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

386 NOTES32The Organising Committee—the leading Menshevik centre inauguaratedat the August 1912 Conference of liquidators. In the FirstWorld War the Organising Committee followed a social-chauvinistpolicy, justified tsarist Russia’s part in the war and carried onjingoist propaganda. Published a magazine Nasha Zarya (OurDawn) and, after its closure, Nashe Dyelo (Our Cause), later renamedDyelo, and the newspaper Rabocheye Utro (Workers’ Morning),later renamed Utro. The O.C. functioned up to the electionsof the Menshevik Central Committee in August 1917. Besides theO.C. which operated inside Russia, there was a Secretariat Abroadcomposed of five secretaries—P. B. Axelrod, I. S. Astrov-Poves,Y. O. Martov, A. S. Martynov and S. Y. Semkovsky. It followeda pro-Centrist line and used internationalist phraseology to coverup its support of the Russian social-chauvinists. The SecretariatAbroad published a newspaper, Izvestia (News), which appearedfrom February 1915 to March 1917.Semkovsky’s article “Russia Disintegrating?”, to which Leninevidently refers, appeared in Nashe Slovo No. 45, March 21. 1915.p. 73The “Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution” (in aletter Lenin refers to it as an article “On Disarmament”) was writtenin German and meant for publication in the Swiss, Swedish andNorwegian Left Social-Democratic press. However, it was not publishedat the time. Lenin somewhat re-edited it for publicationin Russian. The article “The ‘Disarmament’ Slogan” appeared inSbornik Sotsial-Demokrata No. 2, December 1916 (see pp. 94-104of this volume).The original, German text appeared in Jugend-International,organ of the International League of Socialist Youth Organisations,Nos. 9 and 10, September and October 1917 under theheading “Das Militärprogramm der proletarischen Revolution”. Thearticle was printed with this editorial foreword: “In our day, whenLenin is one of the most spoken-of leaders of the Russian revolution,the following article by this veteran revolutionary stalwart,in which he sets out a large part of his political programme, is ofespecial interest. We received it shortly before his departure fromZurich in April 1917.” The heading was apparently given by theeditors of Jugend-International. p. 7733See Note No. 18.p. 7734Reference is to Robert Grimm’s theses on the war question, publishedin the Grütlianer Nos. 162 and 164, July 14 and 17, 1916.With the growing danger of Switzerland being drawn into thewar, a discussion on the war issue arose in the Social-DemocraticParty. In April 1916, the Executive instructed Grimm, Müller,Naine, Pflüger and several other prominent party leaders to statetheir views in the press and their articles were published in theBerner Tagwacht, Volksrecht and Grütlianer. p. 77