Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/91

 family. In this way an armed people is created, as well an armed peasantry, to keep watch over the great revolution of the workers.

 

The programme of the Communist Party is a scheme not only for the liberation of the proletariat of one country, but for the emancipation of the proletariat of the whole world: for it is a programme of international revolution. But it is, at the same time, a programme of the liberation of all oppressed countries and nations. The plundering "great Empires" (England, Germany, Japan, America, etc.) have, by dint of robbery, acquired ascendancy over untold expanses of land and vast numbers of people. They have divided our whole planet between them; and no wonder that in these conquered countries the working class and the labouring masses are groaning under a double yoke—that of their own bourgeoisie and the additional one cast upon them by their conquerors.

Tzarist Russia had also gained by plunder a great deal of territory and many peoples. The present size of "our" Empire is only to be explained in this way. It is quite natural that among many "aliens," including even some sections of the proletariat who did not belong to the "great Russian" nationality, there was a general lack of confidence towards the "Moscal," as the natives of Muscovy were formerly called. The nationalist persecution evoked nationalist sentiments; the oppressed part of the proletariat had no confidence in the oppressing nationality as a whole, without distinction of class; the oppressing parts of the proletariat did not sufficiently understand the position of the "alien" proletariat subjected to by a double burden of persecution. And yet, in order to attain the victory of the workers' revolution along the whole front, complete and perfect confidence of the various parts of the proletariat towards each other is imperative. The proletariat of "alien" nations should be made to feel by deed and word that it has a loyal ally in the person of the proletariat of the nation that formerly was the oppressor. Here in Russia the dominating