Lenin CW-Vol. 23.pdf - From Marx to Mao

LETTERS FROM AFAR313i.e., the second Provisional Government, has also completelydeserted to the bourgeoisie; Chkheidze has not; he continuesto oscillate between the Provisional Governmentof the bourgeoisie, the Guchkovs and Milyukovs, and the“provisional government” of the proletariat and the poorestmasses of the people, the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies andthe Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party united by theCentral Committee.Consequently, the revolution has confirmed what weespecially insisted on when we urged the workers clearly torealise the class difference between the principal parties andprincipal trends in the working-class movement and amongthe petty bourgeoisie—what we wrote, for example, in theGeneva Sotsial-Demokrat No. 41, nearly eighteen monthsago, on October 13, 1915.“As hitherto, we consider it admissible for Social-Democratsto join a provisional revolutionary government togetherwith the democratic petty bourgeoisie, but not with therevolutionary chauvinists. By revolutionary chauvinists wemean those who want a victory over tsarism so as to achievevictory over Germany—plunder other countries—consolidateGreat-Russian rule over the other peoples of Russia, etc.Revolutionary chauvinism is based on the class position ofthe petty bourgeoisie. The latter always vacillates betweenthe bourgeoisie and the proletariat. At present it is vacillatingbetween chauvinism (which prevents it from being consistentlyrevolutionary, even in the meaning of a democraticrevolution) and proletarian internationalism. At the momentthe Trudoviks, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Nasha Zarya(now Dyelo), Chkheidze’s Duma group, the Organising Committee,Mr. Plekhanov and the like are political spokesmenfor this petty bourgeoisie in Russia. If the revolutionarychauvinists won in Russia, we would be opposed to a defenceof their “fatherland” in the present war. Our slogan is: againstthe chauvinists, even if they are revolutionary and republican—againstthem and for an alliance of the internationalproletariat for the socialist revolution.”** See present edition, Vol. 21, p. 403.—Ed.