Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/96

 as well as in other countries. It is they who deceive the workers by empty words about the defence of the fatherland (the bourgeois, Wilhelm fatherland), and crush the workers' revolution at home and execute it in Russia with the aid of the bayonets of their Governments.

The second current is the centre. This has a tendency to grumble against its Government, but is not capable of carrying on a revolutionary struggle. It has not the courage to call the workers into an open fight, and fears beyond everything an armed insurrection, which is the only way of solving the question.

And lastly, there is the third current, the extreme left. In Germany Liebknecht and his comrades. They are German Bolsheviks, their policy and views being those of the Bolsheviks.

You will understand what a muddle ensues as a result of all these groups calling themselves by one and the same name. The Social Democrat Liebknecht and the Social Democrat Schiedemann! What have they in common? The one, a mean traitor, an executioner of the revolution; and the other, a brave fighter for the working class. Can you imagine a greater difference?

In Russia, where the revolutionary struggle and the development of the revolution in October caused the question of Socialism and the overthrow of the bourgeois Government to be settled: immediately the dispute between the traitors to Socialism and the adherents of true Socialism was decided by force of arms. The Right Socialist Revolutionaries and party of the Mensheviks were on the same side of the barricades as the counter-revolutionary rabble: the Bolsheviks were on the other side, side by side with the workers and soldiers. Blood marked a boundary line between us. Such a thing cannot and never will be forgotten.

This is why we were compelled to give a different name to distinguish us from the traitors to Socialism. The difference between us is too great. Our ways and means are too far apart.

As regards the bourgeois Government, we Communists know but one duty towards it—to blow it up, shattering at one blow this union of plunderers. The Social Democrats propagate the defence of the union of business men, screening themselves by a pretence of defending their fatherland.

But after the victory of the working class, we stand for the defence and protection of the workers' Soviet Government