Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

510 NOTES474849Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Philbecker, Jos. Dietzgen,Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx und A. an Sorge und Andere,S. 220. p. 85Vorwärts—a daily newspaper, the central organ of the German Social-DemocraticParty, published in Berlin from 1891 according toa decision of the Halle Congress of the Party as successor to theBerliner Volksblatt (founded in 1884), under the name Vorwärts,Berliner Volksblatt. Engels used its columns to combat allmanifestations of opportunism. In the late nineties, after the deathof Engels, the editorial board of the newspaper was in the hands ofthe Right wing of the Party and regularly published articles by theopportunists. Vorwärts gave a tendentious picture of the fightagainst opportunism and revisionism in the R.S.D.L.P., supportingthe Economists and later, after the split in the Party, theMensheviks. During the years of reaction in Russia it publishedslanderous articles by Trotsky, while denying Lenin and theBolsheviks the opportunity to controvert him and give an objectiveaccount of the state of affairs within the Party.During the First World War Vorwärts took a social-chauviniststand. After the Great October Socialist Revolution it conductedanti-Soviet propaganda. It was issued in Berlin until 1933. p. 87The Polish Social-Democrats—members of the Social-Democracyof the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (S.D.K.P.&L.), therevolutionary party of the Polish working class, founded in 1893 asthe Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland, and from August,1900, after the Congress of the Social-Democratic organisations ofthe Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, where the Polish Social-Democrats merged with part of the Lithuanian Social-Democrats,it became known as the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom ofPoland and Lithuania. The party rendered a service in that itguided the Polish workers’ movement towards an alliance with theRussian workers’ movement and opposed nationalism.During the revolution of 1905-07 the S.D.K.P.&L. foughtunder slogans that were close to those of the Bolshevik Party andtook an uncompromising stand in regard to the liberal bourgeoisie.At that time the S.D.K.P.&L. was guilty of a number of errors:it failed to understand Lenin’s theory of the socialist revolution andthe leading role of the Party in the democratic revolution, and itunderestimated the role of the peasantry as an ally of the workingclass and the significance of the national-liberation movement.While criticising the erroneous views of the S.D.K.P.&L., Lenindid not overlook the services it had rendered to the revolutionarymovement in Poland. He pointed out that the Polish Social-Democratshad “created for the first time a purely proletarian party inPoland and proclaimed the vitally important principle of closeunion between the Polish and Russian workers in their class struggle”(see present edition, Vol. 20, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination”). At the Fourth (Unity) Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.in 1906 the S.D.K.P.&L. was admitted to the R.S.D.L.P. inthe capacity of a territorial organisation.