Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/95

 of millions of peoples of their yoke. The "civilised" plundering Empires have cruelly tortured the inhabitants of their colonies by their blood and iron regime. European civilisation was maintained by the blood of small peoples mercilessly exploited and robbed in the far-off countries beyond the seas. They will be freed by the dictatorship of the proletariat, and by that alone. Just as the Russian Soviet Government has announced its refusal to participate in a colonial policy, and has proved its decision by its attitude with regard to Persia, just so will the European working class, after overthrowing the domination of bankers, etc., give complete freedom to the oppressed and exploited classes. That is the reason why our programme, which is that of the international revolution, is at the same time a scheme for the complete liberation of all the weak and oppressed. The great class—the working class—has set before itself great problems: and it has not only set them, but is proceeding to solve them in a bloody, painful, heroic struggle.

 

Up to the time of the last Convention, our party called itself the party of the social democracy. The party of the working class bore the same name all over the world. But the war has been responsible for an unprecedented schism in the social-democratic parties here. Three main tendencies have come to the fore—the extreme right, the centre, and the extreme left wing.

The right social-democrats have proved to be thorough-going traitors to the working class. They prostrated themselves in the dust, and are still doing so, before the generals whose hands were covered with the blood of workers. They support the vilest projects and greatest crimes of their Governments. We have only to remember that the German Social-Democrat Schiedemann is supporting the Ukrainian policy of the German generals. They are the real executioners of the workers' revolution.

When the German workers have won their cause they will hang Schiedemann on the same gallows as Wilhelm. There are a great number of these kind of persons in France and England,