Everywhere we issued the call for a world workers’ revolution… Russia will become mighty and abundant if she abandons all dejection and all phrasemaking, if, with clenched teeth, she musters all her forces and strains every nerve and muscle, if she realises that salvation lies only along the road of world socialist revolution upon which we have set out.
– Lenin, ‘The Chief Task of Our Day’
Howard: Does this statement of yours mean that the Soviet Union has to any degree abandoned its plans and intentions to bring about a world revolution?
Stalin: We never had any such plans or intentions.
Howard: You appreciate, no doubt Mr Stalin, that much of the world has long entertained a different impression?
Stalin: This is the product of misunderstanding.
Howard: A tragic misunderstanding?
Stalin: No, comic. Or perhaps tragicomic…– Roy Howard, Stalin interview, Communist International, March/April 1936
US right-wing forces and propaganda portray our interest in Latin America as an intention to engineer a series of socialist revolutions there. Nonsense! The way we have behaved for decades proves that we don’t plan anything of the kind.
– Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World
Foreign policy is the continuation of domestic policy. When the Bolsheviks came to power their whole perspective was based upon the world revolution. The key issue was to hold out for as long as possible, while promoting the socialist revolution abroad. Immediately the Soviet government issued a decree for peace without annexations. This appeal, in the words of Lenin, “must be addressed both to the governments and to the peoples. We cannot ignore the governments, for that would delay the possibility of concluding peace, and the people’s government dare not do that”. (LCW, Vol. 26, p. 252.) And he added: “Nor must our proposal for an armistice have the form of an ultimatum, for we shall not give our enemies an opportunity of concealing the whole truth from the peoples, using our irreconcilability as a pretext.” (LCW, Vol. 29, p. 256.)
As a consequence, the Russian Revolution sent a wave of revolutionary fervour through the ranks of the working class throughout the world. To the war-weary, disillusioned and embittered masses, it came as a message of hope, of inspiration and courage, it showed the way out of the bloody chaos into which capitalism had plunged society.
However, Soviet Russia was surrounded by hostile powers, and was forced into a humiliating peace with German imperialism at Brest-Litovsk. Soon afterwards, the Soviet republic was faced with civil war and foreign intervention sent to crush her. However, by November 1918, revolution had broken out in Germany. The Soviet government had received the message: “Greetings of peace and freedom to all. Berlin and the surrounding districts are in the hands of the Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies…” As soon as the news of the German Revolution reached Russia there were spontaneous demonstrations, which were described by Karl Radek:
From every corner of the city demonstrations were marching towards the Moscow Soviet… Tens of thousands of workers burst into wild cheering. Never have I seen anything like it again. Until late evening workers and Red Army soldiers were filing past. The world revolution had come. (Karl Radek, The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power, p. 35.)
Lenin wrote to Trotsky and Sverdlov that:
The international revolution has come so close in one week that it has to be reckoned with as an event of the next few days… We are all ready to die to help the German workers advance the revolution which has begun in Germany. In conclusion: (1) Ten times more effort to secure grain (clean out all stocks for ourselves and for the German workers). (2) Ten times more enrolments for the army. We must have by the spring an army of three million to help the international workers’ revolution. (LCW, Vol. 28, pp. 364-5.)
The breakdown of imperialism and capitalism was signalled by revolutions in Germany, Austria, Hungary, revolutionary situations in Italy, France and even in Britain. Unfortunately, the German Revolution was derailed by the Social-Democratic leaders who conspired with the Junkers and capitalists to destroy the revolution, and handed back power from the workers to the capitalists. This was to result in a series of bloody defeats for the German workers and the murder of its two finest representatives, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. A Soviet Republic was declared in Bavaria and in Hungary but was defeated by the counter-revolution. Social Democracy saved capitalism. The powerful trade union and socialist bureaucracies placed themselves at the head of the upsurge of the masses to divert it into harmless channels.
But precisely because of the breakdown of international socialism in the Second International, which had betrayed Marxism, the new Third Communist International was formed in March 1919, in Moscow, made up of groups which supported the Bolshevik Revolution. Its declared aims and objectives were the overthrow of world capitalism and the construction of a world chain of united Soviet Socialist Republics to join up with the USSR; which itself was not conceived as an independent entity but merely as the base for the world revolution. Its fate would be determined and was bound up with the fate of the world revolution. The revolutionary wave that swept across Europe, through Austria to Italy, France and Britain, gave rise to great expectations of the workers coming to power elsewhere. The spectre of revolution hung all over Europe. The memoirs and writings of nearly all the capitalist politicians of that time bear witness to the despair and the lack of confidence of the bourgeoisie in the face of developing revolution. In Italy, by 1920, the workers had seized the factories. Instead of leading the workers to the conquest of power, the Socialist Party bade them cease this ‘unconstitutional’ procedure. So it was throughout Europe.
The failure of the revolution outside of Russia was primarily due to the betrayals of the old leaders and also the weakness of the Communist Parties and groups that existed. Only in 1920, after the formation of the Third International, did mass Communist Parties emerge in Germany, France, Italy and Czechoslovakia, out of the splits and turmoil within the traditional mass organisations. Yet, compared to the Russians, these parties were very young and inexperienced. This led to tragic mistakes in the period 1920-23. Many of these newly formed parties suffered from ultra-leftism and sectarianism. In 1920, Lenin was forced to take issue with these ‘childish’ illnesses at the Second Congress of the Comintern, and also wrote a work on this question entitled “Left Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder.
The resolutions of the first four Congresses of the Communist International forged in the years 1919-22 are a worked out set of strategy and tactics with which to guide the communist movement. The success of the world revolution seemed to be assured by the development of events. Everything was in place for the impending revolutionary wave. However, the correct positions of Lenin were undone by Zinoviev and Stalin. Their bureaucratic policies had a particularly disastrous effect in Germany, where the Communist Party leadership was disoriented by the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919. First Paul Levy took charge. Levy displayed opportunist leanings which were bitterly criticised by the Party’s ultra-left wing (Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow). Lenin and Trotsky were also critical of Levy, but defended him against the ‘Lefts’. They never had the policy of bureaucratically removing leaders, even when they made mistakes. Lenin once warned Bukharin that “if you want obedience, you will get obedient fools”. They preferred to educate the membership through patient explanation, discussion and friendly criticism.
When, against Lenin’s advice, the ‘Lefts’ finally removed Levy, and the latter moved to the right, Lenin commented: “Well, he lost his head. But he had a head to lose.” His scepticism of the new ‘left’ leadership was soon shown to be correct. In March 1921, under Fischer and Maslow, the inexperienced German Communist Party embarked on an ill-prepared insurrection with no mass support, which culminated in a heavy defeat for the Communists. The so-called revolutionary offensive of the ‘March Action’ led to the loss of 200,000 members and the isolation of the Party. As a result of this debacle, Lenin and Trotsky had to open up a sharp struggle with the ultra-lefts who defended this adventure, for such actions, if they were allowed to continue, would have wrecked the communist movement. In place of impatience and adventurism, the Communists needed to ‘patiently explain’, and win the majority of the working class to its side. Pursuing his usual methods, Zinoviev had Fischer and Maslow removed and replaced by the ‘Rights’, Brandler and Thalheimer. Instead of attempting to re-educate both the party and the leadership in the course of common action and discussion, these Zinovievite methods of manoeuvres and the use of the apparatus to ‘solve’ inner party disputes had the effect of demoralising sections of the Party and disorienting the leadership.