112

p The Great October Socialist Revolution, which signalled a revolutionary change in international relations as a whole, brought, too, a radical change in the way the issue of war and peace was presented. In that issue, as Lenin said, “our October Revolution marked the beginning of a new era in world history”.  [112•**** 

p The new elements in this issue lay both in the emergence of the problem of war between states belonging to different systems, which included features of civil war and 113 international war and in a new relation between war and revolution, and in a change in the conditions and opportunities of struggle against war in general. A state that is a consistent supporter of peace appeared on the world stage, a state on which peace-loving forces in other countries could rely. The practical tasks and slogans of the international proletariat, and primarily the Russia’s proletariat, became different in the struggle for socialism and peace. The slogan of defence of the fatherland gained a completely new meaning for the Russia’s working class. As Lenin put it, “We are and have been defencists since October 25, 1917, we champion the defence of the fatherland ever since that day.”  [113•* 

p The fight against war and for peace meant, in the new circumstances, not only the exposure of imperialist aggression and the battle to overthrow the bourgeoisie, but also the struggle to defend and to fortify the only socialist state in the world. Socialism has no need of an aggressive war to attain victory; war is alien to the very nature of socialism, which removes the exploiting classes—the bearers of militarism and aggression—from power and influence. Conversely, peace is an essential prerequisite of the swift economic and social progress which demonstrates the advantages of the new social system.

p To secure peace was a vital need in order to strengthen the young Soviet Republic and the central task of its foreign policy. The peaceful policy of the socialist state became, in turn, an essential element of the revolutionary strategy and tactics of the working class in the battle for socialism. Although the rise of a socialist state could not completely remove the dangers of world war in the future, it considerably altered the conditions in which the people could fight for peace. The development of the socialist state and its peaceful policy signified a tremendous growth in the anti-imperialist forces and was a major hindrance to those who wanted to unleash another world war.

p The issues of war and peace faced Lenin and the Soviet state not at all as a problem of theory, but as the most urgent and practical matters. An end to the war became the 114 prime condition for strengthening Soviet power. It is extremely symbolic that the Decree on Peace signed by Lenin was the first document of the socialist state; its meaning was profound and comprehensive. In it the workers’ and peasants’ government called upon all the belligerent peoples and their governments to start immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace. The Decree contained definitions of such notions as a just or democratic peace as well as annexation. These definitions retain their clarity right to the present day. It also laid out possible practical ways of implementing the proposals of the Soviet Government and noted the special role of the working class in “saving mankind from the horrors of war and its consequences”; it expressed the determination “to conclude peace successfully, and at the same time emancipate the labouring and exploited masses of our population from all forms of slavery and all forms of exploitation”.  [114•* 

p The Leninist principles of socialist foreign policy, proclaimed by the Soviet state, the vigorous Soviet campaign to put an end to the world war and to conclude a just peace treaty had an immense revolutionising impact on the peoples. Lenin’s peace programme envisaged: the banning of any forcible incorporation of territory seized in time of war; the re-establishment of the political independence of those peoples who, in wartime, had been deprived of their sovereignty; an end to the exploitation of colonies and dependencies, etc. The Soviet peace policy inspired the peoples of all belligerent countries to wage a revolutionary struggle against the imperialist policy of waging the war “to a victorious conclusion”.

p The anti-war, anti-imperialist forces of the time were too weak, however. Nonetheless, the resolute struggle against the imperialist war, initiated by the socialist state in October 1917, was of historic significance. Lenin set out the difficulties of this struggle: “It is highly naive to think that peace can be easily attained, and that the bourgeoisie will hand it to us on a platter as soon as we mention it.”  [114•** 

115

p Lenin turned out to be right. The bourgeoisie did not hand out peace on a platter, rather it did everything possible to stop revolutionary Russia from leaving the war. The Entente imperialists wanted to kill two birds with one stone: to bring down Soviet power in Russia through the medium of the German militarists, and at the same time to improve their own prospects in the war against Germany.

p The Entente refusal to accept Soviet proposals on concluding a general peace treaty forced the Soviet Government to start negotiations with Germany for a separate peace. The ensuing Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, despite its onerous conditions to the Soviet Republic, met the interests of both the Soviet people and the international working class. During this period, Lenin had to withstand a tough onslaught from “Left”-wing Communists who used ultrarevolutionary bombast to advocate a continuance of the war and to oppose the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Lenin’s views on the relation between war and revolution were further developed in his battle with the “Left”-wing Communists.

p Expressing his unshakeable faith in the inevitable triumph of world socialism, and defending the right of oppressed peoples to launch uprisings and to wage revolutionary wars, Lenin stated that revolutions “are not made to order, they cannot be timed for any particular moment; they mature in a process of historical development and break out at a moment determined by a whole complex of internal and external causes”.  [115•* 

p Lenin subjected to withering criticism the view that the “peace psychology” meant “doing nothing”, while the waving of a wooden sword meant being “active”. “Any peace,” Lenin said, ”...will open channels for our influence a hundred times wider....”  [115•**  He rejected the possibility of exporting revolution to other countries and made no bones about the fact that “communism cannot be imposed by force.”  [115•***  Resort to violence is a consequence of resistance by the exploiting classes. "In a country where the bourgeoisie will not offer 116 such furious resistance,” he said, “the tasks of the Soviet government will be easier; it will be able to operate without the violence, without the bloodshed that was forced upon us by the Kerenskys and the imperialists.”  [116•* 

p After the hopes of the Entente countries to defeat Soviet Russia through the medium of Germany had been dashed, they began a direct armed intervention in Soviet Russia and, for three years, conducted a war against the Russian working people in collaboration with Russian counter- revolutionaries. In these circumstances, the Soviet people’s fight against the interventionists acquired the direct and sharply expressed social and class sense of struggle against the Russian and international bourgeoisie. The war in defence of the socialist fatherland became the most just and progressive war of any known to history. The war against the international bourgeoisie also differed in principle from previous wars in every other aspect. Lenin described it as “a war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complex than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states”.  [116•**  Many previous notions and yardsticks could not be applied to this war.

p Peace, too, acquired a new meaning. The end to hostilities and the securing of peace became a condition for the triumph of socialism. After the Soviet state had won the day against intervention and internal counter-revolution, it was interested in prolonging the peace. Peace opened up the most favourable prospects for building socialism in the Soviet Union, which meant strengthening the international status of socialism and encouraging the world revolutionary process.

p Georgi Chicherin, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, underlined the desire of Soviet foreign policy for peace: “Our policy,” he said, “is aimed at maintaining peace, creating stable peaceful relations and helping to consolidate universal peace. This is the basis of our international policy and it is connected both with the general foundations of our system and with a whole number of basic elements in the 117 political situation. The working people desire peace—not only the working people within our Union, but the working people throughout the world.”  [117•* 

p The Soviet peace campaign had an international as well as national significance. It came to play an increasingly important role in the revolutionary movement and in the fight for social progress. The Manifesto of the Fifth Congress of the Communist International, which met in 1924, stated that “everything that is now going on in human society—in the economic, political, scientific and cultural fields,—is put in the shade by the gigantic task of doing everything possible to prevent a new war and thereby to save humanity from death and extinction. Only the working people led by the revolutionary proletariat can achieve that.”  [117•** 

p Lenin’s ideas on the proletarian attitude to various types of war were further developed in the activity of Communist Parties. Of special importance at the time was the defence of the Soviet Union as the socialist homeland of the workers of the world. The need to defend the first socialist state from the incursions of the imperialists was a major factor determining the position of the international working class in respect to the new world war being prepared by the imperialists.

p On many occasions the international communist movement gave a high appraisal of the peaceful Soviet foreign policy. Thus, the theses of the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International entitled "The Struggle Against Imperialist War and the Tasks of the Communists" (1928) stated: "The international policy of the USSR is a peace policy , which conforms to the interests of the ruling class in Russia, viz., the proletariat, and to the interests of the international proletariat. This policy rallies all the allies of the proletarian dictatorship around its banner and provides the best basis for taking advantage of the antagonisms among the imperialist states....

118

p “This policy is the Leninist policy of the proletarian dictatorship. It is merely another—and under present conditions—a more advantageous form of fighting capitalism, a form which the USSR has consistently employed since the October Revolution.”  [118•* 

p The Seventh Congress of the Communist International in 1935 set the Communist Parties, the revolutionary workers, toiling peasants and oppressed peoples the tasks of fighting for peace and defending the USSR, creating a united popular front in the campaign for peace against the warmongers; to draw into its ranks everyone interested in maintaining peace; to combine the fight against imperialist war with the fight against fascism, against militarism and armaments, against chauvinism, and for national liberation and support for national liberation wars.  [118•** 

p The resolution adopted at the Congress stated: “The peace policy of the USSR ... is not only directed towards the defence of the Land of the Soviets, towards ensuring the safety of socialist construction; it also protects the lives of the workers of all countries, the lives of the oppressed and exploited; it means the defence of the national independence of small nations, it serves the vital interests of humanity, it defends culture from the barbarities of war.”  [118•*** 

p Despite the great upsurge in the anti-war and anti-fascist movement and despite all the efforts of the USSR, in the mid-1930s the forces of peace were insufficiently organised and powerful to stop the imperialists from engineering the Second World War.

p The nature of this new world war was affected by the fundamental changes in the international situation associated, on the one hand, with the appearance and consolidation of the socialist state and, on the other, with the establishment of a fascist regime in a number of bourgeois states.

p The war that broke out in 1939 between Hitler Germany, on the one hand, and Britain and France, on the other, was 119 in its initial stage a continuation of the battle of imperialist groupings for markets, territory for hegemony in various areas, and finally for world domination.

p A Comintern document stated that the governments of Britain, France and Germany were waging a war for world domination. The real meaning of the war, a war which was unjust, reactionary and imperialist, was that it continued the protracted imperialist strife within the capitalist camp.  [119•*  The just struggle by the Polish people in 1939 for their national independence could not alter the general nature of the ensuing war, just as the rightful struggle of Serbia in the First World War had not changed the nature of that war.

p The policy of both warring groupings of imperialist powers which brought about the Second World War had a definite, more or less clearly expressed, anti-Soviet and anti-socialist direction. The instigator of the war, nazi Germany, which had become the spearhead of world reaction, openly set out to destroy the socialist state and gain world dominance; it was faced with the question merely of the order in which it would choose its opponents; Britain and France pursued their own ends in counting on directing nazi aggression against the Soviet Union and thereby destroying socialism, and at the same time taking advantage of the inevitable weakening of Germany. Nevertheless, the anti-Soviet bias of the policy of both groupings did not remove the deep distinctions and contradictions between the fascist bloc and the bourgeois democratic states, and did not lead to the formation of a united imperialist camp, although it made its impression upon the course of the war. The existence of the Soviet Union, which the imperialists regarded as their main political opponent and the potential direct enemy in war (though a possible temporary ally in the battle against their rivals), made a difference in principle between the First and Second World wars. Finally, and this is the main thing, the Soviet Union played a leading part in the campaign by the working people of the world against war and fascism. The popular resistance to fascist aggression which 120 developed during the war was a continuation of the prewar policy of the working class and other progressive anti- fascist forces. This aspect was particularly in evidence after the “phoney war” in Europe had ended, when, as nazi aggression unfolded, the whole point of the war for Britain and France lay now not so much in preserving their world positions or conquering new ones, as in defending the existence of their nations and states.

p This referred to an even greater degree to the peoples of other countries who were resisting the nazi invaders. The Second World War brought in its wake immeasurably greater atrocities and suffering than the First; the cost in human lives was far greater. One reason for this was the inhuman, racist theory and practice of German nazism which conducted, on occupied territory, a policy of mass extermination both of prisoners of war and of the peaceful civilian population, a policy that menaced the very existence of various European nations, in particular, the Slav nations.

p German nazism, therefore, became the major obstacle in the way of the world revolutionary process, and its victory would have threatened not merely the national existence of several states, it would have meant undoubted social regression for them. The fight against nazi Germany both in the shape of the Resistance movement in occupied countries and in the form of regular military operations by Britain, the United States and other bourgeois countries, objectively acquired a progressive and liberatory character, despite the imperialist nature of the ruling classes in those countries.

p With nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the war took on a new content. From that time on, it acquired to a considerable degree the character of an immense direct armed confrontation between socialism, along with all the anti-fascist forces, and fascism.

p The war against nazi Germany which was imposed upon the Soviet Union had the most just and progressive aims: to defend the freedom and sovereignty of the Soviet Union, to defend from the fascist thugs the interests of the revolution and socialism and to liberate the peoples of Europe. During the Great Patriotic War of 1941 to 1945, Lenin’s appeals resounded with fresh force: “The socialist homeland 121 is in danger!”, “Everyone to battle with the enemy!”, “ Everyone to arms since the war is inevitable!” The Leninist foreign policy of the Soviet state was aimed at creating and strengthening a coalition between all the anti-nazi forces. Britain, the United States and some other capitalist countries became the allies of the socialist state in the war against nazi Germany.

p The Second World War occupied a place of outstanding importance in the history of mankind. For many peoples of Europe, Africa and Asia it determined for several years the whole meaning of life; social contradictions were reflected through it, and it left its imprint on social conflicts.

p The liberatory nature of the war and the peculiar alignment of class and political forces within it required of Marxists-Leninists a creative development of Leninist ideas concerning the tasks of the working class in the situation of wartime. Since it had been impossible to avert war, it was in the interests of the proletariat, as Lenin had taught, to use it for the benefit of the world revolutionary movement and for accelerating social progress. While the overall methodological principles of Lenin’s appraisal of war remained in force, certain practical tasks and slogans which had been valid during the 1914-1918 war, did not conform to the new historical situation. Neither the slogan of turning the war into a civil war, nor that of defeating one’s own government, nor the slogan of fraternisation applied any longer to the working class in the countries of the antiHitler coalition.

p Whereas during the First World War the interests of the working class demanded a struggle for the revolutionary withdrawal from the war, and for the defeat of one’s own government, and while the interests of the working class radically differed from those of the ruling classes, now, in the midst of a just and liberatory war, the interests of the working people demanded their vigorous contribution to the anti-fascist struggle, the victorious culmination of the war, and in that sense, they basically coincided with the position of the ruling classes. The desire of the ruling circles in Britain, the United States and other countries of the anti-Hitler coalition to deal firmly with their imperialist rivals 122 objeclively conformed to the interests of world social progress, inasmuch as victory over nazi Germany helped to maintain and strengthen the socialist Soviet Union—the major power of the world revolutionary process—signified a weakening in the positions of world reaction and ensured the growth of democratic forces. The defeat of the fascist states was a necessary prerequisite for the further advance of world revolutionary process.

p The Communist Parties, which have always stood in the frontline of the battle against fascism, dedicated their entire activity to the common cause of defeating fascism. A Resolution of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International declared: “Whereas in the countries of the Hitlerite bloc the basic task of the workers and of all honest people, consists in contributing all help to the defeat of that bloc, by sabotage of the Hitlerite war machine from within and by helping to overthrow the governments who are guilty of the war, in the countries of the antiHitlerite coalition, the sacred duty of the broadest masses of the people, and first and foremost, of the progressive workers, is to support in every way the war efforts of the governments of these countries aimed at the speediest destruction of the Hitlerite bloc, and to ensure friendly collaboration between the nations on the basis of their equal rights.”  [122•* 

p The selfless struggle of the Soviet Army, the mobilisation of all forces in the socialist state to defeat fascism, the Soviet foreign policy directed at creating and reinforcing the anti-Hitler coalition, and the expansion of SovietBritish-American co-operation for a concerted struggle against nazi Germany accorded with the national interests of the Soviet people and meant the fulfilment of their internationalist duty to the working class of the capitalist countries. By directly taking part in the war, by obtaining from their bourgeois governments greater military effort (on the issue, for example, of the opening of a second front  [122•** ) and by 123 exposing anti-Soviet tendencies of the reactionary circles, workers in the capitalist countries thereby not only carried out their own national tasks but also fulfilled their internationalist obligation in regard to the socialist state, the Soviet Union.

p The Soviet Union’s participation in the war and its decisive role in the defeat of nazi Germany went a long way to deciding the social and political results of the Second World War. The vast increase in the progressive and revolutionary forces led by the Soviet Union, the socialist revolutions in many parts of Europe and Asia, the strengthening of the position of Communist Parties and other Left-wing forces in capitalist countries, the upsurge in the national liberation movement in the colonies and dependencies all bore out the correctness of the strategy and tactics of the Communist and Workers’ Parties on the issues of war, peace and revolution during the years of severe tribulation.

p Therefore, although the Soviet Union, the international working class and all peace-loving forces had been unable to avert the war, they exerted a decisive influence on its course and outcome and made it possible to utilise it in the interests of revolution and socialism. The fact that the advanced forces of the working class worked out a correct attitude to the two world wars and applied the right tactics to the specific historical conditions of each war, had an extremely great influence on their outcome and on the failure of the calculations of their imperialist instigators.

p While one aim of the First World War was, as Lenin pointed out, “distracting the attention of the working masses from the internal political crises . . . disuniting and nationalist stultification of the workers, and the extermination of their vanguard so as to weaken the revolutionary movement of the proletariat...”,  [123•*  one of its results was the break of the chain of world imperialism through the victory of the October Revolution in Russia. Whereas one of imperialism’s 124 aims in the Second World War was to weaken the Soviet Union and the world revolutionary movement to the utmost, its results strengthened the Soviet Union, enlarged the ranks of socialist countries and stimulated an upsurge in the revolutionary and liberation movement all over the world. The world wars unleashed by the imperialists for the purpose of putting a brake on the revolutionary process, objectively played a part in speeding it up.

p That, however, does not exhaust the question of the interconnection between world wars and the world revolutionary process—between social phenomena that differ in origin and character. The history of the 20th century has shown that wars are neither universal nor the easiest way of furthering the world revolutionary process, and that the working class and all working people have no need of world wars to conquer the bourgeoisie.

p Both in examining the revolutionary after-effects of the First World War and in analysing the results of the Second World War, it is important to bear in mind that the objective basis for the success of the socialist revolution and the national liberation movement was by no means war itself, but the development of class contradictions and class struggle. Neither must one forget that this success in the development of revolution was accompanied by terrible human loss and immeasurable suffering of the working people, by immense economic destruction in many countries. This course of the world revolutionary process was forced upon the international working class by imperialism, which instigated the Second World War.

p The end of the war and the substantial changes in the historical situation that it brought in its wake produced fresh paths for the working class and necessitated a new review of the issues of war, peace and revolution. The fight of Communist and Workers’ Parties for socialism organically merged with the campaign to preserve peace. The international working class, the world socialist system and all the peoples of the world are interested in consolidating the revolutionary gains, in defending them from the incursions of imperialist reaction and, consequently, in preventing another war.

125

p The dialectics of history has been such that the course of revolution, accelerated as a consequence of the world wars, has confronted the progressive forces with the important task of averting another world war.

p True to the behests of Lenin and the creative spirit of Leninism, Communist and Workers’ Parties centred their attention on the fight to preserve peace during the early postwar years, and thereby contributed to a theoretical elaboration of the issues of war and peace in the new historical circumstances.

The importance of the peace campaign grew in the postwar years not simply because of the recent memory of the horrors of war and the consequent popular interest in averting war, but also because of certain specific features of world development. Imperialism, attempting to use military means in order to halt the further growth in revolutionary forces and to turn back social progress, staked mainly on the atomic bomb owned by the United States—the new powerful weapon of mass annihilation which exceeded many times the destructive power of any weapon used in the Second World War.