The USSR and the Comintern

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Newspaper dispatches indicate that Washington is preparing to recognize the Soviet government It is safe to say that in the forthcoming discussion between President Roosevelt and M. Litvinov the possible activities of the Comintern will play an important part America is entering upon a period of profound social shifts. Under such circumstances, the intervention of the Comintern must appear especially dangerous. Moreover, among well-known circles, even now it is considered an immutable fact that the recognition of the USSR carries with it in reality the recognition of the Comintern. We are justified, in our opinion, in stating that such a view is a most vulgar anachronism, being held by people, especially professional politicians, who are loath to ponder new facts, particularly when the latter run counter to their prejudices.

From the first days of its existence, the Soviet government protested against attempts to identify it with the Comintern. Juridically, these protests were irreproachable, because, despite their community of ideals, the two organizations rested upon different national and international foundations; and in their activities, they remained formally independent of each other. But the statesmen of Europe and America were not reassured by this legalistic distinction. They cited the factual connection between the Soviet government and the Third International. The same people were at the head of both organizations. Neither Lenin nor his closest collaborators hid or desired to hide their leading participation in the life of the Communist International. While the Soviet government of that period deemed it possible to make very great material sacrifices for the sake of preserving peaceful relations with capitalistic governments, Soviet diplomacy was under the strictest instruction not to enter into any discussions relating to the Communist International, to the location of its center in Moscow, to the participation of the leading members of the government in it, etc.

In this sphere, concessions were considered even more impermissible than in the sphere of the fundamental principles of the Soviet regime, its system of government, the nationalization of the means of production, the monopoly of foreign trade, etc. When Chicherin, in a letter to Lenin, hinted at the advisability of making concessions to Wilson in reference to the suffrage laws of the Soviet republic, Lenin replied, by letter, with a counterproposal that Chicherin be sent to a sanatorium for a while, in view of the obvious breakdown of his political balance. Nor is it difficult to conceive how Lenin would have replied had any Soviet diplomat been so bold as to suggest some concession or other to capitalist partners at the expense of the Comintern. So far as I recall, no one ever made any such proposals even in a masked form.

During the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, when he argued for the necessity of accepting the German ultimatum, Lenin reiterated time and again, "It is insanity to stake the conquests of the October Revolution on an obviously hopeless war; if the salvation of the German revolution were concerned, that would be another matter. In that case, we would have to risk the fate of the Soviet republic, because the German revolution is incommensurably more important than our own." Fundamentally, the other leaders of the Soviet republic looked at the matter in the same way. In their own time, their speeches and articles were amply quoted as proof of the organic connection between the Soviet government and the Comintern. Therefore the conservative politicians of Europe and America failed to react to arguments de jure; they referred to the situation de facto.

However, much water has gone under the bridge since the time when the ideas of Lenin and his closest co-workers were the definitive ideas of the Soviet republic and the Comintern. Circumstances have changed; people have changed; the ruling stratum of the USSR has been renovated completely; the old ideas and slogans have been ousted by new ones. What had formerly composed the essence has now become transformed into a harmless ritual But instead, there remain preserved intentionally the convictions of some statesmen of the West, based on recollections, as to the indissoluble tie between the Soviet government and the Comintern. It is time this view was revised! In the present-day world, so torn by contradictions, there are far too many real bases for enmity to seek artificial reasons for fanning it It is time to understand that despite the ritualistic phrases employed on holiday occasions, the Soviet government and the Comintern now inhabit different planes. Not only are the present leaders of the USSR prepared to make no national sacrifices for the sake of the German and, in general, the world revolution, but also they do not hesitate for a moment to take such actions and make such pronouncements as deal the heaviest blows to the Comintern and the workers' movements as a whole. The more the USSR strengthens its international position, the deeper becomes the rift between the Soviet government and the international revolutionary struggle.

The most brilliant moments in the life of the Comintern were its congresses, unfailingly assembled in Moscow. Here, through the exchange of international experience and the clash between various tendencies, were formulated the basic programmatic viewpoints and the tactical methods. The definitive participation of the Soviet leaders in the policies of the Comintern was displayed most convincingly precisely during these congresses. Lenin opened and closed the First Congress of the Comintern. He delivered the most important reports at the Second Congress. At the Third Congress, he headed the struggle against the erroneous policies of Zinoviev, Bela Kun and others. Hardly recovered from the first attack of his illness, Lenin read the report of the New Economic Policy of the Soviets at the Fourth Congress. His mind was as lucid as ever, but at times his blood vessels failed him, and he paused in anguish. … To complete the picture, it might be permissible to add that the programmatic manifestos of the first two congresses were written by the author of these lines and that the reporter on the basic tactical questions at the Third and Fourth Congresses was the people's commissar of army and navy.

It is necessary to add to what has been said above that in those days the congresses of the Comintern were convoked every year. During the first four years of the existence of the Third International (1919-22), four congresses took place But that was the epoch of Lenin. Since the Fourth Congress, eleven years have elapsed. During this entire period, only two congresses have taken place, one in 1924, the other in 1928. It is five-and-a-half years now since the congress of the Comintern has been last convoked. This bare chronological summary serves better than any other discussion to throw light upon the actual state of affairs. During the years of civil war, when the Soviet republic was surrounded on all sides by the barbed wire of blockade, and when a trip to the Soviet Union involved not only great difficulties but also mortal dangers, the congresses convened yearly. During recent years, when trips to the USSR have become utterly prosaic matters, the Comintern has been obliged to refrain from congresses altogether. In their stead have come the intimate conferences of the bureaucratic leaders, which are bereft of even a shade of the meaning that was implicit in the multitudinous and democratically elected congresses. But even in these closed sessions of functionaries, not one of the responsible leaders of the Soviet Union any longer participates. The Kremlin is interested in the work of the Comintern only so far as is necessary to shield the interests of the USSR from any kind of compromising action or pronouncement. The matter no longer touches the juridical limitation of functions, but a political rupture.

This same ideological course can be very convincingly followed through in the evolution of the foreign policy of the Comintern. We shall confine ourselves to counterposing the original policy of the Soviet diplomacy with that of the present day. Lenin called the Brest-Litovsk peace a "breather," Le., a brief pause in the struggle between the Soviet state and world imperialism. In this struggle, the Red Army was officially and openly avowed to be the same kind of weapon as was the Communist International. The present foreign policy of the Soviet Union has nothing in common with these principles. The supreme achievement of Soviet diplomacy is the Geneva formula, which provides the definitions of aggression and of the aggressor nation, a formula that applies not only to the interrelations between the Soviet Union and its neighbors but also to the interrelations between the capitalist states themselves. In this manner, the Soviet government has assumed officially the duty of safeguarding the political map of Europe, as it has emerged from the Versailles laboratory. Lenin considered the historical danger of a war to be determined by those social forces that oppose each other on the battlefield and by the political goals they pursue. The present Soviet diplomacy springs completely from the conservative principle of maintaining the status quo. Its attitude toward war and the warring sides is determined not by a revolutionary criterion but by the legalistic criterion: which one crosses the foreign boundaries first Thus the Soviet formula sanctions the defense of national territory against aggression for capitalist nations as well. We shall not discuss how good or bad this is. In general, the purpose of this article is not to criticize the policies of the present Kremlin, but to show the profoundly altered principles of the entire international orientation of the Soviet government, in order thus to eliminate those fictitious barriers that are in the way of the recognition of the USSR.

The plan for building socialism in one country alone is in no way an empty phrase; it is a practical program, embracing in equal degrees economy, internal policies and diplomacy.

The more decisively the Soviet bureaucracy has entrenched itself in its position as to national socialism, the more the questions of international revolution, and with them the Comintern, have been relegated to the background. Every new revolution is an equation with many unknowns, and hence it includes in itself an element of major political risk. The present Soviet government seeks, with might and main, to ensure its internal security against risk connected not only with wars but also with revolutions. Its international policies have been transformed from international-revolutionary policies into those that are conservative.

True, the Soviet leadership cannot openly avow the facts as they are, either to its own workers or to those of other countries. It is shackled by the ideological heritage of the October Revolution, which forms the reservoir for its authority with the working masses. But while the shell of the tradition remains, the content has evaporated. The Soviet government allows the rudimentary organs of the Comintern to maintain their residence in Moscow. But it no longer permits them to convoke international congresses. Since it no longer counts upon the assistance of foreign Communist Parties, it no longer concerns itself in the least with their interests in its own foreign policies. We need only refer to the nature of the reception accorded to the French politicians in Moscow in order to be hit between the eyes by the contradiction between the epoch of Stalin and the epoch of Lenin!

A recent issue of the French official organ, Le Temps (September 24), carries a dispatch from Moscow that is most significant. "The platonic hopes for the world revolution are being expressed [among the ruling circles of the USSR) all the more fervently, the more they are being renounced in practice." Le Temps goes on to elucidate, "Since the removal of Trotsky, who with his theory of the permanent revolution represented a genuine international danger, the Soviet rulers, headed by Stalin, have adhered to the policy of building socialism in one country without awaiting the problematic revolution in the rest of the world." The newspaper insistently warns against error those French politicians who still incline to confuse the phantoms of the past with the realities of today. Let us not forget that this involves not a chance publication but the most influential and utterly conservative organ of the ruling class of France. Jaurès once said aptly about Le Temps, "It is the bourgeoisie turned into a newspaper."

Of all the world governments, the American government has up to now adhered most irreconcilably, in relation to the Soviets, to the principle of capitalistic "legitimacy." In this, the question of the Comintern played the decisive role; we need only recall the Hamilton Fish committee! However, if the honorable member of Congress keeps in touch with living facts, which need no testimony of witnesses — for they speak for themselves — he must come to the conclusion that the foreign policy of the Soviet government no longer creates the slightest hindrance toward its recognition, not only de facto but de jure.