Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/170



The international duty of the Russian working class has become very evident in these days.

We see not only perfectly inactive people but even chauvinists calling themselves internationalists, men like Messrs. Plekhanov and Potresoff, even Kerensky himself. This imposes upon the proletarian party a stem obligation to draw a clear, accurate line of cleavage between lip internationalism and active internationalism.

Mere appeals to the workers of all lands, professions of internationalist faith, direct or veiled attempts to organize a progressive series of proletarian movements in the various countries at war, frantic efforts to bring about agreements between the Socialists of the belligerent countries on the subject of the revolutionary struggle, Socialistic campaigns for peace propaganda, etc. all that, when we consider its actual value regardless of the honesty of the prime movers of such enterprises is just hot air naive sentimentalism, which can be cleverly used by chauvinists to deceive the masses in an underhand way.

The French social-patriots, the government Socialists, most adroit and best grounded in parliamentary juggling, have broken all records for sonorous and melodious manifestoes and internationalist phraseology, coupled with the baldests betrayal of Socialism and internationalism; for they have accepted positions in a cabinet waging an imperialistic war, they have voted for all credits or loans (as Cheidse, Skobeleff, Tseretelli and Stekloff have been doing recently in Russia) and opposed the social struggle in their own country.

Good people often forget the cruel, savage paraphernalia of a world-wide imperialistic war. Phrases and naive sentimental desires are impotent.