12 THE CLASS STRUGGLE PACIFISM IN THE SERVICE OF IMPERIALISM 13 said to themselves: If our government, with such an outspoken pacifist as Wilson at the head, declares war, and if even Bryan supports the government in this war, this war must be an unavoidable and righteous war.
It is now evident why the sanctimonious, quakerlike pacifism of the bourgeois demagogues is in such high favor in financial and war industry circles.
Our Menshevist and Social Revolutionist pacifism, in spite of apparent differences, is, in reality, playing the same part as American pacifism. The resolution on war passed by the majority of the Pan Russian Congress of Councils of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants, condemns the war not only from a pacifist standpoint, but also because of the imperialistic character of the war. The Congress declares the struggle for an early conclusion of the war to be the most important task of revolutionary democracy. But all these premises are merely mobilized so that they may lead to the conclusion: until such time as the war may be ended by the international forces of democracy, the Russian revolutionary democracy will be obliged in every possible way to co operate in strengthening the fighting power of our army and rendering it efficient for both offensive and defensive action.
The revision of the old international treaties, the Congress, like the Provisional Government, would make dependent on a voluntary agreement of the allied diplomacy, which, in its very nature, neither desires, nor is it able, to relinquish the imperialistic aims of the war. The Congress, following its leaders, makes the international forces of democracy depend on the will of the social patriots, who are bound by iron chains to their imperialistic governments. Voluntarily restricting themselves in the question of an early end of the war, to this charmed circle, the majority of the Congress naturally arrive at a very definite conclusion in the domain of practical politics: an offensive on the military front. This pacifism, which solidifies and disciplines the petit bourgeois democracy and induces it to support an offensive, ought manifestly to be on the most friendly terms not only with the Russian imperialists, but also with those of the allied nations.
Milyukov says: In the name of our fidelity to our allies, and to the old (diplomatic) treaties, we must have an offensive.
Kerensky and Tseretelli say: Although the old, diplomatic treaties have not yet been revised, we must have an offensive.
The arguments may differ; the policy is the same. Nor could it be otherwise, since Kerensky and Tseretelli are indissolubly bound up in the government with the party of Milyukov. As a matter of fact, the social patriotic pacifism of the Dans, as well as the quaker pacifism of the Bryans are both operating in the service of imperialism.
In view of this state of affairs, the chief task of Russian diplomacy is not to make allied diplomacy refrain from this act or that or to revise this thing or that, but to make allied diplo macy believe that the Russian revolution is safe and sound and solvent. The Russian Ambassador, Bakhmetieff, in his speech before the Congress of the United States, delivered on June 10, characterized the Provisional Government chiefly from this point of view. All these circumstances, said the Ambassador, point to the fact that the power and significance of the Provisional Government are growing day by day, that with each passing moment the Provisional Government is becoming better able to cope with all those elements that mean disaster, whether they take the form of reactionary propaganda or that of an agitation by the members of the extreme left. At the present time the Provisional Government is determined to take the most drastic steps in this direction, resorting to force, if need be, in spite of its constant endeavors for a peaceful solution of all questions.
There is no doubt that the national honor our defenders remains absolutely unruffled while the Ambassador of revolutionary democracy fervently persuades the parliament of the American plutocracy of the readiness of the Russian Government to pour out the blood of the Russian proletariat in the name of order, the chief ingredient of which is a fidelity to allied capitalism.