Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/81

 Rh trade union movement. This ideological propaganda center was given the name "The International Council of Trade and Industrial Unions."

Our action brought forth a storm of protest from the Amsterdam International, which saw in this new tricks of "Moscow." The Amsterdamers at their London Congress passed a resolution of protest, a verbal assault. They disapproved of the wording of our manifesto where we called them "traitors" and less pleasant epithets. Such names, of course, do not awaken any sympathy. They paid special attention to our sharp tone, to our clear statements, and to our lack of "diplomatic style."

Our declaration brought a storm of protest, and from the beginning the Red International of Labor Unions appeared in the literature of the Amsterdam International as an "international insulter," as an organization which had for its purpose to insult the leaders of the trade union movement, and according to the Amsterdamers, the Red International does nothing else.

The reformists reacted against the organization of our international and against our first acts. Quite differently reacted the working masses: of all countries.

The fact alone of the appearance of the new International, which directly opposed the Amsterdam International, won for us sympathies in all countries; The main reason for these sympathies was not, at the beginning, the character of our International, not in its statutes; not in its theoretical position, but in the fact that this International was of "Moscow"—born on the territory of the Russian revolution.

The same should also be said in regards to the Comintern. The Comintern was at first also considered as a "Moscow" organization, and the sympathy to the Comintern is usually accepted as sympathy for the Russian revolution/ This is the way it occurred in our struggle with the reformists. It is understood thus, not only by the two reformist internationals, but also by the representatives of the bourgeois diplomatic world. The Comintern is based on the Communist Party, the Profintern on the trade union movement, and both of them on the Russian revolution, that is, on one-sixth of the land area of the globe. This whole thing plays a big role in international politics, and all that had, and still has, a special influence on the Western European proletariat.

Thus, the ideological alignment with the Profintern in its first year had a character of sympathy for the Russian revolution, for the Russian proletariat. Often such sympathy was shown to us in spite of the reformists who even then conducted a fight against the Bolsheviks. But even in the first year of our existence it became clear that the revolutionary international trade union movement does not appear as a unit. It has different currents which have to crystallize themselves,