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p By V. S. SEMYONOV

p It was Lenin’s great achievement to uphold Marx’s and Engels’s principles of proletarian internationalism in the international working-class movement at a time when social reformism and social betrayal were rampant in it. He preserved the purity of the ideas of proletarian solidarity and developed them creatively to suit the new historical conditions prevailing at the turn of the century.

p Above all, Lenin raised aloft the banner of internationalism. He stressed that "there is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is—working whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one’s own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this, line, in every country without exception".  [375•1  According to Lenin, proletarian internationalism demands, first, the subordination of the interests of the proletarian struggle in one country to the interests of this struggle on a world-wide scale, and second, the ability and willingness of a nation achieving victory over its bourgeoisie to make the greatest national sacrifices in order to overthrow international capital.  [375•2 

p Leninism is imbued with the spirit of internationalism. For Lenin internationalism was a point of departure or a method of approach to the social phenomena of his time. "We are opposed to national enmity and discord, to national exclusiveness. We are internationalists".  [375•3  Whatever question Lenin approached, whether 376 it related to economic development, political life, the ideological struggle or class relationships, he was always and everywhere a consistent internationalist who based himself on the class interests of the international proletariat.

p Internationalism is not only a natural manifestation of proletarian solidarity and brotherhood, but a real policy that serves the general cause of revolution. For this reason genuine internationalism also finds its expression today in the support of all the fraternal Parties for the existing socialist society and in the assistance rendered by the socialist countries to the world communist movement.

p The principal and crucial factors in the activities of the working class, of the Communist Parties are the objective class interests of the proletariat, which are both national and, at the same time, international in nature. Discussing the national demands of the working class, Lenin wrote that "for the proletariat these demands are subordinated to the interests of the class struggle".  [376•1 

p National factors, which are based on the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat, do not contradict international factors. Neither the latter having the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat as their source, contradict the former. They go together. Engels explained that for the working-class movement genuinely national ideas, that is ideas which reflect dominant economic factors in industry and agriculture, arc at the same time genuinely international ideas. The international struggle of the working class is not, therefore, opposed to national patriotism, if we have in mind not chauvinism, the extreme form of bourgeois nationalism, but patriotism as understood in a revolutionary, proletarian sense, i.e., subject to the great historic tasks of the workers’ struggle for socialism and communism.

p For a century the enemies of communism have been accusing its supporters that, as internationalists, they arc opponents of patriotism. Lenin’s article "On the National Pride of the Great Russians" illustrates the attitude of revolutionary Marxists to patriotism. Lenin wrote that the sense of national pride was by no means alien to the Great-Russian class-conscious proletariat. "We love our language and our country, and we are doing our very utmost to raise her toiling masses (i.e., nine-tenths of her population) to the level of a democratic and socialist consciousness. To us it is most painful to see and feel the outrages, the oppression and the humiliation our fair country suffers at the 377 hands of the tsar’s butchers, the nobles and the capitalists. We take pride in the resistance to these outrages put up from our midst, trom the Great Russians; in that midst having produced Radishchev, the Decembrists and the revolutionary commoners ot the seventies; in the Great-Russian working class having created, in 1905, a mighty revolutionary party of the masses; and in the Great-Russian peasantry having begun to turn towards democracy and set about overthrowing the clergy and the landed proprietors."  [377•1  National pride docs not militate against internationalism, when understood in the revolutionary sense. The interests of the Great Russians’ national pride (understood, not in the slavish sense), Lenin stressed, coincide with the class interests of the Great-Russian and all other proletarians.

p After the victory of the October Socialist Revolution, new problems arose which could be solved only through a correct revolutionary conception of the relations between class and national factors. One of these problems had to do with the right of nations to self-determination up to the point of secession. In upholding the right of every nation to self-determination and state separation, Lenin at the same time stressed that the proletariat, in solving this problem, must place its class interests, and not national interests, above everything else. "... While recognising equality and equal rights to a national state, it (the proletariat—V. S.) values above all and places foremost the alliance of the proletarians of all nations, and assesses any national demand, any national separation, from the angle of the workers’ class struggle."  [377•2  When considering the advisability of the secession of this or that nation the Communist Party "must decide the question exclusively on its merits in each particular case in conformity with the interests of social development as a whole and with the interests of the proletarian class struggle for socialism”.  [377•3 

p In developing and enriching the principles of proletarian solidarity Lenin subjected to profound and relentless criticism the slogans of bourgeois nationalism, bringing out their anti- proletarian, anti-Marxist nature. Bourgeois nationalism proceeds from the idea of the exclusiveness of its own nation, whereas proletarian internationalism proceeds from the principle of the equality of all nations. The proletariat does not recognise any 378 strengthening of nationalism whatsoever. On the contrary, it supports everything that helps gradually to do away with national exclusiveness.

p “Bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism—these are the two irreconcilably hostile slogans that correspond to the two great class camps throughout the capitalist world, and express the two policies (nay, the two world outlooks) in the national question".  [378•1 

p Lenin struggled relentlessly both against the infiltration of bourgeois nationalism into the ranks of the workers and the working people and against the shifting of what is narrowly national onto the international plane, thus diverting attention away from international efforts in the struggle to bring about socialism and to consolidate socialism and communism. When the international activities of the labour leaders and the leaders of the Communist Parties cease to be subordinated to the interests of class struggle, i.e., to the all-out struggle of the international proletariat for democracy and socialism, and when international actions are conducted from positions of national egoism and national narrow-mindedness, then the result is dangerous, adventurist, hegemonistic behaviour in international affairs.

p Nationalism grows from the counterposing of local, parochial attitudes or the narrow interests of one Party to the common internationalist attitude expressing the interests of the entire movement, the interests of peace and socialism. Nationalism has nothing in common with respect for the independence and specific national features of individual socialist countries and Communist and Workers’ Parties. The counterposing of the principle of independence to the principle of international solidarity is at variance with the interests of the movement as a whole and the interests of each Party in particular.

p It is common knowledge that tremendous harm has been inflicted on the cause of socialism and the entire communist movement by the rupture of Maoists with Marxism-Leninism and their adoption of a policy of vile nationalism and anti-Sovietism. The departure of Maoists from the principles of proletarian internationalism and their slithering into nationalism have affected adversely the entire world revolutionary movement.

p The divorcement of international activities from the objective interests of the proletariat leads to subjectivism in international life, to “Left” revolutionary phrase-mongering and adventurism. 379 “. . . Bolshevism,” wrote Lenin in "Lefl-Wing" Communism—an Infiuit’ile Disorder, "took shape, developed and became steeled in the long \ears of struggle against jH’il\-bii>ir<.\coh revolutionis//!, which smacks of anarchism, or borrows something from the latter and, in all essential matters, does not measure up to the conditions and requirements of a consistently proletarian class struggle."  [379•1 

p Ignoring the objective interests of the proletariat in the international field can be a serious danger to the cause of proletarian internationalism. In essence, it is the other side of the coin of bourgeois nationalism, since it involves carrying into the international arena one of "the deepest of petty-bourgeois prejudices, i.e., of national egoism and national narrow-mindedness".  [379•2 

p The recognition of internationalism in words but the substitution of petty-bourgeois nationalism for it in deeds by over-= stressing national peculiarities and propagating national exclusiveness is a deviation from the Marxist-Leninist principles of proletarian internationalism.

p Lenin defined the new fomrs of proletarian internationalism that arose after the working class came to power. With the victory of the October Revolution, the international proletariat realised its most cherished dream by creating a socialist workers’ state of Soviets. For the first time in history a great contingent of the international working class seized power, set up a proletarian dictatorship, and began to implement the ideas of proletarian internationalism. Proletarian internationalism appeared for the first time as socialist internationalism, as the international solidarity of the socialist working class.

p Lenin was the first to demonstrate, both in theory and in practice, that the internationalist task of the first socialist state was not to throw a fuse, regardless of the situation, into the powder keg of capitalism (the fuse might burn out, and the keg still not explode!), but to establish itself as in impregnable fortress in the ocean of capitalism, to exert its revolutionising influence through example, to facilitate the breaking away of one state after another from the chain of imperialism and gradually to gather around itself more and more supporters. Lenin thus brilliantly combined in himself the ardour of the revolutionary who works solely for the world revolution with the sober realism of the politician and the clear analytical mind of the scholar.

380

p To preserve and consolidate the world’s first socialist state is the basic internationalist task of the workers of Russia and the rest of the world.

p In his struggle against the “Lefts” who were in favour of a "revolutionary war" against Germany, Lenin insisted on concluding the “shameful” Brest peace treaty and entering into other agreements with the imperialists. Though these agreements contained disadvantageous terms, they ensured what was most important—peace. In an afterword to his theses on the question of the immediate conclusion of a separate and annexationist peace Lenin wrote that the ”. . . significant change that has occurred is the foundation of the Russian Soviet Republic, and the preservation of the republic that has already begun the socialist revolution is most important to us and to the international socialist movement; that at the moment the slogan of revolutionary war proclaimed by Russia would either be an empty phrase and an unsupported demonstration, or would be tantamount, objectively, to falling into the trap set for us by the imperialists, who wish to inveigle us into continuing the imperialist war while we are still a weak unit, so that the young Soviet Republic might be crushed as cheaply as possible".  [380•1  Therefore, he wrote: "He who is against an immediate, even though extremely onerous peace, is endangering Soviet power."  [380•2 

p In this way, upholding the positions of the true and not the “Left” adventurist idea of proletarian internationalism, Lenin orientated the first land of socialism towards concluding peace in order to secure the gains of the October Revolution.

p Lenin saw that the main international contribution that the Soviet people bad to tnakc to the world revolution lay in economic and cultural construction, in making the Soviet Republic a model for other peoples. To do a good job of building the new society, to develop its economy well and strengthen its defence potential, and in general to strive to make the ideas of socialism ever more attractive to all working people is the internationalist duty of the workers and Communists of a socialist state.

p Lenin saw in this the key to realising both the home and the international aims of the revolution.

p The solution of problems of socialist construction in which international and national factors are closely intertwined is not an easy matter. Such problems call for self-sacrifice; they can be 381 solved only at the cost, if not of the people themselves, then of their conditions of life and work. This has applied with particular force to the Soviet Union, since it was the first to blaze the trail to socialism. At the Third Congress of the Communist International Lenin said that the proletariat, because it had been weakened and, to a certain extent, declassed by the destruction of its material basis—large-scale machine industry—had a very difficult historic task before it: to hold its ground despite all waverings, and to carry through to the end the cause of the emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital. "A nation which is achieving victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital."  [381•1  The building of socialism and communism today fully meets this requirement.

p The example of the Soviet people influences all three currents of the world revolutionary process—the other countries which have achieved social liberation and are now building socialism, the struggle of the workers in the developed capitalist countries, and the national liberation movements. The best means of contributing to the world revolution is the force of example, not the “export” of revolution. ”. . . We have said, and still say, that socialism has the force of example,” underlined Lenin. ".. . We must show the significance of communism in practice, by example."  [381•2 

p We can see here the close interweaving of the international and national tasks of the working people of a socialist country— by building socialism and doing the utmost possible in their own country they present themselves as an example and a model for other countries still struggling to achieve socialism or already beginning to build it. It follows that how fast, how well, and how successfully the working people build socialism is of enormous significance not only for themselves, but for the working people of other countries, too. Moreover, the shortcomings, omissions, setbacks, mistakes and extremes that arc possible in the building of socialism for both objective and subjective reasons directly influence not only the people of the socialist countries concerned, but the entire world revolutionary movement. It follows that while the successes of socialism have a positive and stimulating effect on the world revolutionary process, the mistakes and shortcomings not infrequently have a negative influence on it. Hence the enormous international responsibility of the working class and 382 the Communist and Workers’ Parties of the socialist countries to secure socialist construction on a sound basis with the minimum of mistakes. "Our possibilities of supporting the revolutionary and liberation movement throughout the world likewise depend on our achievements,” said L. I. Brezhnev at the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties. "The force of the example of the new social system, which is becoming the best agitator for socialism both among the working people in the capitalist countries and the peoples who have shaken off the yoke of colonialism, also depends on them."

p The Soviet working class began building socialism without the benefit of previous experience in the conditions of a backward Russia ruined by war and suffering from the continuous assaults of white-guards and foreign imperialists. But in this way they amassed experience useful to the whole international working class. On May 26, 1918 Lenin said: "... This experience cannot be taken away. ... It has gone down in history as socialism’s gain, and on it the future world revolution will erect its socialist edifice."  [382•1 

p Whatever the national peculiarities of the building of socialism in the Soviet Union, it was here that the general laws applicable to the building of socialism in all countries were tested and established. In the third year of the revolution in Russia (1920) Lenin wrote, ”. . . it might have seemed that owing to the enormous difference between backward Russia and the advanced countries of Western Europe proletarian revolutions in the latter countries would bear very little resemblance to ours. We now possess quite considerable international experience, which shows very definitely that certain fundamental features of our revolution have a significance that is not local, or peculiarly national or Russian alone, but international.

p “. . . It is the Russian model that reveals to all countries something—and something highly significant—of their near and inevitable future."  [382•2 

p The international communist movement of today values highly the example which the working class and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union have set and continue to set for the world revolution.

p Speaking at the 1969 Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties W. Gomulka, First Secretary of the Central Committee 383 of the Polish United Workers’ Party, said: “Nothing and nobody can cancel out the decisive role played by the Soviet Union in the world anti-imperalist front.

p "The Soviet Union is now the main barrier to imperialist aggression, safeguards mankind from the atomic blackmail of imperialism and renders support and assistance to the national liberation movements, being the stronghold of all nations fighting for freedom and independence."

p Today the world socialist system as a whole exerts an international impact on the world revolutionary process by the force of its example. The Main Document of the 1969 International Meeting declared: "Socialism has shown mankind the prospect of deliverance from imperialism. The new social system based on public ownership of the means of production and on the power of the working people is capable of ensuring the planned, crisis-= free development of the economy in the interests of the people, guaranteeing the social and political rights of the working people, creating conditions for genuine democracy, for real participation by the broad masses of people in the administration of society, for all-round development of the individual and for the equality and friendship of nations. It has been proved in fact that only socialism is capable of solving the fundamental problems facing mankind."

p The Soviet experience of building socialism has become the international property of the entire world revolutionary movement. "No power on earth, no matter how much evil, hardship and suffering it may yet bring to millions and hundreds of millions of people, can destroy the major gains of our revolution, for these are no longer simply our own gains but the historic gains of the whole world."  [383•1 

p According to Lenin, the international contribution of the Soviet people to the cause of world revolution is also made through their serving as the bastion of all international revolutionary forces, rendering them every necessary material, political, ideological, cultural and military aid.

p To support and aid the revolutionary movement in all countries is the internationalist duty of the working class already building socialism. Lenin drew special attention to the need to support the nations struggling for their national liberation and independence. "Ft is unquestionable that the proletariat of the advanced countries can and should give help to the working masses of the 384 backward countries, and that the backward countries can emerge from their present stage of development when the victorious proletariat of the Soviet Republics extends a helping hand to these masses and is in a position to give them support."  [384•1 

p The success of national liberation movements since the victory of the October Revolution has depended on their tics with the working people’s struggle for socialism, for only the combined front of the countries of socialism and the countries struggling for their liberation can withstand the onslaught of the united forces of imperialism. Lenin pointed out that the "revolutionary movement of the peoples of the East can now develop effectively, can reach a successful issue, only in direct association with the revolutionary struggle of our Soviet Republic against international imperialism".  [384•2 

p It is in the common international interests of the socialist countries and the national liberation movements to assist one another. "We shall exert every effort to foster association and merger with the Mongolians, Persians, Indians, Egyptians,” Lenin wrote, "we believe it is our duty and in our interest to do this, for otherwise socialism in Europe will not be secure. We shall endeavour to render these nations, more backward and oppressed than we are, ’disinterested cultural assistance’, to borrow the happy expression of the Polish Social-Democrats. In other words, we will help them pass to the use of machinery, to the lightening of labour, to democracy, to socialism."  [384•3 

p Lenin’s ideas on the ways in which the young Soviet land could fulfil its internationalist duty included the important idea, which has been proved correct by the whole of subsequent historical practice, that, with the support and help of a socialist country, a lorinerly backward nation can go over to socialism zcithoiil having to pass tbrough the capitalist stage of development. ".. . Arc we to consider as correct the assertion that the capitalist stage of economic development is inevitable for backward nations now on the road to emancipation and among whom a certain advance toward progress is to be seen since the war? We replied in the negative. . . . With the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage".  [384•4 

385

p In the early years of Soviet power Lenin emphasised the need to strengthen the defences of the USSR both internally and internationally in order to counteract the aggressive designs of imperialism. This applies all the more to modern times, when enormous economic capacities are required to create weapons capable of defending the gains of socialism and smashing imperialist aggression.

p Lenin stressed that the point was not merely "to ’proclaim’ internationalism, but to be able to be an internationalist in deed, even when times are most trying".  [385•1  And, looking far ahead, he pointed to the inseparability of national and international tasks with the mounting exigency of the task of converting the dictatorship of the proletariat from a national dictatorship into an international one.  [385•2 

p The following statement by the ^69 Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties has borne out this prevision of Lenin’s: "7 fie if or/(I socialist system is the decisive force in the anti-= imperialist struggle. Each liberation struggle receives indispensable aid from the world socialist system, above all from the Soviet Union."

p Lenin played an outstanding role in restoring international proletarian solidarity. The storms of the Great October Revolution had barely abated and the world’s first Republic of Soviets was still involved in a life-and-death struggle against whiteguards and foreign interventionists and against economic dislocation, when Lenin, without waiting for quieter times, took resolute measures to set up a new, genuinely Marxist international association of Communists based on the principles and traditions of the First International.

p In March 1919, a congress of delegates from Communist Parties and Left Socialist organisations in 30 countries, held in Moscow, passed a decision to set up the Third International. Just as the First International was the creation of Marx and Engels, so the Third, Communist International was that of Lenin’s. The principles of internationalism laid down by Marx and Engels in the First International were revived by Lenin to be developed in the Third International. The establishment of the Third International signified the victory of Marxism-Leninism over social reformism, the triumph of Marxist revolutionary principles in the international working-class movement and the further creative development of these principles in 20th-century conditions.

386

p The Third International founded and directed by Lenin embodied the ideas of proletarian internationalism on a new, higher level of the communist movement. Its base was the working-class movement which had already carried through the socialist revolution in one country and had set up the dictatorship of the proletariat in Soviet Russia. "The Third International,” wrote Lenin, "has begun to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat.

p "The international alliance of the parties which are leading the most revolutionary movement in the world, the movement of the proletariat for the overthrow of the yoke of capital, now rests on an unprecedcntedly firm base, in the shape of several Soviet Republics, which arc implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat and are the embodiment of victory over capitalism on an international scale.

p "The epoch-making significance of the Third, Communist International lies in that it began to give effect to Marx’s cardinal slogan, the slogan which sums up the centuries-old development of socialism and the working-class movement, the slogan which is expressed in the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat."  [386•1 

p A great proletarian internationalist, Lenin regarded the victories and successes of every detachment of the working class as a contribution to the general international struggle of the proletariat. The Comintern was the embodiment of the joint organised struggle of the workers of different countries. As Lenin put it, the founding of the Third International "was a record of what has been gained not only by the Russian workers, but also by the German, Austrian, Hungarian, Finnish, Swiss—in a word, by the workers of the world"  [386•2 

p Thanks to Lenin’s efforts, the Communist International proved to be a model of the unification of the workers of different countries on the principles of proletarian internationalism.

p Lenin developed the major requirement of proletarian internationalism that the liberation movements of the peoples struggling for national independence should be supported in every way.

p The national liberation of every nation is the indispensable condition for the development by the working people of different nations of the joint struggle for their social emancipation. By calling on the workers of all countries to unite, Marx and Engcls pointed to the need for the working class of every country to carry on a resolute struggle against national oppression. The ideal 387 of socialism is inimical to all oppression—social or national. And the emancipation of the oppressed nations is in the objective interests of the proletariat itself. Marx and Engels wrote: "While die various countries lacked national unity and independence, and while each country worked in isolation, the international unification of the proletariat could never have been achieved, nor would the sober and deliberate collaboration of these countries in the furtherance of general aims have been possible."  [387•1 

p Analysing the various combinations of circumstances that can result in the victory of national liberation revolutions, Lenin was the first to raise the question of merging into one stream the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie with the national liberation movement. He came to the conclusion that what is required for the success of national liberation revolutions is "either the concerted effort of huge numbers of people in the oppressed countries ... or a particularly favourable combination of international conditions (e.g., the fact that the imperialist powers cannot interfere, being paralysed by exhaustion, by war, by their antagonism, etc.), or the simultaneous uprising of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie in one of the big powers. . . ."  [387•2 

p Marx and Engels spoke of the need for proletarians to support the liberation struggles of oppressed people as a precondition for the social emancipation of the proletariat itself and that of all working people. Lenin showed further that, in the era of imperialism, the national liberation movement and the world socialist revolution are two interdependent revolutionary currents or processes in a single revolutionary stream of proletarian and anti-= colonial revolutions, preparing the way for the socialist reconstruction of human society.

p This conception of the interdependence of the two historical processes enabled Lenin to extend the content of proletarian internationalism on the new era. This was due to the fact that the replacement of capitalism by socialism does not take the simple form of a scries of proletarian revolutions alone, but covers an entire historical era in which there is "a whole series of democratic and revolutionary movements, including the national liberation movement, in the undeveloped, backward and oppressed nations".  [387•3  Hence "the socialist revolution will not be solely, or chielly, a struggle of the revolutionary proletarians in 388 each country against their bourgeoisie—no, it will be a struggle of all the imperialism-oppressed colonies and countries, of all dependent countries, against international imperialism".  [388•1  Therefore, just as the proletariat must strengthen its alliance with the peasantry and other groups of working people in order to gain victory over its “own” bourgeoisie, so a close union of the revolutionary proletariat with the national liberation movements is necessary in the struggle against international imperialism.

p Marx and Engels advanced the slogan "Workers of all countries, unite!”, which expressed the essence of proletarian internationalism in the times in which they lived. Lenin, in a new age, that of imperialism, extended this slogan to include the new national liberation movements of oppressed peoples in the world revolutionary stream. In 1920, on the cover of the journal of the Communist International Narody Vostoka (Peoples of the East), there appeared the slogan: "Workers of all countries and oppressed peoples, unite!" In a speech to a meeting of activists of the Moscow Party organisation Lenin drew attention to the correctness of this slogan. He said that "from the point of view of present-day politics, this change is correct".  [388•2  The ideas and principles of proletarian internationalism arc not, therefore, immutable. They develop as social life becomes more strongly internationalised, and as the stream of the world revolution is joined by new revolutionary forces, and proletarian internationalism requires new content.

p Now, when the countries of the world socialist system arc playing the leading role in the world revolutionary process, and when the significance of the various anti-imperialist, anti-= monopoly, anti-militarist and anti-war movements in the struggle against the domination of imperialism has grown enormously the nature of proletarian internationalism has again developed further. As a result, the concept of the slogan of proletarian internationalism in the present day is broadening, too.

p The 1969 Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties launched the following appeal: "Peoples of the socialist countries, workers, democratic forces in the capitalist countries, neiely liberated peoples and those who tire oppressed, unite in a common struggle against imperialism lor peace, national liberation, social progress, democracy and socialism!"

p The Communist and Workers’ Parties advocate the 389 international discipline of the proletarian movement in order to strengthen proletarian solidarity and unity. The Bolshevik Party led by Lenin always submitted to this principle. "We are proud that we settle the great problems of the workers’ struggle for their emancipation by submitting to the international discipline of the revolutionary proletariat, with due account of the experience of the workers in different countries, reckoning with their knowledge and their will, and thus giving effect in deed (and not in word, as the Renners, Flit/, Adlers and Otto Bauers do) to the unity of the workers’ class struggle for communism throughout the world."  [389•1 

p If international discipline is not observed, if Communist and Workers’ Parties refuse to take joint action when this is possible, then the principles of proletarian internationalism are grossly violated and great damage is inflicted on the world communist and workers’ movement.

p In present-day conditions when the international proletariat is represented by powerful contingents on all continents, when the socialist countries of Europe, Asia and America are developing under the guidance of the working class, paramount importance attaches to the strong international alliance of workers, to the international brotherhood of workers and their Parties. The international force of capital organised into alliances, pacts, etc., is confronted by the multi-million force of workers, which is the more real, active and powerful, the greater the unity of workers and their Marxist-Leninist parties.

p Today imperialism is powerless to deal with the growing forces of the international working class and is therefore historically doomed. Imperialists and their politicians and ideologists can only pin their hopes on splitting the workers’ ranks, encouraging all kinds of vacillation in their midst and in the ranks of the Communist Parties, reviving Right and Leftist deviations in the international labour and communist movement, in a word—on subjectively undermining the objectively powerful strength of the contemporary working-class and communist movement.

p A Marxist-Leninist working-class party is strong by virtue of its ability to tap all its internal possibilities in the struggle for the interests of its people and simultaneously in the struggle for the common international cause of revolution and socialism. Any attempts to “strengthen” Party positions at the expense of weakening and even severing international ties, at the cost of refusing 390 to undertake joint action together with the other contingents ot the communist movement can only serve to jeopardise the ideological independence of this Party from the bourgeoisie and undermine its political authority.

p The basic interests of the international class struggle of the proletariat imperatively demand that all its national contingents display complete solidarity and unity of action. This does not. rule out differences of opinion among them or divergencies on different matters. They may, of course, approach problems in different ways. But such disagreements (some being of a temporary nature, others more lasting) should not be allowed to interfere with unity in the struggle against the common international enemy—imperialism.

p To consolidate proletarian internationalism all Communist and Workers’ Parties must pursue a correct, principled Marxist- Leninist political line. They must abide by the following international principle of Leninism: "The proletariat cannot pursue its struggle for socialism and defend its everyday economic interests without the closest and fullest alliance of the workers of all nations in all working-class organisations without exception."  [390•1 

p In order "to work till a durable and voluntary union of peoples is achieved”, as Lenin said, time and patience are needed, and the knack of taking into account in each definite case both the interests of each nation and the interests of the international working-class movement and of the socialist community as a whole. It is necessary to conduct constantly, day after day, the most varied joint international activities in order to consolidate proletarian solidarity. "Working-class organisation and solidarity is not confined to one country or one nationality: the workers’ parties of different countries proclaim aloud the complete identity (solidarity) of interests and aims of the workers of the whole world. They come together at joint congresses, put forward common demands to the capitalist class of all countries, have established an international holiday of the entire organised proletariat striving for emancipation (May Day), thus welding the working class of all nationalities and of all countries into one great workers’ army."  [390•2 

p The Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties held in Moscow in 1969 proved to be such a world forum for Communists. Speaking at this Meeting L. I. Brezhnev expressed his belief that 391 it would "play a major role in stimulating the actions of the fighters against imperialism”, and would "contribute towards uniting the entire world front of the forces championing peace, democracy, national independence and socialism".

p It is possible to foil the sinister designs of internal and external enemies and to maintain a steady offensive against imperialism only by keeping inflexibly to the path of proletarian internationalism. This offensive is the more successful the more close arc the ranks of Communists.

p The Twenty-Third Congress of the CPSU reaffirmed that loyalty to communism, proletarian internationalism and socialist solidarity have always been and will remain a law of the Party’s work and struggle.

p The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is unfailingly true to its internationalist revolutionary duty. It is conducting an irreconcilable struggle against revisionism and dogmatism, and against manifestations of nationalism, and furthering the creative development of Marxist-Leninist theory. The CPSU advocates a policy of joint action by the Communist Parties of the world in the struggle against imperialism, for the great aims of peace, democracy, national independence, socialism and communism.

International solidarity has been and remains the cornerstone of the communist and working-class movement. In the present situation, proletarian internationalism becomes especially vital; it becomes a major prerequisite for social progress, for rallying all revolutionary forces for a further offensive against imperialism.