Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 21 - From Marx to Mao

15
THE TASKS
OF REVOLUTIONARY SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY
IN THE EUROPEAN WAR 1
THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS
ON THE EUROPEAN WAR
Reports have reached us from most reliable sources, regarding
a conference recently held by leaders of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party, on the question of the
European war. The conference was not of a wholly official
nature, since the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. has
as yet been unable to gather, as a result of the numerous
arrests and unprecedented persecution by the tsarist government.
We do, however, have precise information that the
conference gave expression to views held by the most
influential circles of the R.S.D.L.P.
The conference adopted the following resolution, whose
full text we are quoting below as a document:
RESOLUTION OF A GROUP OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS
1. The European and world war has the clearly defined
character of a bourgeois, imperialist and dynastic war.
A struggle for markets and for freedom to loot foreign countries,
a striving to suppress the revolutionary movement of
the proletariat and democracy in the individual countries,
a desire to deceive, disunite, and slaughter the proletarians
of all countries by setting the wage slaves of one nation