isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

REVOLUTION AND CONQUEST 453
aware of the weakness of their foreign associates; but even if
they had been aware of it they could still hope that with the
progress of international revolution these associates would gain
strength, as it had been gained by the Bolsheviks, who had
themselves been little more than a 'sect' early in I gr 7. The hope
se('med all the more justified as the Second International had
fallen into such disrepute that it appeared to be dead beyond
resurrection. The workers' widespread opposition to the old
International sprang, however, not from any positive revolutionary
attitude, but from a revulsion against war and social
patriotism. The Bolsheviks, naturally, confused the motives.
Even so, their expectations were not altogether groundless:
within a year the new International did, in fact, gain a formidable
hold on the European Labour movement.
Trotsky made only a brief appearance at the founding congress.
Kolchak's spring offensive had just begun and Trotsky,
interrupting an inspection of the battlefields, came to the
conference hall straight from his train, in full uniform, bringing
with him a breath of the civil war. The delegates who had known
him as the spokesman of Zimmcrwald eyed with thrilled curiosity
the passionate anti-militarist transfigured into the leader
of an army.' He gave the conference a hurried explanation of the
main lines of his military policy and then presented a manifesto
he had written to introduce the new International to the world.
The manifesto began with a rapid incisive survey of the changes
which capitalism had recently undergone. The war had brought
the twilight of laissez faire. The state now tended to dominate
economic life. Which state would dominate it, the bourgeois or
the proletarian? This was the question. The reformists and
social patriots evaded the issue and preached conciliation. 'If
these preachings were to find acceptance among the working
classes, capitalist development in new, much more concentrated
and monstrous forms, would be restored on the bones of several
generations, with the inevitable prospect of new world war.
Luckily for mankind, this is impossible." Socialism, if it won in
Europe, would also free the colonial nations, and assist them
with its technology, organization, and spiritual influence so as
to speed up their transition to an organized Socialist economy.
1
Arthur 1laTl$0me, Sii: Wuks in Russia, p. 143.
• Trouky, Sochinmya, -vo1. 1