The real significance of the Balkan Wars is that they clearly revealed a tendency towards a world war. The tensions between the big imperialist powers had been steadily accumulating to the critical point where any accident could ignite a general conflict. The only hope of avoiding war was not pacifist declarations but the revolutionary movement of the working class. This was the position taken by Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg at the congresses of the International that immediately preceded the First World War. On the face of it, the forces at the disposal of the international socialist movement were more than enough to stop a war. In 1914, the Second International was a mass organisation with 41 parties in 27 countries with a total membership of about 12 million workers. Resolutions passed by big majorities in the Stuttgart and Basel congresses pledged the International to oppose war by all means at its disposal.
Lenin’s position on war was neither ‘warmongering’ nor tearful pacifism but revolutionary through and through. Among the many slanders levelled against Lenin, one of the most absurd is that he ‘wanted war’. This assertion is frequently linked to a misinterpretation of his idea of ‘revolutionary defeatism’ which has been almost universally misunderstood. When a Polish journalist, Majkosen, asked Lenin before the First World War whether, if war would hasten revolution, he wanted a war, he answered:
No, I don’t want that… I am doing all I can, and will continue to do so till the end, to hinder the war mobilisation. I don’t want millions of proletarians to be forced to slaughter one another impelled by the lunacy of capitalism. There can be no misunderstanding on this point. To objectively predict war, and to strive, in the event of such a misfortune to develop, to take advantage of it as best we can – that is one thing. To desire a war and work for it, that is something entirely different. (V.I. Lenin Biography, Moscow, 1963, p. 213.)
In November 1912 the Basel Emergency Conference of the International was held. The impressive number of delegates proclaimed the colossal power of the labour organisations of the world – a total of 555 delegates representing 23 countries listened as the greatest issue of the day was earnestly debated. At the conference the predominant trend was pacifism. The great French socialist Jean Jaurès read out an anti-war resolution: “The proletariat demands peace in the most energetic terms,” he proclaimed. But such general declarations ‘for peace’ are not worth the paper they are written on in the event of war breaking out. In order to transform such general sentiments into a fighting programme against war, something else is required. That is why Lenin had moved an amendment at the Stuttgart Congress in 1907 stating that in the event of war, the working class would take advantage of the situation to overthrow capitalism. In fact, that would be the only way in which war could be stopped. Amazingly, Lenin’s amendment was unanimously approved. But, as it later became clear, the leaders of the international Social Democracy only voted for such resolutions because they had not the slightest intention of ever carrying them out.
Such was the general rule in almost all the parties of the Second International. The revolutionary programme was safely kept locked in a drawer, tucked away in the Party’s constitution, to be taken out and dusted off to be read out at May Day meetings, and then put back again for the rest of the year. Between the theory and practice of the Social Democracy, there was an unbridgeable abyss. The masses believed in the socialist aims of the party, but for most of the leaders, sucked into the rarefied world of parliamentary politics, the latter were at best irrelevant and at worst an embarrassing encumbrance. Their outlook was well summed up in the winged phrase of the father of revisionism, Eduard Bernstein: “The movement is everything, the final goal is nothing.”
But just as the leaders of the Second International were lulling the workers with the vision of peaceful, gradual change and reform, the capitalist system was preparing a rude awakening for all classes in society. The Balkan Wars had solved nothing, but raised the temperature of international relations to fever pitch. Macedonia was divided between Greece and Serbia. Romania seized a chunk of Bulgarian territory (southern Dobrudja). In the western Balkans, the powers set up a new independent Albania. But Serbia, although victorious, was blocked from getting secure access to the Adriatic Sea, an aim in which she was backed by Russia. Defeated and humiliated in the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria waited for an opportunity to take her revenge and joined the camp of Germany and Austria. From fear of Russia, Turkey, the other defeated power, also moved closer to Germany, with whom it concluded an alliance in August 1914. On the other hand, Serbia and Montenegro grew even closer to Russia in self-defence against Austria-Hungary. In the words of Russia’s Foreign Minister Sazonov: “Our fundamental task is to guarantee the political and economic emancipation of Serbia.” (BH Sumner, A Survey of Russian History, p. 380.) The world was sliding uncontrollably towards war.
In Russia, the Bolshevik legal press waged a consistent anti-war agitation, concentrating on exposing the real war aims of tsarism in the Balkans. Lenin’s slogans were “Against interference of other powers in the Balkan war… War against war! Against any interference! For Peace: such are the workers’ slogans.” As opposed to the sentimental whimperings of the pacifists, Lenin always approached the question of war from a class standpoint, exposing the interests that lay behind the patriotic slogans. Lenin’s articles constantly denounced the capitalists and arms manufacturers and unmasked the real war aims of Russian tsarism, showing their material basis and class content. He always asked, with a lawyer’s turn of phrase, ‘cui prodest?’ – who benefits from the arms race? There was no question of taking sides in this Balkan conflict. The interests of the Balkan people could not be served by a war. And the very idea that the right of self-determination of this or that Balkan statelet could serve as a justification for dragging the whole of Europe into war was simply monstrous. Later, in 1915, Lenin explained that if the war had been a question of a military conflict between Serbia and Austria alone, it would be necessary to support Serbia, from the point of view of the rights of nations to self-determination. However, this right was never considered by Lenin to be absolute for all times and circumstances. In no way could the struggle for self-determination of the Serbs or any other people justify plunging the whole world into a war. In this case, as always, the right of self-determination was subordinate to the interests of the working class and the world revolution.