly oppressed by the Muscovites?
After all, if you consistently follow the path proposed by Lenin, then Russia will very quickly be pulled apart into many small and unviable pseudo-national formations. However, this is exactly what liberals sought in the 90s of the last century. Remember Yeltsin’s words: “Take as much sovereignty as you can swallow.”
***
The obvious bias of Lenin's Russophobic approach to the national question is especially clearly visible when comparing his assessments in relation to Russia, on the one hand, and in relation to Germany, on the other:
“The war of 1870-1 was a continuation of the bourgeois-progressive (decade-long) policy of liberation and unification of Germany” (Lenin, “On the Peace Program”).
It is worth recalling that during this war, Germany captured and annexed the two largest French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. But, say, the Alsatians are a people that arose on the basis of Germanized Celtic tribes, speaking the Alemannic dialect of the German language, which differs from the East German dialects much more strongly than the Ukrainian language from Great Russian. Moreover, during the period of the German annexation of Alsace (1871-1918), the Alsatians regularly opposed the Kaiser’s policy of forced Germanization.
“The German chauvinist Lench cited an interesting quotation from Engels’s work: “Po and the Rhine.” Engels says there, among other things, that the boundaries of large and viable European nations in the course of historical development, which absorbed a number of small and non-viable nations, were determined more and more by the language and sympathies of the population. Engels calls these boundaries “natural.” This was the case during the era of progressive capitalism in Europe, around 1848-1871. Now the reactionary, imperialist is increasingly breaking these democratically defined boundaries” (Lenin, “Results of the Discussion on Self-Determination”)
But for Ulyanov, the violent seizure of Alsace by Germany is a progressive and completely natural phenomenon, and the result of Ukraine’s voluntary entry into Russia is an unnatural reactionary event that led to the oppression of Ukrainians by the Great Russians!
Of course, Lenin died a long time ago, and one could have forgotten about him, but his works still live on. And one of the saddest consequences of the creations of the leader of the pestilent revolution is the collapse of the Soviet Union he created, to a large extent, predetermined by his adventuristic, Russophobic national policy. And Lenin still achieved his goal. The Great Russians no longer oppress the Ukrainians, the united Russian nation is split into three parts and the contours defining their mutual confrontation are already visible. And the time is not far off when the followers of Ulyanov’s ideas, obeying the instinct of self-determination, will drag Ukraine into NATO.
Lenin and the problem of peace.
There is a persistent myth that Lenin allegedly tried in every possible way to stop the world massacre and achieve the establishment of a speedy peace. However, the facts suggest otherwise. Here, for example, is how Vladimir Ilyich felt about the idea of ending the war at its initial stage:
"Down with priestly-sentimental and silly sighs for peace at all costs! Let us raise the banner of the civil war" (Lenin, The Position and Tasks of the Socialist International);
“The slogan of peace, in my opinion, is wrong at the moment. This is a philistine, priestly slogan. The proletarian slogan should be: civil war” (Lenin, “Letter to Shlyapnikov 10/17/14”);
“The slogan of peace can be raised either in connection with certain conditions of peace or without any conditions, as a struggle not for a specific peace, but for peace in general...
Everyone is definitely in favor of peace in general, including Kitchener, Joffre, Hindenburg and Nicholas the Bloody, for each of them wants to end the war: the question is precisely that everyone sets imperialist (i.e. predatory, oppressive foreign peoples) peace conditions in favor of their own nation" (Lenin, "The Question of Peace").
In the slogan of “peace in general,” Lenin was absolutely not satisfied with the possibility of ending the world massacre before it developed into an even bloodier civil war and world revolution. He categorically insists that the war should end only after the victory of the revolution, when the proletariat of the warring countries overthrows the bourgeois governments. Until then, any attempts by individual socialists to stop the senseless bloodbath and make peace between the warring countries caused attacks of rage and indignation in Lenin:
“We are talking about an article by one of the most prominent (and most vile) opportunists of the Social-Democrats. party of Germany, Quark, who, among other things, said: “We, the German Social Democrats, and our Austrian comrades, constantly declare that we are quite ready to enter into relations (with the English and French Social Democrats) to begin negotiations about the world. The German imperial government knows about this and does not pose the slightest obstacles.”...
Anyone who does not understand this even now, when the slogan of peace (not accompanied by a call for revolutionary action of the masses) has been prostituted by the Vienna Conference... is simply an unconscious participant in the social-chauvinist deception of the people” (Lenin, “On the Evaluation of the Slogan “Peace””).
However, after the February Revolution, Lenin's statements on the issue of peace somewhat changed their tone. At this time, Vladimir Ilyich no longer dared to publicly proclaim that the desire for peace was sentimental priesthood. This mockery was replaced by calls to fight the imperialist war, which, however, did not in the least change the essence of Lenin’s position that real peace is not possible without a socialist revolution:
“The fight against the imperialist war is impossible other than the struggle of the revolutionary classes against the ruling classes on a worldwide scale” (Lenin, “Speech on the War of 07/22/17”).
In order to prove that a sustainable peace under the rule of capitalists is impossible, Lenin puts forward the thesis according to which the war supposedly, in principle, cannot be ended without abandoning annexations. At the same time, he began to interpret the very concept of annexation in an extremely broad and extremely vague manner: not only as the seizure of foreign territory carried out during WWII, but also like all seizures in all previous wars. In addition, Lenin significantly expanded the interpretation of the principle of a nation’s right to self-determination, extending it not only to the nation, but also to the nationality and the people:
“The main condition of a democratic peace is the renunciation of annexations (conquests) - not in the sense that all powers return what they lost, but in the fact that all powers return what they lost, but in the only correct sense that every NATION, without a single exceptions, both in Europe and in the colonies, receives freedom and the opportunity to decide for itself whether it forms a separate state or is part of any other state” (Lenin, “Tasks of the Revolution”).
“The theoretical definition of annexation includes the concept of “alien people,” i.e. A PEOPLE that has preserved its individuality and will to a separate existence" (Lenin, "Porridge in the Heads").
At the same time, the leader of the world revolution probably understood that the difference between the Little Russian and Great Russian languages is at the level of differences between dialects of the same language, and therefore he generally abandoned the criterion of linguistic differences as a condition necessary for self-determination:
“Annexation is the annexation of any country distinguished by national characteristics, any annexation of a nation - it makes no difference whether it differs in language, if it feels like another people, against its desire” (Lenin, “Speech at the Bolshevik Meeting 04/17/17”).
Thus, on the one hand, the Bolsheviks were in every possible way concerned about the right of self-determination of all peoples, nationalities or nations, believing that no one should resort to violence when determining the boundaries between states:
“We say that borders are determined by the will of the population. Russia don’t dare fight over Courland! Germany, away with the troops from Courland! This is how we solve the issue of separation. The proletariat cannot resort to violence, because it must not interfere with the freedom of peoples” (Lenin, “Speech on the National Question”).
On the other hand, the Bolsheviks did not intend to observe any legality or respect for the will of the majority within their own country long before they came to power:
“We all agree that power should be in the hands of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies... This will be exactly a state like the Paris Commune. Such power is a dictatorship, i.e. relies not on the law, not on the formal will of the majority, but directly on violence. Violence is a weapon of power" (Lenin, "Report on the current situation 05/07/17").
However, the need for violence for Lenin’s supporters is understandable, because the absolute majority of the population in Russia were peasants, on whose support the Bolsheviks could hardly count, which is why dictatorship was the only way for them to stay in power. That is why already in the first Soviet Constitutions the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat was spelled out, which, in particular, was implemented by providing workers with a rate of representation in government bodies elected by the people that was five times greater than that of peasants:
“The Congress of Soviets of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is composed of representatives of city councils and councils of urban settlements at the rate of 1 deputy per 25,000 voters and representatives of provincial congresses of councils - at the rate of 1 deputy per 125,000 residents.”
So why then was Lenin so concerned about the issue of a free, democratic solution to the problem of self-determination of all oppressed nations, if he himself elevated inequality and violence to the principle of his domestic policy in relation to the majority of the Russian people?
The fact is that before the October Revolution, Lenin deliberately put forward provocative and obviously impossible slogans in order to maximally undermine the foundations of the then existing world order. And it was difficult to think of a better way to blow up the capitalist world than playing on nationalist strings and inciting ethnic hatred. After all, the implementation of the principle of self-determination, especially in areas with a mixed population, has always been a detonator leading to explosions of popular discontent.
But, having gained a foothold in power, Lenin immediately forgot that the “oppressed” Great Russians were, say, the Central Asian peoples, who were still deprived of the right to freely leave the RSFSR, although they had their own languages and with arms in their hands proved the presence of their desire to self-determination. Lenin did not remember his own principles about the right to self-determination when deciding the fate of the Cossacks.
Ulyanov understood perfectly well that the peace conditions he put forward, in which it would be necessary to revise the borders of the vast majority of countries, were absolutely unacceptable for all the main participants in the war, which means that these conditions, in principle, could not contribute to its end:
“Not a single socialist, while remaining a socialist, can pose the question of annexations (seizures) differently, cannot deny the right of self-determination, the freedom of secession to every people.
But let us not be deceived: such a demand means a revolution against the capitalists. First of all, in the first place, the British capitalists, who have more annexations (captures) than any nation in the world, will not accept such a demand (without a revolution)” (Lenin, “Deal with the capitalists or overthrow of the capitalists?”).
Therefore, the leader of the world proletariat was forced to admit that his calls for peace without annexations are only a tactical slogan, subordinated to the main goal - the struggle for world revolution:
“When we say: “no annexations,” we say that for us this slogan is only a subordinate part of the struggle against world imperialism” (Lenin, “Speech on the War of 07/22/17”).
“And the main thing is that bourgeois governments must be overthrown and start with Russia, because otherwise peace cannot be achieved” (Lenin, “Letter to Ganetsky”).
The long-awaited world.
As we approached the point in time when the Bolsheviks could actually seize power into their own hands, the slogan of “peace” became one of the main theses in Lenin’s speeches and articles, since he perfectly understood that only in this way could the coming revolution be protected from suppression by the army:
“For troops will not march against the government of the world” (Lenin, “The Crisis is Overdue”).
Although in order to achieve Lenin’s main goal - the victory of the world revolution, it was not the establishment of peace that was required, but the continuation of the world massacre, and, most importantly, its escalation into a civil war, not only in Russia, but also in Germany and France.
“We will tell the truth: that a democratic peace is impossible unless the revolutionary proletariat of England, France, Germany, Russia overthrows the bourgeois governments” (Lenin, “The Turn in World Politics”)
Therefore, along with calls for peace, Ulyanov still continued to insist on the principles of establishing peace without annexation, in an interpretation that he himself invented, absurd and not recognized by anyone.
And everything would have been fine, but the trouble is that the Russian soldiers, from the constant Bolshevik calls for fraternization, took it and began to fraternize seriously, but what kind of war could there be with the Germans if they suddenly became our brothers? It was no good to fight with brothers, which meant that the Russian peasant had nothing else to do at the front. So the soldiers began to go home, hurrying to take part in the division of the land promised to them. As a result, the remnants of the completely demoralized Russian army melted away literally by leaps and bounds. But the German troops, as they stood, continued to stand, and all sorts of fraternization had an extremely weak effect on them. It was here that, realizing the sad result of his actions aimed at disintegrating the army, Lenin suddenly realized:
“The soldiers are just running. Reports from the front speak about this. It is impossible to wait without risking helping the conspiracy between Rodzianka and Wilhelm (such a conspiracy did not exist in nature, and rumors about it were only the fruit of Ulyanov’s sick imagination - Yu.Zh.) and complete devastation due to the general flight of soldiers, if they (already close to despair ) will reach complete despair (and who then will fight for the ideals of the revolution? - Yu.Zh.) and abandon everything to the mercy of fate" (Lenin, "Letter to Comrades").
At the beginning of the war, Lenin wrote that even if the Germans take St. Petersburg, this will in no way change the nature of the war. Now it finally dawned on him that the fall of Petrograd threatened a real catastrophe. There could be only one way out - a speedy forceful seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. And at the same time, Lenin did not care about the freedom of expression of the will of the Great Russians, since the results of such an expression of will were obvious to him in advance, they could only bring final defeat to the Bolsheviks:
“Waiting until the Constituent Assembly, which obviously will not be with us, is pointless” (Lenin, “Report at the meeting of the Central Committee on October 23, 1917”).
Yes, that there was a Constituent Assembly, Ulyanov was not even sure of the voting results at the Congress of Soviets, where his supporters had the majority of votes:
“It would be disastrous or a formality to wait for the swing vote on October 25, the people have the right and obligation to resolve such issues (however, only Lenin knew this secret desire of the PEOPLE - Yu.Zh.) not by voting, but by force” (Lenin, “Letter to the Members Central Committee")
Nevertheless, without calls for peace, the Bolsheviks could not come to power and could not stay at its peak, but Lenin needed peace only after his party seized power:
“We must end this criminal war as soon as possible, and not with a separate peace with Germany, but with a universal peace, and not with the peace of the capitalists, with the amir of the working masses against the capitalists. There is only one path to this: the transfer of all state power entirely into the hands of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies both in Russia and in other countries" (Lenin, "Letter to the delegates of the Congress of Peasants' Deputies").
Finally, on the night of October 24-25, the Bolsheviks arrested the provisional government and seized power in Petrograd. After which the first decrees of the new government were adopted at the Congress of Soviets. And, above all, a decree on peace. Now Lenin acted as the head of the Russian government. However, despite this, he continues to talk about completely absurd conditions for ending the war, which would have to redraw the borders of almost all states in the world.
According to Vladimir Ilyich, to begin the self-determination procedure, it was enough for someone to simply declare such a desire in the press, or for one of the parties to speak out for independence. After which it was necessary to withdraw all troops from the region, the desire for self-determination of which was declared in the press, and carry out a democratic procedure of popular voting, which should finally determine its fate:
“If any nation is kept within the borders of a given state by force, if, contrary to its expressed desire, it does not matter whether this desire is expressed in the press, in popular assemblies, in party decisions or indignations and uprisings against national oppression - If the right to freely vote, with the complete withdrawal of the troops of the annexing or generally stronger nation, is not given the right to decide without the slightest coercion the question of the forms of state existence of this nation, then its annexation is annexation, i.e. seizure and violence" (“Decree on Peace”, adopted by the Congress of Soviets on October 26 (November 8), 1917)
However, at this point the diplomatic fantasies of the leader of the revolution were suddenly interrupted, and a semblance of common sense suddenly awoke in him:
“At the same time, the Government declares that it does not at all consider the above peace conditions to be ultimatum, i.e. agrees to consider all other peace conditions, insisting only on their proposal as quickly as possible by any belligerent country and on complete clarity, on the unconditional exclusion of any ambiguity and any mystery when proposing peace conditions” (“Decree on Peace”, adopted by the Congress of Soviets on October 26 (8 November) 1917).
Russia's former allies in the Entente, naturally, disowned Lenin's peace proposals. So Lenin’s calls did not lead to any kind of universal peace, and they could not have led. However, if earlier Ilyich categorically rejected even the very possibility of concluding a separate peace:
“There cannot be a separate peace for us, and according to the resolution of our party there is not even a shadow of a doubt that we reject it... We do not recognize any separate peace with the German capitalists and will not enter into any negotiations” (Lenin, “Speech on War”) ,
then, disregarding its own principles, the Soviet government signs an armistice with the Germans, and on December 22 begins to conduct separate negotiations with Germany and its allies.
And here the Kaiser, like a cat and a mouse, starts a game of diplomacy with the Bolshevik amateurs. To begin with, Berlin declares its adherence to the main provisions of the Soviet declaration of peace without annexations and indemnities, subject to the acceptance of these proposals by the governments of the Entente countries. After which Petrograd again turns to its former allies with an invitation to take part in peace negotiations. Of course, without receiving any response from them.
Meanwhile, Berlin, in the territories it occupied, carried out purposeful activities to form puppet governments in the former national outskirts of Russia, fully accountable to it, seeking separation from Russia. In Ukraine, not without the influence of Lenin’s cries about the so-called national oppression of the Great Russians, the Little Russians came to power Shivinist The Rada, which instantly began to seek protection of its independence from the Germans.
On January 9, the German side stated that since the Entente did not join the peace negotiations, Germany considers itself free from the Soviet peace formula, and a few days later it demanded the separation from Russia of over 150 thousand square kilometers of its territory. Moreover, all this was done by Berlin in full accordance with the German interpretation of the principle of peace without annexations. It’s just that Germany was forced to keep its troops in Poland and the Baltic states at the request of the national governments of these new states.
On February 9, Germany and Austria signed a separate peace with the Ukrainian Rada. Although at this point in time the Rada no longer represented anyone, since power in Ukraine had almost completely passed to the Soviets.
On February 18, Austro-German troops launched an offensive along the entire front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Two days later the Germans entered Minsk. During these days, General Hoffmann wrote in his diary:
“Yesterday, one lieutenant with six soldiers captured six hundred Cossacks... The most comical war I have ever seen, a small group of infantrymen with a machine gun and a cannon on the front carriage follows from station to station, takes prisoner the next group of Bolsheviks and moves on.”
On February 21 Lenin announced "The socialist fatherland is in danger". Since then, the holiday “Soviet Army Day” arose in Soviet mythology. In accordance with this historical myth, on February 23, near Narva and Pskov, the newly created Red Army regiments allegedly stopped the German offensive.
However, there was no German attack on Petrograd at that time, since the fall of the Russian capital could lead to the fall of Lenin’s government and the restoration of the Entente, which the Germans feared most of all. Nevertheless, since through the efforts of the Bolsheviks the Russian army was actually destroyed, then at the categorical demand of Lenin, who instantly forgot about his assurances not to sign a separate peace with Germany under any circumstances, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided to completely surrender. Under the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany, which was signed on March 3, Russia renounced sovereignty over Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and also pledged to completely demobilize the army, including the military units newly formed by the Bolsheviks.
However, Lenin did not grieve too much about the Russian territories given to the Germans, although he called the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty obscene, but his much greater indignation was caused by the Entente’s seizure of territories from Germany:
“The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, dictated by monarchical Germany, and then the MUCH MORE BRUTAL AND VIOLENT Peace of Versailles, dictated by the “democratic” republics, America and France, as well as “free” England” (Lenin, “Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism”) .
That is why now, when in Russian society there has been an extraordinary increase in interest in the patriotic activities of the Georgian Stalin, almost no one remembers with a kind word the deeds of the “Great Russian” Russophobe Ulyanov. Nowadays only words of anathema and curses are thrown at Lenin.
“The transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war is the only correct proletarian slogan, indicated by the experience of the Commune, outlined by the Basel (1912) resolution and arising from all the conditions of the imperialist war between highly developed bourgeois countries. No matter how great the difficulties of such a transformation may seem at one moment or another , socialists will never give up systematic, persistent, steady preparatory work in this direction, once war has become a fact" (Lenin, article "War and Russian Social Democracy", September 1914)
Here we need to stop and pay attention to a very important feature of Lenin’s plan. Ilyich had no intention of saving Russians from the horrors of war; he only wanted to redirect the cannons and machine guns so that the war would go against part of his own people. But it was easier to achieve this transformation of the war “wrong” into “right” - so that brother against brother and son against father - when “one’s” government was defeated. This defeat weakened him and made the path to revolution easier. And Lenin points out: “A revolution during war is a civil war, and the transformation of a war of governments into a civil war, on the one hand, is facilitated by the military failures (defeat) of governments, and on the other hand, it is impossible to actually strive for such a transformation without facilitating those defeat itself... The revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot help but desire the defeat of its government..." (article "On the defeat of its government in the imperialist war"). In principle, Lenin proclaimed the slogan of defeat not only the tsarist, but also all other governments participating in the First World War. However, he cared little whether the socialists of Germany, Austria-Hungary, England and France would support his call with their practical actions. In addition, only one of the warring parties can suffer defeat in a war. Therefore, the defeat of Russia in practice means a military victory for Germany and the strengthening of the Kaiser's government. But Lenin is in no way embarrassed by this circumstance and he insists that the initiative for defeatism should come precisely from the Russian Social Democrats: “... The last consideration is especially important for Russia, because this is the most backward country in which a socialist revolution is directly impossible That is why the Russian Social Democrats had to be the first to come up with the theory and practice of the slogan of defeat" (Lenin, "On the defeat of their government in the imperialist war").
Admire the following quotes from the leader of the world proletariat, every letter and punctuation mark in them is saturated with complete Russophobia: “Down with priestly sentimental and stupid sighs for peace at all costs! Let us raise the banner of civil war...” (Lenin, “Situation and Tasks” socialist international"). “The slogan of peace, in my opinion, is wrong at the moment. It is a philistine, priestly slogan. The proletarian slogan should be: civil war...” (Lenin, “Letter to Shlyapnikov 10.17.14”) “For us, Russians, from the point of view interests of the working masses and the working class of Russia, there cannot be the slightest, absolutely no doubt that the least evil would be now and immediately - the defeat of tsarism in this war. For tsarism is a hundred times worse than Kaiserism..." (Lenin, "Letter to Shlyapnikov. 10/17/14".) Stunning statements of cynicism! And it’s not just “losing the war”, but turning it into a civil war - this is already a double betrayal! Lenin demands, furiously insists on the need for civil war! It is a pity that the tsarist government did not think of sending a messenger to Europe with an ice ax for Mr. Ulyanov, who wrote his Russophobic libels in European coffee houses. Look, the fate of Russia in the twentieth century would have been much less tragic.
And another very important point: we look at the dates of Lenin’s statements. The leader of Bolshevism put forward the tasks of the defeat of Russia and the need for a civil war immediately and unambiguously, when no one yet knew the upcoming course of the war. N. Bukharin, who was with him in Switzerland, said in the Moscow Izvestia in 1934 that the very first propaganda slogan that Lenin wanted to put forward was a slogan to the soldiers of all the warring armies: “Shoot your officers!” But something confused Ilyich and he preferred the less specific formula “transforming the imperialist war into a civil war.” There had not yet been any serious problems at the front: no heavy losses, no shortage of weapons and ammunition, no retreat, and the Bolsheviks, according to Lenin’s plan, had already launched a fierce struggle to reduce the country’s defense capability. They created illegal party organizations at the front, conducting anti-war propaganda; issued anti-government leaflets and appeals; carried out strikes and demonstrations in the rear; organized and supported any mass protests that weakened the front. That is, they acted like a classic “5th column”.
Anti-war rally in a military unit 
A.A. Brusilov writes in his memoirs: “When I was commander-in-chief of the Southwestern Front during the German war, the Bolsheviks, both before and after the February coup, strongly agitated in the ranks of the army. During the time of Kerensky, they had especially many attempts to penetrate the army... I remember one incident ... My chief of staff, General Sukhomlin, reported to me the following: several Bolsheviks arrived at the headquarters in my absence. They told him that they wanted to infiltrate the army for propaganda. Sukhomlin was obviously confused and allowed them to go. approved and ordered them to be returned back. Arriving in Kamenets-Podolsk, they came to me, and I told them that under no circumstances could I allow them into the army, since they wanted peace at all costs, and the Provisional Government wanted peace. demands war until there is a general peace together with all our allies. And then I expelled them from the borders under my control.”
Anton Ivanovich Denikin testifies: “Bolshevism spoke most definitely of all. As we know, he came to the army with a direct invitation - to refuse obedience to his superiors and stop the war, finding grateful soil in the spontaneous sense of self-preservation that gripped the mass of soldiers. Delegates sent from all fronts to the Petrograd Soviet with inquiries, requests, demands, threats, there they sometimes heard from the few representatives of the defencist bloc reproaches and requests to be patient, but they found complete sympathy in the Bolshevik faction of the Council, taking with them into the dirty and cold trenches the conviction that peace negotiations would not begin until all power passes to the Bolshevik soviets."
The tsarist regime had many shortcomings, but it was not at all “rotten,” as Soviet propaganda so hard tried to convince us. The Black and Baltic seas were controlled by the Russian fleet, industry sharply increased the production of ammunition and weapons. The front has stabilized in the western regions of Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states. Losses? In total, Russia irretrievably lost less than 1 million people in the First World War, compare with the gigantic multimillion-dollar losses in the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars. But where the autocracy has fallen very short is in countering people of different political colors who are conducting subversive anti-state activities, including the so-called liberals. February revolution 1917 became a strong blow to the country's defense capability. From the memoirs of the so-called “old Bolshevik” V.E. Vasiliev “And our spirit is young,” the active role of the Bolsheviks in organizing the February revolution is clearly visible: “Late in the evening, the Putilovite Grigory Samoded came to our company. He brought an appeal from the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks, in which , in particular, it said: “Remember, comrade soldiers, that only the fraternal alliance of the working class and the revolutionary army will bring liberation to the dying oppressed people and put an end to the fratricidal and senseless war. Down with the royal monarchy! Long live the fraternal alliance of the revolutionary army with the people!" We immediately went to all the Izmailovo barracks to raise soldiers. Samoded went with us to the 1st battalion. Already in the morning of February 25, rallies began in the barracks. Officers, among whom Colonel Verkhovtsev was in charge , captains Luchinin and Dzhavrov, tried to interrupt the speeches, but the soldiers refused to obey the officers and began to act together with the revolutionary companies. At rallies, the soldiers called for decisive action - arming the workers, dispersing and disarming the police, policemen... Izmailovsky and Petrogradsky regiments, leaving the barracks. , joined the worker columns. All the streets and alleys on the Peterhof highway were reliably guarded by armed workers and our companies. That evening, leaflets from the St. Petersburg Bolshevik Committee were passed from hand to hand, calling for decisive action: “Call everyone to fight. It’s better to die a glorious death fighting for the workers’ cause than to lay down your life for the profits of capital at the front or to wither away from hunger and backbreaking work... We stopped one of the cars. Let's go to the barracks. We shot the officers who offered desperate resistance."
Street fighting in Petrograd in February 1917 
We read further the curious memoirs of V.E. Vasiliev especially carefully: “On March 1, 1917, an event of enormous importance occurred. A joint meeting of the workers’ and soldiers’ sections of the Council, with the participation of the Bolsheviks, developed (this was a major victory for our party) order number 1 of the Petrograd Council, mandatory for all units of the garrison. I remember well this order, which in the post-February days blocked the path of reaction to counter-revolutionary elements to obtain weapons. The order ordered the troops to obey only the Petrograd Soviet and their regimental committees. Weapons were now to be at the disposal of the soldiers’ committees and were not to be issued to officers even on their own. requirement. The soldiers were granted civil rights, which they could use outside of service and formation. Order 1 (the soldiers perfectly understood who was its initiator) raised the authority of the Bolsheviks even higher. . I. Podvoisky, one of the most experienced organizers of military and combat work, the Military Commission is the core of the future “Voyenka”. At the end of March, a meeting of the Bolsheviks of the garrison took place (97 representatives from 48 military units). It established, instead of the Military Commission, a permanent apparatus - the Military Organization - with the goal of "unifying all party forces of the garrison and mobilizing the masses of soldiers to fight under the banner of the Bolsheviks."
So who actually inspired the adoption of the infamous order No. 1 - again, these were the Bolsheviks! The situation in Petrograd was critical, huge crowds of armed soldiers rushed around the city, starting fierce battles with cadets and gendarmes; In Kronstadt, massacres of officers by sailors took place. Formal anarchy! In such a situation, it would have cost nothing to push any, even the most anti-Russian, resolution through the new authorities, just to calm the raging “defenders of the Fatherland.” And for some reason we still blame the so-called “liberals” for the collapse of the army. General A.S. Lukomsky noted that the order of the 1st Petrosovet “undermined discipline, depriving the officer command staff of power over the soldiers.” With the adoption of this order in the army, the principle of unity of command, fundamental to any army, was violated, as a result there was a sharp decline in discipline. All weapons came under the control of soldiers' committees. But this was to the benefit of the Bolsheviks, and during this period they became the most active defenders of the so-called “army democracy.” The order to the delegates to the Minsk Council, drawn up by the Bolshevik A.F. Myasnikov, said: “Considering it correct... the destruction of standing armies... we see the need to create more democratic orders in the army.” Among the new Bolshevik slogans is “arming the people.” It is interesting that when the Bolsheviks began to create their own - truly combat-ready Red Army - they completely forgot about order number 1 of the Petrograd Soviet, and about “army democracy”, and about “arming the people” too. In the army led by Trotsky, without any sentimentality they shot their soldiers even for minor offenses, achieving the strictest discipline. Thus, in August 1918, Trotsky used decimation to punish the 2nd Petrograd Regiment of the Red Army, which had left its combat positions without permission.
The memoirs of another “old Bolshevik” - F.P. Khaustov - date back to April and May 1917: “District Bolshevik committees are elected. This makes the regiment united... The committee establishes connections with neighboring regiments and the same work is also carried out there, according to elections of Bolshevik committees. The matter expanded, and in mid-March the entire 43rd Corps was organized on the Bolshevik program. The Bolshevik Committee of the 436th Novoladozhsky Regiment was almost entirely included in the corps committee, replenished with representatives from other regiments. At the same time, the Bolshevik committee of the 436th Novoladozhsky regiment established contact with the Central and St. Petersburg committees of the Bolsheviks through Comrade A. Vasilyev and received literature and leadership from there. At the same time, a live connection was established with the Kronstadt sailors, and the regiment committee became part of the Petrograd military organization. the central committee of the Bolshevik party. At the beginning of March, the committee organized, contrary to the order of the commander-in-chief of the Northern Front, fraternization with the Germans on an area of at least 40 miles. At this time I was the chairman of the Bolshevik corps committee. The fraternization took place in an organized manner.... The result of the fraternization was the actual cessation of hostilities in the corps sector."
So, the tsarist government was unable to keep the situation in the country under control. Instead of reliably isolating or eliminating the organizers of anti-state activities, law enforcement agencies exiled them to well-fed Siberia, where they gained strength, fed themselves, freely communicated with each other, building revolutionary plans. If necessary, revolutionaries easily escaped from exile. During the war, the fight against subversive activities was also insufficiently active and did not correspond to reality. After the attempted Kornilov rebellion, the Military Revolutionary Committees (MRC), under the control of the Bolsheviks, seized into their hands all command and administrative power in the regiments, divisions, corps and armies of the Western Front. The Provisional Government, like the tsarist government, was unable to promptly and firmly stop the subversive activities of the Leninists. For the sake of truth, let us recall once again that it itself did a lot to destabilize the army with ill-conceived resolutions and orders. But one should not attribute too much to the Kerensky government; despite serious mistakes, it had no intention of surrendering the country to the Germans. From January to September 1917, about 1.9 million people joined the active army from the rear garrisons, which significantly blocked the increasing flow of desertion. In the summer, Germany continued to maintain significant forces on the Eastern Front: 127 divisions. Although their number dropped to 80 in the fall, this was still a third of Germany's total ground forces. In June 1917, Kornilov's army with a decisive assault broke through the positions of the 3rd Austrian Army of Kirchbach west of the city of Stanislav. During the further offensive, about 10 thousand enemy soldiers and 150 officers were captured, and approximately 100 guns were captured. However, the subsequent breakthrough of the Germans on the front of the 11th Army, which fled before the Germans (despite its superiority in numbers) due to moral decay, neutralized the initial successes of the Russian troops. This is how supporters of Russia’s defeat stabbed their own country in the back.
Of course, the defeatist activities of the Russian revolutionaries were received with great enthusiasm by the Germans. The German General Staff organized a large-scale campaign to support the subversive efforts of the Bolsheviks. Special offices were engaged in agitation among Russian prisoners of war. German intelligence financed the Bolsheviks with large sums through the left-wing political adventurer Parvus (real name Gelfand). He settled in Stockholm, which became an outpost of German intelligence to control events in Russia. On March 2, 1917, the German representative office in Stockholm received the following instruction 7443 of the German Reichsbank: “You are hereby notified that demands will be received from Finland for funds to promote peace in Russia. The demands will come from the following persons: Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sumenson, Kozlovsky, Kollontai, Sivers or Merkalin Current accounts are opened for these persons in branches of private German banks in Sweden, Norway and Switzerland in accordance with our order 2754. These requirements must be accompanied by one or two of the following signatures: “Dirschau”. "or "Milkenberg". Requests endorsed by one of the above-mentioned persons must be executed without delay." After the war, Erich von Ludendorff (Quartermaster General, the de facto head of the German General Staff) recalled: “... Our government, having sent Lenin to Russia, took on enormous responsibility! This trip was justified from a military point of view: it was necessary for Russia to fall ...". And one more thing: “By November, the degree of disintegration of the Russian army by the Bolsheviks had reached such a level that the OKH was seriously thinking about using a number of units from the Eastern Front to strengthen its positions in the West. At that time we had 80 divisions in the East - a third of all available forces.”
Erich von Ludendorff: "...Our government, having sent Lenin to Russia, took on enormous responsibility! This trip was justified from a military point of view: it was necessary for Russia to fall" 
After the October revolution, the first thing the Bolsheviks did was publish Lenin’s decree on peace. This treacherous step became the most powerful and decisive impetus for the complete collapse of the front, it practically ceased to exist. The soldiers went home in huge crowds. At the same time, a mass exodus of officers began from the army, who did not agree with the new conditions of service, with the new government and who reasonably feared for their lives. Murders and suicides of officers were not uncommon. The guards assigned to guard the warehouses fled, which is why a lot of property was stolen or perished in the open air. Due to the massive loss of horsepower, the artillery was completely paralyzed. In January 1918, 150 thousand people remained on the entire Western Front; for comparison, in mid-1916 it consisted of more than 5 million people.
General Brusilov testifies again: “I remember a case when in my presence it was reported to the Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front that one of the divisions, having expelled its superiors, wanted to go home entirely. I ordered to let them know that I would come to them the next morning to talk with them They tried to dissuade me from going to this division because it was extremely brutal and that I would hardly get out of them alive. I, however, ordered to announce that I would come to them and that they would meet me with a huge crowd of soldiers. raging and not aware of her actions. I drove into this crowd in a car... and, standing up, asked them what they wanted. They shouted: “We want to go home!” I can’t talk to the crowd, but let them choose several people with whom I will speak in their presence. With some difficulty, but still the representatives of this crazy crowd were chosen. When I asked which party they belonged to, they answered me that. They used to be social revolutionaries, but now they have become Bolsheviks. "What is your teaching?" - I asked. “Land and freedom!” they shouted... “But what do you want now?” They frankly declared that they no longer wanted to fight and wanted to go home in order to divide the land, taking it away from the landowners, and live freely, not bearing any burdens. To my question: “What will happen to Mother Russia then, if no one thinks about her, and each of you cares only about yourself?” To this they told me that it is not their business to discuss? , what will happen to the state, and that they firmly decided to live calmly and happily at home. “That is, to eat sunflower seeds and play the harmonica?!” “Exactly like that!” the nearest rows burst out laughing. “I also met my 17th Infantry Division, which was once in my 14th Corps, which greeted me enthusiastically. But in response to my exhortations to go against the enemy, they answered me that they themselves would have gone, but other troops adjacent to them, they will leave and will not fight, and therefore they do not agree to die uselessly. And all the units that I saw, to a greater or lesser extent, declared the same thing: “they don’t want to fight,” and everyone considered themselves Bolsheviks.. "
Lenin, in his speech at the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies on June 9 (22), 1917, said: “When they say that we strive for a separate peace, this is not true... We do not recognize any separate peace with the German capitalists and We won’t enter into any negotiations with them.” It sounded patriotic, but Ilyich blatantly lied and resorted to any tricks to come to power. Already at the end of 1917. The Bolsheviks entered into negotiations with Germany, and in March 1918. they signed a separate peace on fantastically enslaving terms. Under its terms, a territory of 780 thousand square meters was torn away from the country. km. with a population of 56 million people (a third of the total population); Russia pledged to recognize the independence of Ukraine (UNR); indemnity in gold (about 90 tons) was transported by the Bolsheviks to Germany, etc. Now the Leninists had a free hand for the long-awaited war with their own people. By 1921, Russia was literally in ruins. It was under the Bolsheviks that the territories of Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Western Ukraine and Belarus, the Kara region (in Armenia), Bessarabia, etc. seceded from the former Russian Empire. During the Civil War, from hunger, disease, terror and battles (according to various sources), from 8 to 13 million people died. Up to 2 million people emigrated from the country. In 1921, there were many millions of street children in Russia. Industrial production fell to 20% of 1913 levels.
It was a real national disaster.
