Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/115



''Resolution on War, passed by the General Conference of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviki), May 9, 1917. All voting in favor except seven, who abstained from voting.''

The present war, on the part of all the belligerents, is an imperialistic war, that is, it is fought by capitalists for the division of spoils through their domination of the world, for markets, for financial capital, for the suppression of backward nations, etc. Each day of war enriches the financial and industrial bourgeoisie and impoverishes and weakens the powers of the proletariat and the peasantry of all the belligerents, and later of the neutral countries. In Russia the prolongation of the war involves also a grave danger to the Revolution and its further development.

The passing of government authority, in Russia, into the hands of the Provisional Government, that is, the government of the landholders and capitalists, did not and could not alter the character and significance of Russian participation in the war.

This fact became particularly apparent when the new government not only did not publish the secret treaties concluded between the late Czar and the capitalist governments of England, France, etc., but even formally confirmed these secret treaties, which promised Russian capitalists a free hand in China, Persia, Turkey, Austria, etc., without consulting the Russian people. The concealment of these treaties from the Russian people completely deceived them as to the true character of the war.

For this reason the proletarian party can support neither the present war nor the present government, nor its loans, without breaking completely with internationalism, that is, with the fraternal solidarity of the workers of all lands in their struggle under the yoke of Capitalism.

No confidence is to be placed in the promises of the present government to renounce annexations, that is, conquests of foreign territory, or in the promise to renounce forcible retention within the confines of Russia of this or that nationality. For in the first place, since capitalists are bound together by the thousand threads of banking capital, they cannot renounce annexations in the present war, as they have not renounced the profits on the billions invested in loans, in concessions, in war industries, etc. And, in the second place, the new government, having, in order to deceive the people, renounced annexations, then proceeded to state, through the mouth