WIKTOR SUKIENNICKI

An Abortive Attempt at International
Unity of the Workers’ Movement
(The Berlin Conference of the
Three Internationals, 1922)

I. UNITY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

Unity in thought and deed, a complete solidarity of all people in common action, is one of the most tempting ideals of humanity. It has never been achieved in the past, and will hardly be achieved in the future. Human beings are still rather quarrelsome and bellicose, and the angelic salutation of nearly twenty centuries ago: “Peace on the earth to men of goodwill” is far from being realized in practice. In wartime, however, close unity within each of the opposing camps is even more important than it is in times of peace. Thus, the great apostles of class war, Marx and Engels, preached unity and coined the popular slogan: “Workingmen of the world, unite!”

The first attempt to apply this slogan failed after roughly a decade. The so-called First International, the International Workingmen’s Association, established in 1864, was officially dissolved in 1876 as a result of a fundamental split between the Bakuninists and the Marxists. Re-established in 1889, the Second International did not pass the crucial test of the First World War, when individual national solidarities prevailed over international working-class solidarity. After the war, great efforts were made to reassemble the former International which had disintegrated further into groups supporting the war effort (the right-wing), those who opposed it (the left-wing), and those who remained neutral (center). Many were against the re-establishment of a Second International to be led by those who had failed the test in 1914 and had “betrayed” the working-class cause. During the war, the oppositionists met in Zimmerwald (September, 1915) and Kienthal (April, 1916) to discuss possible unity, but did not dare to proclaim formally the foundation of a new Third International. However, after the first attempts at reconstitution of the broken Second International had been made, and a conference for this purpose had gathered in Geneva from February 3 to February 10, 1919, the leaders of the victorious Russian Revolution made the fateful move and the creation of the Third International was officially proclaimed in Moscow in March, 1919.

Hence the problem of the workers’ “unity” became even more complicated because of the rivalry of the two “unifying” centers to which a third— the intermediate “Second-and-a-half International”—was promptly added.

II. “UNITY” BASED ON THE RUSSIAN MODEL

The proclamation of the establishment of the Third International in March, 1919, was, in fact, a repetition on an international scale of Lenin’s strategy and tactics in the Russian socialist movement. From its beginning, the Russian socialist movement was, in theory, pledged to “the workers’ unity,” “the proletarian unity,” and “the socialist unity.” But in practice it had always been split into multiple factions quarrelling and fighting with each other.

The first attempt to unify all Russian Marxists into one organized party had been made in March, 1898, at a conference in Minsk. The following year Bernstein’s famous book was published in Germany starting the world-wide “revisionist” schism among the Marxists. Lenin, exiled in Siberia at the time, carefully observed the events in the socialist movement, studied the appropriate materials, and reflected upon adequate methods of implementing his theoretical conceptions of a radical transformation of the whole social, political, and economic order. Lenin’s idea of a paper, published uncensored abroad (born at this time), was shared by two of his closest friends, Martov and Potresov, as well as by the leaders of the Russian Social Democratic movement abroad, Plekhanov, Aksel’rod, and Zasulich; in August. 1900, they formed the editorial board of Iskra (Spark).

On behalf of the board, Lenin wrote in a declaration on the proposed publication that its aim would be to “establish and consolidate unity among all Russian Social Democrats.” However “before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation. Otherwise, our unity will be purely fictitious, it will conceal the prevailing confusion and hinder its radical elimination.”¹ After a year and a half of preparatory work, during which the editorial board of Iskra was often divided on many issues, a congress was summoned in July, 1903. The result of the congress was not the intended unification of all Russian Social Democrats but the momentous split into the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.

Although at the end of the congress the majority (Bolsheviks) seemed to be on Lenin’s side, shortly afterward he was abandoned by nearly everybody. Deprived of Iskra, Lenin, with Bogdanov-Malinovskii and his brother-in-law, Lunacharskii, founded another paper, Vpered (Forward), and succeeded in constituting a “Bureau of the Majority’s Committees” at a meeting of twenty-two persons, in August, 1904, in Geneva. This Bureau summoned the pure-Bolshevik “Third” Congress, in April, 1905, in London, attended by twenty-four persons. A larger Menshevik conference was simultaneously convened in Geneva.

Further discords with his new friends and the fact, revealed during the 1905 Revolution in Russia, that Bolshevik influence was hardly predominant there among the working masses striving spontaneously for “workers’ unity,” made Lenin a little more cooperative. He agreed to call a new “unity congress” with the Mensheviks, in April, 1906, in Stockholm; among its 112 delegates, the Bolsheviks formed a minority of forty-six.

According to subsequent reminiscences of Lunacharskii, at the time of the preparatory work for the congress Lenin, with “his subtle smile,” had said to him:

If we have the majority in the Central Committee or on the editorial board of the central organ, we will demand the strictest discipline. We will insist on complete subordination of the Mensheviks for the party’s unity. If their petty-bourgeois nature will not allow them to go with us, let them take the responsibility for the split (odium rasriva) in the party’s unity, which was achieved at such a high price. Then, certainly, they will take from the united party considerably fewer workers than they brought in.

When Lunacharskii asked what Lenin’s tactics would be if, after all, the Mensheviks got the majority at the congress, Lenin answered with a “somewhat mysterious smile”: “it depends on the circumstances. In any case, we will not permit a noose to be put around us because of unity, and we will by no means allow the Mensheviks to lead us on a rope.”² According to Bertram Wolfe, “Lenin considered himself ‘the only true master and exponent of an infallible science called Marxism’,” and “was not merely ready to split any organization on any difference that he had come to think important; he was ready to split and discredit and wreck every organization he could not control.”³

When, in connection with the electoral campaign to the Second Duma in 1907 Lenin was accused by the Central Committee before a party court of honor of using a “poisoned weapon” against his “Menshevik comrades,” he declared that he “will always conduct a struggle of extermination” against the “political enemies.”⁴

At that time and during the following decade, it was just a literary metaphor, but, after 1917, it could be—and was—a genuine reality.

The fictitious “unity” of the party was tolerated by Lenin for some five years. In January, 1912, he gathered fifteen of his most trusted partisans in Prague and called the gathering a general congress of the party. This “congress” formally excluded from the party all but Lenin’s groups and “elected” a new Central Committee with Lenin at its head. On Trotsky’s initiative, a conference of the “excluded” groups was called in August, 1912 in Vienna, and they decided to indict Lenin for this peculiar coup d’état before the International Socialist Bureau in Brussels. In an attempt to straighten out their mutual relations, the Bureau summoned the representatives of all Russian socialist groups to Brussels on June 16, 1914. Fourteen groups were present; only one was Bolshevik. ⁵

The coming of World War I and the subsequent Russian Revolution not only destroyed those plans for socialist unity in Russia but resulted in Lenin becoming the head of the Soviet Russian state. In this state, the soviets, not the party, theoretically “united” all the working people and in the initial stage of the revolution, they represented all shades of leftist socialist opinion. At first, the “anti-Bolshevik bloc” held the majority in them, including their leading organs (with all groups and parties being represented on a proportional basis). This method was so firmly established that after the October upheaval many Bolsheviks were of the opinion that the new Soviet government should be formed in a similar way and should be a “coalition” socialist government. Lenin did not share this opinion and did his best not only to keep his “political enemies” out of the government but also to reduce at first, and then to eliminate, their representation in all the soviet and other official organizations.

The non-Bolshevik socialist parties and groups were for some years tolerated in the Bolshevik-dominated state under the official assumption that they represented insignificant minorities of the “working people’s” opinion. Although most of them accepted the basic idea of the Soviet state and were ready to collaborate with the Bolsheviks on a democratic basis, many of their leaders and most of their active workers were arrested during the Civil War by state security organs, on charges of connection or sympathy with the counterrevolutionary Whites. Such was the practical application of the theory of the “poisoned weapon” in “a struggle of extermination” against all “political enemies” formulated by Lenin as early as 1907.

At the Eighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets on December 23, 1920, Lenin said in a speech following the debates on his report on foreign and domestic policy that

now we actually saw that in the epoch of the social revolution the proletariat can only be united by an extreme revolutionary Marxist party, only through a ruthless struggle against all other parties. (Stormy applause.)⁶

It was after the Civil War that Lenin completely eliminated all the dissidents from the party and formally outlawed all the non-Bolshevik socialist parties in Russia. In March, 1921, after the Kronstadt revolt, at the Tenth Party Congress, his famous resolution on party unity prohibited the formation of any faction or group. In a booklet, O prodovol’stvennom naloge, written in April and published in May, 1921, he stated the necessity for a regime of terror.

After the imperialist war of 1914-1918 . . . it is impossible not to apply terror despite hypocrites and phrasemongers. It is either . . . White-Guard bourgeois terror, or it is the Red proletarian terror. There is no in between. There is none and there will not be any of the “third” side. . . .⁷

He also publicly announced that he would keep all the non-Bolshevik Russian Socialists—the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries—”carefully in prison” or banish them “to Berlin, to Martov.”⁸ These were the last steps on the long road of building a “monolithic” party and achieving the “complete unity” of the working people in Russia.

According to Lenin’s speech at the Third Congress of the Comintern, on July 1, 1921, a similar pattern was to be applied in all other countries.⁹

III. THE WESTERN SOCIALISTS
AND SOVIET RUSSIA

The Russian Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the “First Workers’ and Peasants’ State” made a deep impression throughout the world, particularly among the “working people”; socialist and labor parties became basically pro-Russian. Several of them were reluctant to take part in attempts to re-establish the former International, for practically nobody wanted to separate himself from the Russian comrades. At the first post-war international socialist conference in Berne (February 3-10, 1919),¹⁰ there had been differences of opinion on the socialist attitude towards democracy and dictatorship, although everybody expressed great sympathy and interest in the Russian Revolution, and the conference agreed to send a special commission to Russia “to study carefully the political and economic situation in Russia, and to present to the International a detailed and objective report.” While the minority at the conference, led by F. Adler and J. Longuet, had done their best not to shut the reconstituted International’s door in the faces of the Russian Bolsheviks, the latter refused categorically to have anything in common with any “betrayer of the working class.” They not only hurried to establish their own Third International in March, 1919, but at its Second Congress in 1920 put a padlock at the entrance in the form of the “Twenty-one Conditions.”¹¹

Such an attitude hardly facilitated the efforts of the partisans of “an honorable compromise” in the quest for a genuine “unification of the world-wide forces of socialism and democracy.” The Constitution and Rules of the British Independent Labor Party (ILP) explicitly stated that it worked for this end “in co-operation with the Socialist International.”¹² Ramsay MacDonald, the leader of this party after August 4, 1914, “did not fear to declare war on war,” and also publicly stated in L’Humanité of April 14, 1919, that he was “very much distressed” by the foundation of the independent Moscow International:

The Socialist International at the present time is sufficiently wide for all types of socialist thought, and in spite of all the theoretical and practical differences created by Bolshevism, I see no reason why the Left Wing should break away from the Center and form an independent group.¹³

Neither MacDonald’s article nor Lenin’s answer to it, written in rather abusive language,¹⁴ brought any definite solution. According to Philip Snowden, the Chairman of the ILP in the 1918-20 period, the ILP membership (which in 1919 was estimated at “not less than 80,000”)¹⁵ was “acutely divided” on the question of the International: a moderate section supported the rebuilding of the Second; “a not inconsiderable section, composed in the main of young men and women” was for the Third; and there was “a third section dissatisfied with both the moderate policy of the Second International and the extreme [policy of the Third].” “It looked at one time as though these divisions would disrupt the ILP.”¹⁶ This did not happen, and at their next conference in Glasgow in April, 1920, after animated debates the ILP by a majority of 529 to 144 decided to sever all its connections with the Second International and, without affiliating itself immediately to the Third (206 delegates voted for this solution), to inquire and consult with Moscow and every other left party before the next special conference of the ILP assembled in order finally to solve this problem.¹⁷

The situation in several other important socialist parties—Italian, Swiss, American, German Independent, etc.—was very similar to that of the British ILP; they refused to send their representatives to the conferences in Berne (February, 1919), Amsterdam (April, 1919), and Lucerne (August, 1919) in order to reconstitute the former International, but were willing to go to Moscow, where the Second Congress of the Third International was summoned in the summer of 1920.

On December 10, 1919, an extraordinary British Trade Union Congress passed a resolution demanding from the British Government “the right to an independent and impartial inquiry into the industrial, political, and economic conditions in Russia.” British passports and Soviet entry-visas were issued to members of the special delegation of the Trade Union Congress and the Labor Party (seven men and two women, one of whom was Mrs. Snowden) and to the two delegates of the ILP and some journalists (among whom was Bertrand Russell) accompanying them.¹⁸ This delegation left England on April 27, 1920, and spent over a month in Russia, returning to England in several individual groups in the second half of June or July, 1920. As this was the first official foreign delegation to Russia, a special train was sent from Petrograd to the frontier to meet them. According to Mrs. Snowden’s report it was

gaily decorated with red bunting, fervent mottoes, and the green branches of trees. The train was attended by a number of Red Guards and Bashkir cavalrymen in gorgeous purple uniforms, with wonderful cloaks and long swords. From Reval to Narva we had been just a plain, ordinary Cook’s Tourist Party. From the Russian frontier to the end of our visit we were the Royal Family!¹⁹

After a few days in Petrograd, the party went on to Moscow where it was officially welcomed at the railway station by Kamenev; its members dined with Chicherin and met with Trotsky at the Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Theater. The next day, May 18, a military parade of the Moscow garrison was organized in honor of the foreign guests, and in the evening a solemn meeting of the Moscow Soviet took place in the Bolshoi Theater at which a Menshevik, R. Abramovich, was given the floor, along with several Bolsheviks and guest speakers.

During their stay in Russia the members of the British delegation had no difficulty in meeting, not only with representatives of the Soviet authorities and the Bolshevik Party, trade unions, Red Army and Navy, and the Third International, but also with the official representatives of the Mensheviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries and other parties, as well as “a very large number of private persons . . . representing the professional classes and many of the former bourgeoisie and nobility.”²⁰ The non-Bolshevik Russian socialists provided the British guests with several memoranda on the political and economic situation in Russia, on the situation of Russian workers, on the trade unions, on the activities of the Cheka etc.; some of these memoranda and statements influenced or were included in the delegation’s official Report.²¹

In order to give the members of the delegation a more intimate acquaintance with the actual situation in Soviet Russia, they were invited to attend a meeting of the Moscow printers’ trade union which, like the trade unions of chemists and civil servants, was not yet dominated by the Bolsheviks. The Moscow printers’ meeting was in honor of the British guests and was open to the public. It was officially advertised and widely publicized and on May 23, 1920, the great hall of the Moscow Conservatory of Music was filled to overflowing. There was a rather critical report by M. S. Kefali-Kammermacher on the condition of the printers in Soviet Russia: “As in the time of the Czar’s government, the printers are forced to print, not their own thoughts, but calumnies against themselves.”²² This was followed by no less critical speeches (among others by a representative of the Menshevik Central Committee, F. I. Dan), which were enthusiastically corroborated by the audience. Then, at the end of the meeting, its chairman, a printers’ union officer, A. F. Deviatkin, announced that there was one more speaker who could not reveal his name because he was hunted by the police. The audience loudly demanded that the floor be given him, and—as reported in the delegation’s Report:

in response to tremendous applause and shouts for his name, [the anonymous speaker] came down to the front of the platform, at the conclusion of the speech, and announced: “I am Tchernoff.” The meeting sprang to its feet and cheered. Tchernoff then escaped, while the entrances to the hall were guarded to prevent pursuit. . . .²³

This incident created a great impression and was widely commented on; it brought about rather serious consequences both for the Moscow printers and the Soviet people in general: the printers’ union was dissolved and most of its former officers were arrested during the night of June 17.²⁴ Subsequently the other trade unions had to submit to more severe control and in the following few months the last remnants of political freedom in Soviet Russia were liquidated.

Before the latter process was completed or, rather, while it was still in its early stages, the Second Congress of the Comintern gathered in Moscow. It was attended by a large number of foreign delegates, not all of whom were communists. Some of them established contact not only with the official Comintern and Bolshevik representatives in Moscow but—like the British delegation before them—also with the remnants of the Russian non-Bolshevik socialists. Most of the Italians, Serrati excepted, were not impressed by their informal meetings with members of the Menshevik Central Committee, but the German Independent Socialists, Dittmann and Crispien, were so impressed by their talks with Martov and Abramovich (who spoke German fluently), that they asked them to come to the German Independents’ Congress to be held in Halle in October, 1920. This congress was to decide definitely the problem of the Independents’ adherence to the Comintern; Zinoviev and Lozovskii from the Bolshevik side were also invited.

After the invitation was formally confirmed by the German USPD, the Mensheviks decided to accept it, announced this decision in an “Open Letter” delivered to most of the delegates to the Comintern Congress, and asked for passports to go abroad. The Soviet authorities hesitated, and the question was brought before the Bolshevik Central Committee for a decision on principle. According to rumors in Moscow, despite opposition from several Central Committee members, Lenin’s opinion prevailed that the removal of the “minority opposition” leaders from Moscow and from Russia in general would facilitate the ultimate “unification” of the “working people” under Bolshevik leadership, and the question of passports was decided affirmatively. Martov left Russia at the end of September, 1920; Abramovich, who was accompanied by his family, received his passport a few weeks later. In both cases it was explicitly stated on the passports that they had been issued “according to the decision of the RKP(b) Central Committee.”²⁵

Several foreign delegates who attended the Second Congress of the Comintern were not impressed by either their personal experiences in Russia or by the rigid “Twenty-one Conditions” voted upon by this congress, and, after returning home, publicly stated disapproval. In particular, Dittmann’s articles on the experiences of the German workers who voluntarily emigrated to the “First Workers’ and Peasants’ State,” first published in Berlin in Freiheit on August 31 and September 1, 1920 and then reprinted in several other languages, had worldwide repercussions.²⁶ On September 2 a correspondent of the London Daily News named Segrew dispatched a radiotelegram to Lenin in which he said:

The reports of the French and German Socialist Delegations, who recently returned from Russia, did more damage to your cause, than the whole anti-Bolshevik propaganda during the last years . . . . The report published here by the German Independent Socialist Dittmann is even more harmful to you.²⁷

In his direct answer to Segrew, written on September 8, Lenin said:

it is obvious that the Kautskyites, like Crispien and Dittmann, do not like Bolshevism. It would be sad if such men did like us. . . . The Third Communist International would be poor if it accepted in its ranks the Dittmanns of Germany, France or any other type. . . .

On September 24, in a “letter to the German and French workers on account of the debates at the Second Congress of the Communist International,” he stated that

only the split with such and similar people [as Crispien and Dittmann] will create the international unity of the revolutionary proletariat against the bourgeoisie and for its abolition.²⁸

Even more violent language was used by Radek in a pamphlet, The Mask Has Fallen, published by the Communist International in Germany:

Your reports become weapons not only of the Anti-Bolshevik League . . . but also of the international bourgeoisie which directs them against Soviet Russia; they become weapons which are to activate cannons and tanks against the Russian workers. . . . Hands off Soviet Russia, you hypocrites and traitors! No honest worker believes you when you lie about Soviet Russia, and no honest worker will believe you when you feign sympathy for Soviet Russia. . . . Our slogan is not an understanding with you but a struggle against you until your destruction-you slaves and lackeys of the bourgeoisie, you traitors to the German and Russian proletariat!²⁹

The style and tone of the publications supporting the foreign delegates’ position were quite different. An active USPD worker, Tony Sender, wrote in a pamphlet entitled The Dictatorship Over the Proletariat or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat:

Is the Communist International the real de facto International? With most painful regret we say that this is not so. . . . This is why it must be once more underscored that the question is not “for or against Moscow” but “for or against the conditions,” and our answer is: for Moscow, but against the impossible conditions which hinder the revolution.³⁰

IV. INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ UNION-THE
“SECOND-AND-A-HALF” INTERNATIONAL

The verbal duel between Zinoviev and Martov, the latter handicapped by illness, at the Congress of Halle in October, 1920, was followed by a split in the USPD: 236 delegates voted for the acceptance of the Comintern’s “Twenty-one Conditions,” 156 against.³¹

The example of the Germans proved decisive for the French and Italian parties at their congresses held respectively in Tours in December, 1920, and in Leghorn in January, 1921. The majority of Frenchmen joined the Comintern unconditionally. The majority of Italians, led by Serrati, while professing unfaltering allegiance to the program of the Comintern, refused to depart from the party tradition of tolerance for divergent opinions and did not accept the twenty-first “condition.” After their inquiry in Moscow, the British Independents, at their conference at Southport in March, 1921, also refused to accept the “Twenty-one Conditions,” by 521 votes against 97, a decision which resulted in an exodus of some 5,000 of their members who joined the “United” Communist Party of Great Britain established at a conference in Leeds in January, 1921.³²

Refusal to accept the Comintern’s “Twenty-one Conditions” was by no means an indication of acceptance of the program of the rebuilders of the Second International. Neither French and Italian Socialists nor German and British Independents took part in the Geneva Congress of July-August, 1920, at which the Second International was formally reconstituted. As partisans of genuine unity of the world proletariat, they deplored its division between the two Internationals, and most of them welcomed an initiative put forward as early as the fall of 1919 by a leader of the Swiss Socialist Party and participant at the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences, Robert Grimm. He advocated the “reconstruction” of the real International, which would absorb the old Second and the new Third Internationals. In particular, at their Glasgow Conference of April, 1920, the British Independents formally seconded the Swiss initiative and invited

the Swiss Party to arrange for a consultation regarding the possibility of the re-establishment of one all-inclusive International for the purpose of formulating a basis for an International which, while making a quite definite announcement of our Socialist objective, would allow the national sections to adapt their politics to the differing political and industrial conditions in the various countries.³³

On their part the German Independents decided, on October 29, 1920, to invite all the socialist parties not belonging to either International to a conference in Berne to take place on December 5, 1920; the Austrian Social Democratic Congress passed a resolution on November 7, 1920, offering Vienna as a place for a conference which would “not establish a new Fourth International but would look for ways and means leading to the establishment of a world organization of the working class in which the class-conscious proletariat of all countries is united.”³⁴

The result of these conferences was the establishment in 1921 of the International Working Union of Socialist Parties, “not an International embracing the whole revolutionary proletariat, but a means to create such an International,” according to paragraph 1 of its Rules.

The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Mensheviks) became an outstanding member of the so-called Vienna Union (or Second-and-a-half International), along with the British and German Independents and the French and Austrian socialists. Martov and Abramovich did not return to Russia after their trip to Halle, but settled in Berlin. They established contact with those of the former Russian socialist emigres who did not return to Russia after the revolution, constituted the party’s Delegation Abroad, and started the publication of Sotsialisticheskii vestnik (Socialist Courier—the first issue appeared in February, 1921, the last in 1965), which during its more than forty years of existence was one of the world’s leading socialist papers. Despite their precarious situation of exile from their own country, the Mensheviks’ actions were sometimes very successful and, owing to the generally pro-Russian attitude in Western left-wing circles, were not without their effect on the Kremlin. In particular, their vigorous political campaign of protest against the imprisonment of the Mensheviks in Russia was so effective that Moscow decided by the middle of January, 1922, to give most of the arrested Mensheviks a “free choice” between the two alternatives suggested by Lenin in the spring of 1921. (See above p. 207.) Several of the prisoners, as for example, G. Y. Aronson, F. I. Dan, B. I. Nicolaevsky, S. M. Schwarz and others, preferred banishment and went “to Berlin, to Martov” where they substantially reinforced the Sotsialisticheskii vestnik and the Delegation Abroad, and also the “Second-and-a-Half International.”

V. THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL’S ATTEMPTS
FOR “UNITY” THROUGH THE BRITISH
LABOR PARTY

Having proclaimed the formal reconstitution of the Second International, the 1920 Geneva Congress did not consider its work completed. It voted upon a special resolution in which “in order to obtain a complete exploration of the possibilities of securing a representative International,” it appealed to its

British Section to accept the responsibility of acting as a negotiating body charged with the duty of approaching national Socialist and Labor bodies not represented at this Conference, and taking such steps as may be considered necessary to secure their adherence.³⁵

After some hesitation, the British Labor Party accepted this “responsibility” and, in December, 1920, addressed a letter “to the Socialist and Communist Parties of the World” in which it pleaded for a “Unified International” and expressed its readiness to “conduct some preliminary consultations and then consider how we can best fulfill the responsibilities imposed upon us by the Geneva Conference.”³⁶

According to the Report presented at the British Labor Party Congress in Brighton in June, 1921,

There has been no response to this appeal from the parties which seceded from the Second International in order to negotiate with the Communist International. On the contrary, the divisions in the International Socialist movement have been consolidated by the formation of the Vienna Union . . . [and] the French Socialists, the German Independents and the British I.L.P. are associated with it . . . [and] have engaged not to enter into any separate negotiations for joining with other International organizations.³⁷

After the debates on this Report, the Brighton Congress passed a resolution

that in view of the present position of the Labor Movement throughout Europe and the changes in the International Socialist Secretariat, [which was transferred to London], this Conference instructs the Executive to take steps to secure that the position of the Second International shall be strengthened, that its democratic foundations as opposed to dictatorship shall be accepted, and that invitations shall be sent out to all Labor and Socialist bodies throughout the world, inviting them to attend a conference from which a comprehensive International may arise; this Conference also calls for a consultation between the Vienna International Committee and the Executive of the Second International Committee to promote unity and prevent further division.³⁸

This resolution was communicated without delay to the Vienna Union and the Second International. The latter replied positively while the former debated the problem at an enlarged meeting of its Bureau in Frankfurt, on July 8-11, 1921.³⁹ In a letter addressed to the British Labor Party on July 14, 1921, the Vienna Union replied that, in principle, it was in agreement with the object of creating a comprehensive Labor International. The International, however, could only be created on the basis of fundamental conceptions common to all, and unfortunately, in their view, this community of fundamental conceptions did not yet exist.

An obvious symptom of this, is the antagonism existing between the principles of the Second International and those of the Parties affiliated to our . . . Union . . . , which [antagonism] is, in a word, to be traced back to the antagonism between the reformist and revolutionary conceptions of the class struggle.

For these reasons, the Vienna Union considered that the time for convoking a conference on an extended basis had not yet come. On the other hand, they willingly accepted the British Labor Party invitation to meet and discuss this entire problem, independent of the planned general conference.⁴⁰

The consultative meeting between the Labor Party Executive and the Vienna Bureau took place on October 19-20, 1921 in London. The Vienna Union members insisted that the Communist parties be invited to any proposed general conference on the restitution of the International, while the British Labor Party did not propose, for the moment, to invite the Communists because their methods were so different as to make any cooperation impossible. No agreement was reached. The two points of view were subsequently embodied in a written declaration by the Vienna Union and a rejoinder by the Secretary of the British Labor Party.⁴¹

On November 22-23, 1921, at a meeting of the Second International Executive in Brussels, the report of the British Labor Party’s meeting with the Vienna Union was discussed and it was agreed that, in view of the unsettled differences of opinion, no immediate results of the negotiations initiated by the British Labor Party were to be expected; the obstacles to international unity were still very serious.⁴² However, they were to continue to try to create a frame of mind favorable to the re-establishment of unity by common action, in Western Europe at least, between the parties affiliated to the different Internationals. Since the problem of reparations was one of those that most directly concerned the working people of the war-devastated countries, it was agreed that if the French Socialist Party would take the initiative in calling a conference of all the workers’ parties of the countries directly affected, the parties belonging to the Second International would not refuse to attend. Thus, the right-wing opposition to any direct contact with the Communists was, at least partly, overcome.

VI. THE COMINTERN’S “NEW TACTICS”

The Comintern leaders in Moscow carefully watched all the moves of the British Labor Party for a rapprochement between the Vienna Union and the Second International. On August 1, 1921, the so-called “Little Bureau” of the Comintern’s Executive Committee decided to publish a manifesto “For the Unification of the World Proletariat, against the Social-Traitors’ Union,” denouncing both the attempts to reach an agreement and their failure and appealing to the workers to unify under the Communist banner: “They wish to exploit the workers’ tendency for unity for their dirty little business, for a Filthy union of the Social-patriotic and independent leaders. . . . Let yourself go with us; . . . against Jouhaux and Renaudel, against Noske, Scheidemann and Ebert, against Renner and Vandervelde, against Dittmann and other bourgeois valets! . . . Down with their unity, directed against the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.”⁴³

The Communist leaders realized, however, that such appeals and manifestos did not work in practice, and where real, concrete issues were at stake (for example, the problems of the famine in Russia or of the “White Terror” in Spain and Yugoslavia), they did not hesitate to approach the European socialists, proposing common action. These precedents were quoted by Zinoviev when, at the full Executive Committee of the Comintern session of December 4, 1921, he inaugurated the great debates on a radical change in the Comintern’s tactics with regard to the question of the proletarian “united front.”

According to Zinoviev, the “revolutionary tide” in the West had reached its ebb and the reflux had begun; the masses, which had been passive and inclined to the right, now were anxious for action and were inclined to the left. They were demanding the unification of all forces for this action, and viewed the “united front” of workers’ organizations as a condition for success. The Communists could not ignore this spontaneous tendency of the masses; they must exploit it for their own aims. After a short analysis of the actual situation in Germany, Italy, France, England, Switzerland, and the United States, Zinoviev came to the conclusion that “Menshevism and Bolshevism are international phenomena,” and that the lessons of the Russian experiences of 1905-1906 and 1912-13 might be useful to other countries. “Our enemies are trying to discredit us in the eyes of the masses as professional splitters. That is why, in such a situation as the present, we must strongly support the demand for a united front, and know how to exploit it for the aims of Communism.”⁴⁴

Zinoviev also saw the dangers connected with such a strategy. “To be a strategist,” he said, “to execute a definite maneuver, it is necessary to have a clear head and to stand on strong feet, not made of clay. This means that we must have genuine Communist parties. . . . On the surface we may even make some concessions, but only on the surface. This will be very dangerous in the countries where our Communist parties are weak.”

Zinoviev had no doubt that the leaders of the Second International would be aware of the real meaning of the Communist maneuver, but thought that the Communists must openly put down some definite conditions for unification, the most important being their complete independence and full liberty to criticize the Second and Second-and-a-half Internationals. There could, in fact, be unity of action of the separate forces, but by no means full organizational unity. When organizing an anti-war demonstration, for example, the Communists should propose to “those gentlemen” that they also take part in it. If they refused, they would appear to the masses as the splitters and saboteurs of the working masses’ unity.

In the debates following Zinoviev’s report, the representatives of the Western Communist parties expressed doubts and stressed the dangers of the new tactics which they felt would not be comprehensible to their members. Only Radek and Bukharin (and Lozovskii) agreed unreservedly with Zinoviev, although they polemicized with each other.

Bukharin contested Radek’s opinion that the new tactics might be more or less stable. He felt that they could be changed in twenty-four hours to meet demands of changing situations. He stressed that there was no contradiction between the former and the present tactics; the former demanded splits which were absolutely necessary and extremely important; the latter did not demand the preventing of splits or the reconstitution of unity, but only proposed to form a bloc with the splitter groups. The results of the new tactics might be twofold: if the Communist proposal were rejected, then this fact would be exploited in order to stigmatize the Social Democrats, to unmask them; if the answer were positive, the Communists must do their best to take into their hands the general leadership and the positions strategically most important.

Radek then agreed that complete confusion (polnaia nerazberikha) could arise if the theoretical premises of the Communist tactics were not carefully thought over and the working masses properly informed.

Zinoviev summarized the discussion, saying that the tone of the polemics with the socialists should be even more rude (muzhitski) than before, and that mistakes were inevitable. He suggested that before the appropriate theses on the new policy were adopted they be discussed by a special commission.

On December 18, 1921, Zinoviev, reporting on the work of this commission, suggested that the draft theses “on the United Front” be submitted for further discussion to the enlarged plenary session of the Comintern Executive Committee, called for the beginning of February, 1922. Radek proposed that the Executive Committee adopt the theses and immediately start both “wide-scale organizational work in the [Communist] parties and negotiations with the adversary.” After a short discussion, the draft-theses were in principle unanimously adopted by the Comintern Executive, and on December 25 the Comintern Presidium debated on their practical execution.⁴⁵ It was decided that the theses should be publicized in the Communist International and in Internationale Korrespondenz (Berlin) and published in a separate brochure together with relevant materials; that a special appeal to the international proletariat should immediately be drafted by Souvarin, Radek, and Zinoviev, explaining the essence of the theses, and that confidential letters should be sent by the Comintern Secretariat to the Italian, German, French, Polish, and Czechoslovak parties with concrete suggestions. Radek’s drafts of the appeal and the confidential letter to the German party were adopted by the Comintern Presidium on December 27, 1921.⁴⁶

The twenty-five theses “On the United Workers’ Front and on the Attitude Towards the Workers Who Are Members of the Second, the Second-and-a-half, and the Amsterdam Internationals, as Well as Towards the Workers Who Are Supporting the Anarcho-Syndicalist Organizations” repeated in their argumentation the principal ideas of Zinoviev’s report of December 4. The most important was thesis 20 which stated in part:

. . . The leaders of the Second, the Second-and-a-half, and the Amsterdam International have proved by their behavior until now that they renounce, in fact, their watchword of unity when the question is practical action. . . . However, the refusal of the leaders . . . will not incite us to drop the proposed tactics which have deep roots among the masses and which we must know how to develop systematically and without hesitation. In the instances when our proposals of joint struggle are rejected by our adversaries, it will be necessary that the masses know this, and thus realize who actually is the splitter of the united workers’ front. In the cases when the proposal is accepted by the adversary, it is necessary to aim at the gradual deepening of the struggle and its elevation to a higher level. . . .⁴⁷

The most important concluding chapters of Radek’s appeal stated that past experience should have convinced “even blind people” of the correctness of the Comintern program and ended: “Since you could not make up your minds . . . to struggle with arms in hand for power, for dictatorship, . . . then, at least, unite among yourselves for the struggle for bare existence, for a piece of bread, for the struggle for peace. . . . When you start the fight, you will see that in order to win you will need the sword of dictatorship.”⁴⁸

VII. THE VIENNA UNION’S INITIATIVE
AND THE GENOA CONFERENCE

When, at the beginning of January, 1922, the French Socialist Party sent invitations to all the leftist parties of Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, and Germany for a joint conference in Paris on February 4, 1922, the British Labor Party and the Belgian Socialist Party accepted without reservation, in accordance with the Second International Executive’s decision. The Vienna Union’s Bureau formally approved the French initiative and even spread it by publicizing in an appeal “To the Workers’ Parties of All Countries” its intention to enter into negotiations with the Executive Committees of both the Second and Third Internationals in order to arrange by mutual agreement of all the international central organizations a general all-embracing conference in the spring of 1922 with an agenda limited to the most imminent questions:

1. The economic situation and the struggle of the working class;

2. The defensive struggle of the proletariat against reaction.⁴⁹

None of the Communist parties accepted the French invitation despite the Moscow December debates and theses on the “united front.” Since the internal situation prevented the representatives of the Italian Socialist Party, and the railway strike the representatives of the German parties from coming to Paris on February 4, 1922, only the French and Belgian Socialists and the British Laborites attended. Those present considered it inopportune to proceed with the proposed debates on reparations and disarmament and decided to refer the memoranda on these subjects, submitted by the French Socialist Party, to a special commission; the remainder of the conference was spent discussing the proposal of the recent appeal of the Vienna Union. An informal exchange of views between the Executive members of the Vienna Bureau and the Second International then took place.⁵⁰

The Vienna Union appeal had also been discussed in Moscow, at the Comintern Executive’s Presidium meeting on January 10, 1922, and it was decided that in principle the Communist parties should answer positively, with a reservation that the ultimate decision would be reached at the enlarged Comintern Executive meeting, which it decided to call on February 21.⁵¹

Representatives of the non-Communist leftist parties of nine Western European countries had gathered in Frankfurt on February 23, 1922. The parties affiliated to the Second International were represented by Vandervelde and Huysmans from Belgium; Shaw, Jowett, and Tillett from Great Britain; Braun and Wels from Germany; Andersen from Denmark; Vliegen from Holland. The parties of the Vienna Union were represented by Wallhead from Great Britain; Ledebour and Crispien from Germany; Longuet and Bracke from France; Adler from Austria; Grimm from Switzerland. The Russian Left SR’s were represented by Schreider. Serrati, a representative of the Italian Socialist Party not affiliated to any international, was also in Frankfurt and took part in one of the joint meetings.⁵²

In addition to separate meetings of each group, two joint meetings were held on February 23 and February 24, 1922. The representatives of the Second International declared that no question of principle divided them from the Vienna Union, and that they were ready to make some concessions with regard to persons and organization in order to make possible the fusion of the two bodies. With regard to the Comintern, they said that they did not completely reject the idea of a general conference with a definite agenda; however, they had doubts concerning the good will of the Communists. They said that certain preliminary questions should be put to the Communists in order to ascertain whether they wanted a general conference to prepare for genuine common action or rather to provide themselves with a platform to enable them to fight “the Social-Traitors” better. Finally, the representatives of the Second International still reserved complete liberty of action with regard to the proposed general conference, and said that their final decision would depend on the impression they received from a preliminary joint meeting of the representatives of the three international bodies, “with the object of examining the possibility of a joint convocation of this conference.” When agreeing to take part in the preliminary meeting with the Communists, the representatives of the Second International openly stated that they intended to raise the questions of political prisoners in Russia, of the Red Army invasion of Georgia, and of the right of peoples to self-determination, as well as the question of Communist methods of creating their clandestine “cells” and provoking divisions and splits in the workers’ organizations. All these points were explicitly mentioned in a formal letter handed to the representatives of the Vienna Union as an official reply of the Second International to the Union’s public appeal.⁵³

In Moscow, the New Economic Policy, officially adopted in the spring of 1921, was followed by a New International Policy of trade and negotiations with capitalist states; on October 28, 1921, Chicherin suggested an economic “general conference.” This suggestion was accepted by the Allies’ Supreme Council at its meeting in Cannes on January 6, 1922, and the prompt convocation of such a conference in Genoa was decided. The Cannes decision was formally transmitted to the Moscow government by Italian Prime Minister Bonnoni and on January 17, 1922, it was discussed by the Politbureau.

Despite some objections against the place of the proposed conference,⁵⁴ the Politbureau decision was in principle positive; the unusually large fifteen-man Soviet delegation to Genoa was designated, and unofficial talks about possible mutual concessions followed.

The Communists intended to go to Genoa as “businessmen.” “We are going there as merchants,” said Lenin in a public speech on March 6, 1922, and he added:

If upon this basis [business] should be superimposed many various political talks, proposals and projects, it is necessary to realize that this is only a minor super structure, quite often artificially constructed, invented and executed by those who have an interest in it.⁵⁵

Thus, when on January 20 Chicherin asked Lenin if it would be possible “for a decent compensation” to agree to a “small change” in the Soviet constitution and give some limited political rights to all Soviet citizens, Lenin considered such a proposition proof of Chicherin’s overwork, if not insanity.⁵⁶

In his opinion, there was no price for a genuine political concession on the Soviet principles of extermination of all “parasite” elements and detention of all political opponents “carefully in prison.” On January 21, 1922, in a telephone message to Trotsky, Lenin said that he had no doubt “that the Mensheviks are increasing now, and will increase, their most malicious (zlostnaia) agitation. I think therefore that it is necessary to increase both the supervision and the reprisals against them.” Further on in the message Lenin suggested that Trotsky should start “immediately an open struggle” with the Mensheviks through the press (poshli nemedlenno v otkrytyi boi v pechati). ⁵⁷ The following day, January 22, in a most confidential note to the Politbureau members, Lenin wrote that “here in Moscow, we are surrounded by Menshevik and semi-Menshevik spies”⁵⁸ and a few days later in letters to Unszlicht, at that time the acting chief of the political police, he suggested that the newly created revolutionary tribunals should be packed with “ ‘your’ men,” and that the “speed and the strength of reprisals” should be increased, particularly “against the Mensheviks.” ⁵⁹

Such was the political atmosphere in Moscow when on January 19, 1922, the Vienna Union sent to the Comintern their official proposal of an invitation to “a general conference of workingmen’s organizations.” On the one hand, it fitted well into the Comintern’s “new tactics of a United Front” as well as into the Soviet New International Policy and the proposed Genoa Conference; on the other hand it was a rather delicate matter in view of the domestic policy described above.

While postponing the official answer to the Vienna Union invitation until the ultimate decision of the enlarged plenum of the Comintern’s Executive which had been summoned, Zinoviev approached Lenin and asked him to deliver personally a report on the delicate matter of “the united front” at this plenum. He also asked Radek, who at that time was in Berlin,⁶⁰ to conduct unofficial preliminary talks on the proposed “general conference.” However, Lenin, for reasons of ill-health, declined to give such a report, despite Zinoviev’s repeated insistances.⁶¹ Moreover, Radek’s activities in Berlin, although positive with regard to both the proposed “general socialist conference,” and the Soviet-German rapprochement, caused some displeasure to both Chicherin and Lenin. The former objected to Radek’s interview with a correspondent of the Parisian Le Matin as undiplomatic. The latter, in a note of January 30, 1922, to the Politbureau members, suggested officially rebuking Radek “for his compliant attitude (podatlivost’) toward the Mensheviks” and [at the same time] proposed to increase reprisals against the Mensheviks, asking Trotsky “to hasten with all his forces the furious attack on the Mensheviks with regard to Georgia.” ⁶²

All this by no means meant that Lenin was against participating in the “general conference” sponsored by the Vienna Union. Quite the contrary; he took this participation for granted, but with no concessions to the Mensheviks. On February 1, 1922, Lenin addressed a telephone message to Bukharin and Zinoviev asking them to look for the “most pungent” (naibolee zubastykh) people as candidates for delegates to this conference and to think over the main strategic and tactical questions connected with it. On his part Lenin suggested limiting the agenda of the proposed conference to the questions most directly related to the practical common action of the working masses in those fields that were considered by all three Internationals. However, said Lenin, “In the case that the yellow gentlemen raise controversial political questions as, for example, our relations with the Mensheviks, Georgia, etc., we should apply the following tactics”: insist that the general conference agenda be unanimously accepted by its participants and declare that the Communists would be ready to discuss any controversial question under the strict condition (pri obiazatel’nom uslovii) that simultaneous discussions would also take place on such questions as: 1) the socialists’ betrayal of the anti-war Basle Manifesto; 2) their indirect participation in the assassination of R. Luxemburg, K. Liebknecht, and other German Communists, as well as 3) the murders of many revolutionaries in the colonies, etc. A full list of such counter-questions should be prepared in advance, and the proper persons designated to report on them at the general conference. During its debates, Lenin instructed further, an occasion should be found to declare officially that the Communists consider both the Second and the Second-and-a-half Internationals to be “inconsequent and hesitant” members of the international “bourgeois bloc.” It should be made known that the Communists were negotiating with them not only in order to reach, possibly, a practical unity of mass action, but also to unmask their wrong political line before the masses (just as the socialists hoped not only to achieve practical unity in direct mass action, but also to unmask the political incorrectness of the Communist attitude). ⁶³

On February 3, Bukharin wrote Lenin that both he and Zinoviev fully agreed with Lenin’s suggestions with regard to the three Internationals’ projected conference⁶⁴ and a day later, on February 4, Lenin sent a telephone message to Bukharin, Zinoviev, and all the Politbureau members suggesting that the problem of “the struggle against war” be put on the agenda of the enlarged plenum of the Comintern Executive and an extended propaganda campaign be started in the Soviet press recalling the Basle antiwar manifesto and its betrayal by the socialist leaders.⁶⁵

After having ultimately refused to report on the “united front” at the Comintern meeting, he did not keep his semi-promise to draft the theses on this problem nor even to complete an article on it.⁶⁶ Neither was Lenin enthusiastic about the draft-resolution prepared by Zinoviev for the proposed meeting of the three Internationals. On February 23, 1922, in a telephone message addressed to Molotov but to be communicated to all Politbureau members, Lenin suggested that some changes be made in the draft-resolution and, in particular, insisted that the words describing the leaders of the Second and Second-and-a-half Internationals as “the helpers (posobniki) of the world bourgeoisie” be omitted. “This is quite obvious,” said Lenin, and “it is absolutely nonsensical to risk a break of an extremely important practical achievement in order to have once more the pleasure of chiding the scoundrels (obrugat’ merzavtsev) whom we chide, and will chide, a thousand times more in another place.”

In conclusion, Lenin suggested that the resolution could be adopted by the enlarged plenum by a majority of votes, instead of unanimity, and added in brackets: “those voting against we will later on submit to a special, serious, and popular lesson in common sense (umu-razumu).”⁶⁷

Practically at the same time Lenin formally disqualified Radek as a diplomat in a telephone message of February 20 to the Politbureau members, and in a letter of February 21 to Kamenev and Stalin.⁶⁸

Parallel to his preoccupation with Comintern problems, Lenin was active with the preparatory work for the Genoa Conference. In several messages he insisted on speeding up the conclusion of economic and other agreements with the Germans,⁶⁹ drafted detailed instructions for the Soviet delegation to Genoa,⁷⁰ and argued with Chicherin who had shown some opposition when instructed eventually to promote the “petty-bourgeois pacifist illusions” that “I [Chicherin] have cursed all my life.”⁷¹ It seems that, in sum, Lenin attached more importance to and worked harder for the Genoa Conference than for the conference of the three internationals.

VIII. THE FIRST ENLARGED SESSION
OF THE COMINTERN EXECUTIVE
(FEBRUARY 21-MARCH 4, 1922)

A double representation of each party had been invited for this first enlarged session, and 105 delegates gathered in Moscow on February 21, 1922; this included delegations from thirty-six countries (the Poalei Syon delegates from Palestine were not admitted) as well as representatives of international Communist organizations such as trade unions, youth, women’s, cooperative, and sport societies.⁷²

At the first four meetings, on February 21 and February 22, the representatives of the Communist Parties of Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, Italy, England, America, Poland, and the Balkans reported on their internal situation; at the fifth meeting, Zinoviev made a report on the Comintern Executive’s activities and Radek reported on his negotiations in Berlin with the representatives of the Second-and-a-half International.⁷³ On the same evening, at the sixth meeting, Zinoviev presented a report on the “Tactics of the United Front.”⁷⁴

Zinoviev started his report by denying that the “Tactics of the United Front” were new or that the change in tactics was influenced by the interests of the Soviet state. In his opinion, “the historical and deep interests of the first victorious proletarian state corresponded to those of the working class of the whole world.” The tactics on the united front had been preached by Lenin in 1920 in his Infantile Disease; Zinoviev quoted long passages and stressed that Lenin had then been very frank and had said, as Zinoviev had said later, “that the tactic of the united front is just a tactical maneuver in order to unmask the socialist leaders: ‘You should support Henderson and MacDonald in the same way as a cord supports a hanged man.’”

Historically, Zinoviev discerned three different periods: 1919-20 when the masses were revolutionary but the leaders were lacking; 1920-21 when Communist parties were being organized in most of the countries but the masses had ceased to be revolutionary; and the most recent period when in the face of the capitalists’ offensive the masses of workers were ready to fight for their interests and desired to do so through a united front. This latter tendency was not quite clear at the time of the Third Congress of the Comintern; it had become so since.

Zinoviev said that both the tendency for unity and the readiness to fight were objectively revolutionary factors and even the Christian workers, who did not wish to hear anything about communism, when they supported a strike were following a Communist policy without knowing it. On the other hand, the Communists supporting the watchword, “united front,” proved that they were not “professional splitters.” Now, said Zinoviev, “the time has come to change roles, since the Second and the Second-and-a-half Internationals will appear before the working class as the splitters, and not we.”

After having refuted the arguments of the French and Italian parties who, for different reasons, were against the new tactics and in particular against the general conference proposed by the Vienna Union, Zinoviev affirmed that, in fact, all the socialist leaders realized that a united front would be disastrous for them, and that Serrati and Martov were “furious” and were saying that the Communist tactics were immoral. This, according to Zinoviev, was not true.

At the seventh meeting, on February 25, the floor was given to the French and Italian oppositionists. Speaking on behalf of the former, Renault started by stressing that, although the French Communist Party was a “particularly disciplined” member of the Comintern, it would use its right of free internal discussion to present to the enlarged session “an opposing thesis, a thesis which rejects the propositions of the Executive.”⁷⁵

The French Socialist “splitter” Party had, according to Renault, no influence among the masses, and the tactics proposed by the Executive would give it such an influence.

Renault suggested that the question of the Executive proposal be passed over to the next Comintern congress for final decision and with regard to Radek’s proposal for a preparatory conference for the “general conference” he said:

. . . We believe that the international proletariat does not understand this rapprochement between the leaders of the Third International and the Russian Revolution on one side and the men who have fought most against communism and the Soviet Republic on the other. . . . We believe that the directors of the Second and Second-and-a-half Internationals will gladly profit from the occasion that will present itself to hear the calumnies of international Menshevism to which the representatives of the Third International will surely respond with the necessary energy. We strongly doubt that such discussion would be a useful preface to the Conferences of Genoa or of Rome.

Renault concluded his speech by saying that it would be easy for the French Communists to declare that they, as disciplined members of the Comintern, would submit to its decisions and do their best to apply these decisions in France, and then report that in practice these decisions were inapplicable. Instead of this formal and hypocritical method, they preferred to try to persuade the majority with their arguments.

Although Renault had been formally authorized by the Comité Directeur of the French party to present at the meeting a view opposing the Executive’s theses, there were some French Communists who supported the theses. On behalf of them, Kerr, Souvarin, and Treint presented a written declaration in which they dissociated themselves from Renault’s point of view, as allegedly based on a wrong interpretation of the Executive’s theses, and reserved for themselves the right to present their arguments orally. On February 27, Treint was given the floor, and he affirmed that, despite the arguments of the Comité Directeur, an important minority, “environ le quart de nos Fédérations,” had correctly understood and supported the Executive’s theses on the united front.

The Italian delegates who, on several other problems, had been even more divided than the French, did not disagree among themselves on the question of the Executive’s theses. They had received mandatory instructions to oppose them, confirmed by a special telegram from Italy. Their point of view was presented on February 25 by Roberto and Terracini. The former said that it was Zinoviev’s report that had ultimately convinced him that the Executive had drawn the wrong conclusions from a correct evaluation of the actual world situation. According to Roberto, no unity of action was possible between the Social Democrats who held strictly to legality and the Communists who were ready “to go outside the limits of law, to fight illegally, and to apply violence.”

Terracini, in his speech, reported on the theses that had been drafted in Italy and finally edited by the Italian delegation in Moscow. He expressed doubts as to whether it was worthwhile to sacrifice principles in order to win the masses. He believed that any accord with Vienna or Amsterdam would be a great mistake. If the Italian theses were rejected (Terracini thought this quite probable) and the Executive’s theses approved by the majority, they would be inapplicable in many countries, according to Terracini.

On February 26 the partisans of the Executive had the floor: Lunacharskii, Radek, McManus (Great Britain), Thalheimer (Germany), Burian (Czechoslovakia), Walecki (Poland), Trotsky, and Marshall (USA). As there were twenty-nine more persons on the speakers’ list their number was limited to no more than one speaker from each delegation. On February 27 six more speakers pleaded for the Executive’s theses, and on February 28, after more discussion by the French and Italian delegates, the debate was closed, following a concluding speech by Zinoviev.⁷⁶ In a last effort to reach an agreement with the oppositionists, he proposed not to pass to a vote but to nominate a commission. Kolarov then proposed that any partisan of the oppositionist view should be able to take part in the deliberations of this commission. During four days of deliberations no agreement was reached by the commission, and finally, on March 4, at the seventeenth meeting of the enlarged Executive session, individual draft resolutions were presented by the majority and the minority on both the general problem of a united front and the proposed “general conference.”⁷⁷ The general draft resolutions were rather short: the majority stressed the fact that the tactics proposed by the Executive by no means signified any attenuation of the opposition to reformism, and formally approved the theses adopted by the Executive in December; the minority insisted that no rapprochement should take place with “political parties” and did not mention the theses.

On the proposed “general conference,” the minority’s draft resolution suggested rejection of the Vienna Union’s invitation for the proposed general conference; the majority pronounced itself for participation in this conference and suggested enlargement of the number of organizations to be invited in order to have “an effective and universal representation of all the workers’ organizations of the world.” The majority’s draft resolution proposed also to add to the agenda of the general conference the following points: struggle against new imperialist wars; assistance for the rehabilitation of Soviet Russia and for the reconstruction of the regions devastated by war; the imperialist Versailles Treaty. It also stressed the importance of the workers’ world conference being held simultaneously with the planned Genoa conference.

Of the twenty-two delegations that took part in the voting, nineteen (with a total of forty-six votes) voted for the majority; three delegations (with ten votes) voted for the minority. After the voting, Cachin, on behalf of the three minority delegations (Italian, French, and Spanish), read a declaration, which stated that having carried out their instructions, having given their arguments and having defended them up to the vote, the minority would loyally follow the majority’s decision.⁷⁸

Zinoviev, on behalf of the newly elected Presidium, said that they would accept this declaration and, without referring directly or indirectly to Lenin, added that “some comrades” had demanded that the leaders of both the Second and the Second-and-a-half Internationals be asked to explain several essential problems at the proposed general conference. In particular “many Russian comrades” demanded that Vandervelde be indicted for violation of the Basle Congress decisions, and eventually be charged for this crime before the Russian revolutionary tribunal; “our Russian comrades” asked also that the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party leaders be accused for the part they played in the attempts against Lenin’s and Trotsky’s life and in the assassination of Volodarskii; “the comrades from Georgia” requested an explanation from Henderson for his meddling in Georgian affairs; “the Yugoslav comrades” sought an explanation from the Yugoslav Social Democrats for their united front with the police and the reaction; “several German comrades” questioned Scheidemann and Noske on their role in the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Liebknecht and on V. der Goltz’s action in Baltic provinces; “the Polish comrades” sought an explanation from Daszynski for assisting “the Polish and French counterrevolution.” Far from rejecting all these claims, Zinoviev said that they must be postponed for another time and place; at the proposed general conference only the most important question of a united front of the working class against the offensive of the capitalists should be raised and solved. “Ultimately, the proletariat’s victory over the bourgeoisie will put its seal on the judgment of all the traitors.”⁷⁹

IX. THE BERLIN CONFERENCE OF THE
EXECUTIVES’ DELEGATES FROM
THE THREE INTERNATIONALS

Due to ill health in March, 1922, Lenin’s work was curtailed but he continued to supervise Soviet policy, both domestic and foreign, and in particular the preparatory work for the planned international conferences. His original objections to Chicherin’s policy notwithstanding, he came to the conclusion that the latter had successfully adapted himself to the political line drawn in Moscow. In particular he was fully satisfied with Chicherin’s plan of action in Genoa; he found it “excellent” (prevoskhodno; prekrasno; verno; pravilno) and wrote: “It will be both virulent and ‘by mutual understanding’ (‘po dobromu’), and will help to split the enemy . . . . We will disgrace them and will spit upon them ‘by mutual understanding’ (Osramim i opliuem ikh ‘po dobromu’).”⁸⁰

On March 27, 1922, at the Eleventh Russian Party Congress, Lenin once more expressed his satisfaction with the “Genoa delegation,” saying that it was composed “of our best diplomats” and armed with carefully prepared, detailed instructions.⁸¹

He was much less satisfied with the preparatory work for the second “general conference.” Although all his remarks and instructions transmitted to the Politbureau members on February 23 had been taken fully into consideration in the final version of the majority’s resolution of the enlarged plenum of the Comintern Executive and were corroborated in Zinoviev’s closing speech, Lenin’s recent conflict with the Comintern leaders undoubtedly left little confidence in and bitter feelings toward Zinoviev and Radek, in particular. On March 14, Zinoviev asked Lenin for his opinion of a draft of instructions for the Comintern delegates to the meeting of the representatives of the Executives of the three Internationals. Lenin was dissatisfied with the draft on the whole, and in particular with a point about the proposed change of attitude toward the Mensheviks. He was also not satisfied with the list of delegates which the Comintern Executive nominated on March 17.⁸²

By that time it had become evident that a new, delicate, and rather complicated matter would be introduced by the non-Communists at this meeting: the problem of the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries. Whereas, in accordance with Lenin’s instructions, most of the Mensheviks and anarchists were, in the early spring of 1922, given a “free choice” between jail or banishment, on February 28, 1922, a GPU (State Political Administration) decision was published announcing that several Socialist Revolutionary leaders and activists imprisoned in Russia would be indicted before the Revolutionary Tribunal for counterrevolutionary terrorist crimes. The announcement made a great impression in the West, and after the Socialist Revolutionary emigre paper Golos Rossii on March 11 published an appeal “To the Socialist Parties of the Entire World” asking them to protest the probable death sentences pronounced by the Revolutionary Tribunal, several Western socialist leaders, Vandervelde among them, sent telegrams to Lenin, Zinoviev, and Chicherin asking them for a postponement of the Socialist Revolutionary trial.

On March 17 Lenin instructed Zinoviev that the reply to these telegrams (which he would draft) should be sent by the Soviet Minister of Justice, D. I. Kurskii. On the same day, he made an urgent proposal to the Politbureau containing instructions to the “Comrades who are going abroad,” stressing the need for “great restraint in declarations and discussions about the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries on the one side, and on the other a most ruthless struggle against them and a complete lack of confidence (because they are de facto the most dangerous assistants to the White-Guardists).” ⁸³

There is no doubt that Lenin’s proposal represented his immediate reaction to the news that Radek was to be nominated as the Comintern’s chief delegate. Lenin’s position was not easy: he had advised looking for “the most pungent people” as delegates for the proposed conference; Radek’s extraordinary “pungency” was notorious, but Lenin doubted his qualities as a diplomat and even as a politician: he had explicitly objected to his “softness” (podatlivost) with regard to the Mensheviks on January 30.

His proposal was duly voted by the Politbureau on March 18, and without contesting Radek’s formal nomination, Bukharin was designated as Radek’s unofficial adviser and “political commissar.” He was later to share a large part of the blame for the result of the Berlin meeting.

A nine-man body composed of official delegates of the three Internationals met in Berlin on April 1, 1922, and agreed that at the formal meeting on April 2 each of the three Executives was to be allowed 10 delegates with deliberative voices; in addition all members of the Executives were to be admitted as guests; parties not affiliated to any of the three Internationals were not to be admitted, with only one exception: the Italian Party was to have the right to one delegate with a deliberative voice and two guests; the nine representatives of the Executives were to form a Committee of Nine⁸⁴ acting throughout the whole conference; and Tom Shaw, Clara Zetkin, and Friedrich Adler would in turn be in the chair. French, German, and English were al pari with De Man from Brussels and Grimm from Berne acting as translators. After some deliberation, Radek’s proposal that the conference be open to the press was not accepted; only a limited number of journalists, sponsored by any of the three Executives, was admitted. ⁸⁵

The first formal meeting was opened on Sunday, April 2, 1922, in the Berlin Reichstag, by F. Adler. In the opening speech he said in part:⁸⁶

. . . We have no illusions, we know that each of the three groups present here entered this conference with considerable reservations. . . . Each of the three sides will give some such expression of their views. . . . In spite of these differences an attempt can be made to lead the way towards common action within definite limits . . . it is no part of our present task to try to bring about any fusion . . . . I think I may say that the chief reason which has brought us together . . . is that the International of capitalist imperialism is now gathering for a conference in Genoa. . . . We will discuss the problems, the difficulties and obstacles, which lie before us all. . . . We will not be dismayed if at first we deal honestly, differences manifest themselves. We think that on the ground of these differences and in spite of these differences a common struggle on the part of the international proletariat can be waged for certain concrete ends. . . .

After Adler’s speech, Clara Zetkin read a statement on behalf of the delegation of the Third International, written in unexpectedly cautious and moderate language:

. . . Until labor bands together in a common struggle for its interests against international capital, until labor breaks with the policy of coalition with capital, until labor rises to the fight for political power, there will always be the disunity within its ranks which is one of the principal sources of capital’s strength . . . . The Communist International demands of the working masses that they unite for the struggle against the present offensive of capital, and that they carry on that struggle in the most energetic manner without consideration as to their differences of opinion upon the way leading to the final victory and the means of assuring this way. . . . It considers this proposed International Labor Congress a means for the uniting of the coming labor struggles. . . . The delegation of the Communist International is ready to do all in its power for the united struggle of the international proletariat, without concealing for a moment what separates it from the reformist and semi-reformist parties. . . . The delegation of the Communist International . . . proposes that this International Conference only deal with such questions as concern the immediate practical united action of the working masses, questions which do not divide it, but unite it. . . .⁸⁷

The Communists’ unexpected moderation induced the representatives of the other two Internationals to postpone their declarations and ask for an adjournment of the meeting.

At the afternoon session under T. Shaw’s chairmanship, Vandervelde made some personal remarks on the Comintern declaration and then said in the name of the Second International:

. . . The exchange of views about to take place will show us whether this [general] conference is actually possible or impossible. . . . There must be between us a minimum of agreement upon the common action, accompanied by mutual confidence. . . . I will explain why we are filled with suspicions and apprehensions. Certain documents have been published recently which justify these apprehensions.

Here Vandervelde referred to Radek’s “confidential” letter (“with which you are all familiar”) and to the December Comintern public appeal (see above p. 218), and said:

An appeal is made for union, for the realisation of the united front, but no secret is made of the intention to stifle us and poison us after embracing us. . . . I know very well that one has to take these things in the Pickwickian sense; that in Communist circles to call a man a traitor simply means that you disagree with him in principle . . . you told us this morning, in very moderate and careful language, not only that you were ready to unite with us in conference, but that you were anxious to do so. . . . Under these conditions, we are bound to reply to you: Before we go to a general conference, we must have certain guarantees; . . . guarantees against attempts at noyoutage; guarantees for freely elected delegations from the peoples whose territory you are now occupying; finally, guarantees of rights of defense for the prisoners. Such are our conditions; . . . At a general conference we must all feel ourselves on the basis of equality, we cannot have as allies in the deliberations gendarmes and executioners.⁸⁸

In concluding his speech, which later was qualified by E. H. Carr⁸⁹ as “highly provocative,” Vandervelde affirmed that he had tried to express himself without bitterness and not to reply with insults for the “often received insults,” and stressed the historic significance of the meeting:

For the first time since 1914 we are united here. A sight like this is not without a certain grandeur, to see to-day in this assembly, whether as journalists or delegates, such men as Chernov, Dan or Martov, side by side with Radek or Bukharin. We are united . . . . Can we not, in spite of everything which separates us, unite . . . and by international action prepare the way for the coming of Socialism.

After Vandervelde’s speech a short declaration on behalf of the Vienna Union was read by Paul Faure:

The formation of a really united Labor Front . . . can only succeed if the conflicts between working class parties are conducted exclusively with intellectual and moral weapons, and are not poisoned by terroristic methods of combat of one workers’ party against the other. . . . Equality of political rights shall be restored to Socialist Parties of Russia, the freedom of political and economic activity to the workers and peasants of Russia, and the right of self-determination to the toiling people of Georgia. . . . The carrying out of death sentences against members of the SR Party of Russia . . . would make the continuation of the action started by this conference morally impossible. . . .

In its final paragraphs, the declaration of the Vienna Union stated that the right-wing socialists in the Western countries were also guilty for their part in the “brutal persecutions” of left-wingers and Communists and stressed “an indispensable necessity for a united proletarian front” to use “all their power to restore the full freedom of expression” also in the West.⁹⁰

After the three Executives’ statements were delivered, a general debate was opened. Radek, MacDonald, and Serrati asked for the floor. The chairman, Tom Shaw, proposed to give it to Radek and to postpone the other two speakers until the next meeting.⁹¹

The general tone of Radek’s speech was quite different from the written declaration read by Clara Zetkin. He started by stressing that the Communists had come to the conference based on the Vienna Union invitation, and “refrained from settling past accounts.” To Vandervelde’s demand of “a minimum of agreement . . . accompanied by mutual confidence,” Radek answered with brutal frankness:

Not a pennyworth of confidence! . . . we stand here to-day as enemies and have to try to find the way to an understanding; and if you come to us with phrases about confidence we say to you plainly: “No.” . . . we sit down at the same table with you, we will fight with you, and this fight will decide whether it is a maneuvre, as you say, . . . or a stream which will unite the working class. . . . If you fight with us and with the proletariat of all lands . . . against further world ruin . . . we will try to fight together, not for love of you, but because of the unprecedented need of the hour which drives us and compels you to confer in this hall with the very Communists you have treated as criminals.⁹²

Radek rejected the “conditions put by Citizen Vandervelde” and offered instead a kind of trade in political prisoners: the Russian SR’s for the supporters of the Bavarian Soviet republic.

The general tone of Radek’s speech nearly broke up the conference. Although the Sunday afternoon meeting was explicitly adjourned by the chairman “until 10 o’clock to-morrow morning,”⁹³ there were no official meetings on Monday but only negotiations behind the scene. According to E. H. Carr, Radek, who alone of all those present at the conference was informed of the advanced state of the negotiations between the Soviet and German governments that were soon to be completed at Rapallo, was “unshakeably” determined to avoid a final break, and “his public polemics were matched by extreme conciliatoriness behind the scenes.”⁹⁴ Ultimately the official meetings were resumed on Tuesday, April 4; Clara Zetkin was in the chair, and MacDonald and Serrati were given the floor.

Ramsay MacDonald’s speech was correct in form but peremptory in content. In his opinion the position of the Second International had been “perfectly clear.” As long as “we feel that every Communist,” when cooperating with socialists, “has a dagger concealed behind his back,” no honest and genuine cooperation is possible. Radek’s rejection of a demand that political prisoners in Russia be tried by “an international tribunal” is justified, but not his “cynical gesture” in suggesting a trade in prisoners.

In order to avoid any “misunderstanding about our position,” MacDonald read during his speech a written and carefully worded official declaration of the Second International, stating that “a general conference with a limited objective must be preceded by the acceptance of the following conditions by the Third International: (1) Renunciation of the ‘noyautage’ tactics; (2) Nomination of a commission . . . for the examination of the case of Georgia and other states similarly circumstanced . . . ; (3) The liberation of prisoners detained for political reasons, and the trial of those who are the objects of a criminal accusation before a court of justice with rights of defense under the control of International Socialism.” ⁹⁵

To the surprise of some listeners, Serrati rallied to the Comintern point of view. He started by stressing his strange situation of a “guest” admitted “simply because it was said that the general conference might be held in Genoa or Rome.” Passing to the heart of the matter, he said:

. . . We are surely not here to set ourselves up as judges one of another. We have all committed many errors. . . . It is not possible to play the part of accusers, when we are simply the slaves of circumstances. We do not rule history; we follow it. . . . I am persuaded that the Bolshevist comrades will eventually form a coalition: that you Bolshevists, you Menshevists, you Social Revolutionaries, will unite one day to defend the proletarian revolution against the attack of the capitalist bourgeoisie. Our duty should be to understand and to try to act in such a way as not to embitter discussions; not to deepen wounds, but to seek to cure them as far as we can . . . . I believe that the conference will be more successful than is expected. . . . What is this noyautage? It is something that we all do when we want to get together those comrades who are in agreement with us in order to carry out some special task of propaganda in the general situation. It is true that the Bolshevists have sometimes carried it out in a very malicious way. . . . But noyautage will be stronger if we are divided than if we are united. I believe there will be no more noyautage when our Bolshevist comrades no longer find themselves alone to defend their cause. . . .⁹⁶

At the afternoon meeting O. Bauer, a representative of the Vienna Union, did not share Serrati’s opinion that “all moral considerations” should be eliminated in the debates of the politicians.

. . . I agree with MacDonald that we must also seek moral conditions for co-operation. . . . Let the masses first fight together, whatever their different political convictions may be, then I am convinced that in this common struggle, on the common battlefield, the feeling of comradeship and solidarity will develop, until no proletarian Party will allow itself to oppose the fulfillment of these moral conditions. (Applause from Vienna and Moscow) . . . . I am quite convinced that the actual conditions of the proletariat . . . and a difficult, tragic situation of the Soviet Republic will compel the Third International to abandon any maneuvres they are contemplating and . . . I believe that the conditions put by the Second International are such that no one can seriously oppose them. . . . All we can do is appeal to both sides. If either side thinks that we can help in the task of mediation, we place our services at your disposal; for our part we are convinced that the need of the proletariat in this hour demands sacrifices from us all. . . .⁹⁷

After Bauer’s speech Radek was given the floor once more. His second speech was full of irony and pungency. He attacked personally MacDonald and Vandervelde, as well as England and the Vienna Union, and refused to make any concessions:

England always stands for small peoples, unless she has conquered them. . . . England considers also the Baku petroleum wells as an integral part of Western civilization. . . . I understand the position of the Vienna International. It sits between us and the Second International, . . . and speaks like God himself, like Justice with her balance distributing exhortations on the right and on the left. . . . The good faith does not consist in this, that we have forgotten anything we have said about you and will swear that we will not fight you anymore . . . . Now the concrete conditions . . . the renunciation of cell-tactics. . . . If you ask us to give up the struggle against Reformism we shall answer flatly: “No.” . . . We will fight against Reformism in the Trade Unions, so long as we exist. . . . [As to] examination of the question of Georgia and the other States “in similar circumstances,” . . . we agree to this condition, . . . I would like to ask, whether in “similar circumstances” the attitude of the Labor Party towards the Egyptian question, the Irish question, and the Indian question ought to be examined . . . the liberation of prisoners . . . the accused have the right to choose the defense they want. . . . And as far as our delegation from the Communist International is concerned, we can promise that we cordially accept the suggestion that you [Vandervelde] should be granted the right to appear as lawyer for the defense. . . . We can satisfy you by allowing you to take as many stenographic reports as you like, and to examine all documents and letters. . . . I repeat again: we accept no conditions. . . . We stand for the united front of the proletariat without conditions,⁹⁸

Radek’s speech concluded the public debates. Before closing the meeting, its chairman, Adler, stated the general wish to complete the conference “before tomorrow night,” and announced a meeting of the Committee of Nine in the morning and a plenary meeting to be held the following afternoon. There were rumors that the talks had been completely broken off when the plenary meeting did not convene on schedule. Finally, at 11:45 p.m. Friedrich Adler opened the meeting and reported on the results of the work behind the scenes:

. . . there is no reason why we should hide from you the fact that again and again our attempts were nearly wrecked. . . . But, comrades, . . . we have in the end reached an agreement such as we had dared not hope for at the beginning of the proceedings. (Bravo) We can say that, after years during which it has been impossible even to meet in common debate, we have at least succeeded in passing a common resolution of the Executives. Each of the three Executives has put on one side its own special views with regard to certain paragraphs in the resolution, and its wishes with regard to the insertion of further points, and the representatives of all three Executives will set forth in a protocol separate declarations on such points . . . [which] will be published in order to give the whole proletariat a chance of understanding existing differences. But, comrades, in spite of these differences, we have, after long and troublesome deliberations, arrived at a resolution which will express the common will of all three Executives.⁹⁹

The most important parts of the resolution which was finally agreed upon are as follows:

. . . The conference . . . proposes that the Executives should agree to the setting up of an Organisation Committee of Nine, which shall undertake preparations for further conferences of the three Executives, as well as conferences on a wider basis . . . . In this Organisation Committee no majority resolutions will be allowed, its task will be to express the general point of view of the three Executives as far as this is declared . . . .

The conference notes the declaration of the representatives of the Communist International that the 47 S-R’s who are to be tried will be allowed any defenders they wish; that, as already announced in the Soviet Press before the conference, no death sentences will be inflicted in this trial; that . . . the trial will be public . . . .

The conference declares that all the three Executives have expressed their readiness to collect and examine the material . . . on the question of Georgia . . . .

The conference agrees in principle upon the necessity for calling a general conference as soon as possible. . . . The conference, therefore, calls upon the workers of every country to organise great mass demonstrations, with as much unity as possible, during the Genoa Conference, either on the 20th of April, or, where this is technically impossible, on the first of May:

For the eight-hour day;

For the struggle against unemployment . . . ;

For the united action of the proletariat against the capitalist offensive;

For the Russian revolution, for starving Russia, for the resumption by all countries of political and economic relations with Russia;

For the re-establishment of the proletarian united front in every country and in the International.¹⁰⁰

Except for a few interventions by Radek, nobody else took the floor; on Radek’s proposal the declaration was proclaimed adopted without a formal vote;¹⁰¹ and at midnight the conference was formally closed. To its official proceedings separate declarations were annexed.

The delegation of the Comintern Executive stated that they agreed to the joint declaration “after much hesitation” because it did not pronounce itself against the Treaty of Versailles. In addition they renounced their demand for an inquiry into the murders of Luxemburg, Liebknecht and other German Communists; into the persecution of Communists in Latvia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Hungary; into the attitude of the Labor Party towards Ireland and the Colonies, all because of their “desire to further, and not to obstruct, the slightest advance in the direction of the united front.” The Communist declaration concluded by expressing a conviction “that unless there is a break with the policy of coalition with the bourgeoisie, which is at the root of all this trouble, a real united front of the working class will be impossible,” and that “the pressure of events will compel the working masses to battle, and will teach them to force their reformist leaders to change their policy if they do not wish to be set aside by the working classes.”¹⁰²

The Executive of the Vienna Union stated that the opposition of the Comintern delegates prevented the insertion of a passage on “the immediate release of all political prisoners in their own countries,” into the joint declaration, and noted that the Communists “considered of such importance the further detention of socialist prisoners in Russia that they were prepared to abandon their struggle for the freedom of the proletarian political prisoners languishing in capitalist state prisons.”¹⁰³

The Executive of the Second International in its “final declaration” “whilst accepting the principle of a general conference as soon as a common ground of action can be found,” insisted upon the necessity of “a written and precise answer” from the Comintern to their three “conditions.”¹⁰⁴

In addition to these separate declarations by the three main parties, declarations on behalf of the German Social Democrats and the Georgian Socialists, by Otto Weis and I. Tsereteli respectively, were published. The former protested in vigorous language Radek’s reference “to the tragic events of January, 1919, in Berlin” and “allusions to the victims of the March Putsch in Central Germany in 1921,” stressed Radek’s personal involvement in German events, and concluded that his “immoral and horrible” proposal, “which amounts to blackmail,” of a trade of political prisoners in Russia and in Germany “does not lack a certain symbolic meaning: for both are . . . the victims of the Moscow International.”¹⁰⁵ The latter stressed the fact of Radek’s public admission that the Bolsheviks had occupied Georgia by military force in order “to secure access to the naphtha regions,” and emphasized that the Georgian Socialists were always ready “to take into account as widely as possible the economic needs of Russia.”¹⁰⁶

X. AFTERMATH OF THE BERLIN CONFERENCE

On the very day that the Berlin Conference of the three Executives began, a large Soviet delegation arrived in Berlin on their way to the Genoa Conference. On April 3, 1922, its leaders, Chicherin and Litvinov, paid a formal visit to the German chancellor and foreign minister Wirth and lunched with Rathenau. On April 4, Wirth and Rathenau met with Chicherin, Litvinov, Rakovskii, and Radek. Their talks were friendly and fruitful; officially it was announced in Pravda, April 5, that the German government had decided to pass over to the Soviet government the premises of the former Russian embassy in the central part of Berlin¹⁰⁷ which until then was in the possession of non-Bolshevik Russians. The most essential part of the talks on the prospective Russian-German collaboration—economic, political, and in the military field in particular—was not publicized. Agreements in the first two areas were kept secret until the Rapallo treaty; agreements in the military field remained secret much longer.¹⁰⁸

Thus, this part of Lenin’s manifold policies on the eve of the Genoa Conference went very smoothly, and Lenin found himself quite satisfied with Chicherin’s “diplomatic ability.” In general, the Soviet press gave a great deal of publicity to the coming Genoa Conference, whereas the Berlin meeting of the three Executives was left in silence. The first news about it was published in the aforementioned April 5 issue of Pravda , on the second page, in the form of ROSTA’s (Soviet news agency) wire from Warsaw, dated April 3. On the next day, i.e. two days after the completion of the conference, the wires from Berlin, dated April 3, were published saying that the “fate of the conference hangs in the air,” along with an unsigned Pravda editorial stating that in this “first meeting with the splinters of former Social Democracy” the question of the summoning of an international conference of the workers’ organizations for the struggle against capitalist reaction is being debated, that the Socialists “are trying to break up (sorvat’) this practical accord (sgovor).” but “their plans will be unmasked.” The editorial concluded among other items the following:

. . . the King’s minister, Vandervelde, . . . thinks that if we are entering into trade relations with foreign capital, we will, probably, choose him as a go-between and will pay him a commission. He is absolutely wrong [neprostitel’noe zabluzhdenie].

On April 7, Pravda published on the front page a more detailed report on the conference of the three Executives, giving the abstracts of MacDonald’s, Serrati’s, Bauer’s, and Radek’s speeches delivered on April 3 and 4, and on April 9, it printed a wire from Berlin, dated April 6, that “an agreement had been reached” and another from Hannover with an abstract of the “general declaration.”

This scarcity of delayed news in the Soviet press was by no means a result of lack of information. Technically the communication between Berlin and Moscow was in order and the latter was duly informed on the happenings at the conference. Politically, however, Lenin continued to be rather cool and dissatisfied with regard to the Comintern action, and he decided to squash it completely. On April 9, 1922, he dictated an article to be published immediately in the Soviet press and in a separate note asked the Politbureau members: Not to oppose publication of the article in Izvestiia and Pravda; To instruct the Soviet and the Party press to evaluate the Berlin agreement from this point of view; To increase the propaganda against the S-Rs and the Mensheviks under the guidance of Trotsky; and To instruct Radek to return immediately to Moscow “with all the proceedings of the Berlin conference.”¹⁰⁹

On April 10, the Politbureau agreed with Lenin’s proposals, and on April 11 both Izvestiia and Pravda published his front-page editorial: “We paid too dearly.”

Lenin stated plainly that, in his opinion, Radek, Bukharin, and the other Comintern representatives had made a mistake in accepting two conditions in particular: 1) that there would be no death penalties in the trial of the forty-seven SRs; and 2) that the representatives of all three Internationals would be admitted to this trial.

According to Lenin, both these -conditions were nothing but political concessions made to the reactionary bourgeoisie by the revolutionary proletariat, and no reciprocal concessions were made. Thus, the “bourgeois diplomats” “this time” were much more clever than “ours,” concluded Lenin, and he stressed that in the future no concessions should be made by the Communists without getting something equivalent in return.

As a result of the Berlin mistake, Lenin foretold the possibility of a strengthening of the Italian and French Communists’ opposition to the united front. With some irony he also predicted that “two or three” attempts might be made by the enemies of Soviet Russia on the lives of Communist leaders, which “might be successful,” since now they know in advance that they can shoot at the Communists and have a chance that the Communists will be prohibited from shooting at them.

On the other hand, Lenin stressed the partial success of Radek in “unmasking” the Second International’s positive attitude toward the Treaty of Versailles, and in making “some kind of breach into a closed hall,” and came to the final conclusion that the signed agreement should not be repudiated (rvat’ podpisannoe soglashenie nam ne sleduet).¹¹⁰

On the same day, April 11, Zinoviev asked for Lenin’s approval of a draft resolution to be voted upon by the Comintern Executive with regard to the Berlin Conference and agreement:

1. To increase the campaign against the Mensheviks and the SR’s in the international Communist press;

2. To use systematically the materials of the Berlin Conference and to attack all the weak points of the opponents;

3. For the time being the [Committee of] Nine should not publish any joint appeals;

4. During the demonstrations of April 20, to criticize the opponents without restraint (ne stesniat’sia);

5. The separate sections [of the Comintern] should act according to local conditions;

6. Any moves of the [Berlin] delegation will be postponed until the questions of the ratification of the Berlin results are decided.¹¹¹

In general, Lenin agreed with Zinoviev’s draft but made a few remarks and suggestions:

a) to make more precise point (1) by stressing the identity of the leaders of the Second and Second-and-a-half Internationals, with the Russian Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries and the latter’s contact with “the general front of the landowners and the bourgeoisie against the Soviets”;

b) point (3) is doubtful; in some cases (as defending the interests of Soviet Russia) joint appeals would be useful;

c) to ratify the Berlin agreement as soon as possible;

d) to be more careful in propaganda among the workers who support the Second and the Second-and-a-half Internationals, to avoid “sharp words” and to explain patiently the Communist policy and its differences as compared with that of the Socialists.¹¹²

On the following day, April 12, Pravda published an editorial by Zinoviev on “The Prospects of the United Proletarian Front.” In it Zinoviev agreed with Lenin’s opinion that “unnecessary concessions” had been made in Berlin, but expressed his conviction that the agreement would “undoubtedly” be ratified by the Comintern Executive. Further on, Zinoviev stressed that the Communists have “complete independence” in choosing the slogans for the joint demonstrations of April 20 and May 1, because “the united front is not a feast of reconciliation with the leaders of the Second and Second-and-a-half Internationals. It is not covering up (zatushevyvanie) of the differences. It does not blunt (prituplenie) the contradictions.”

On April 20, 1922, the Comintern Executive formally ratified the Berlin agreement and nominated its representatives to the Committee of Nine: C. Zetkin, Frossard, and Radek as full members and Heckart (Germany) and Bukharin as deputy members. At the same meeting the text of a “manifesto” was adopted which affirmed that the whole idea of the united proletarian front was in danger, because of an effort of the leaders of the Second and Second-and-a-half Internationals to kill it at birth, as had allegedly been proved at the Berlin Conference.¹¹³ According to Sotsialisticheskii vestnik,¹¹⁴ on the same day, April 20, the Soviet People’s Commissar of Justice, D. I. Kurskii, broadcast “to the whole world” that “the Moscow Court is in no way limited by an obligation taken by the Russian C.P. to withhold the death penalty” in the SR trial.

Kurskii’s statement was not mentioned in the Soviet press, which, at that time, was full of news and articles on the Genoa Conference and Soviet-German treaty which was signed at Rapallo, on April 17, 1922. This treaty not only greatly surprised world public opinion but also radically changed the entire political situation, and influenced the “united front” demonstrations fixed for April 20 and May 1. Many leftists, particularly in Germany, were greatly shocked by the fact that the Soviet government had become an “ally” of the German Government which, until then had been bitterly fought by the Communists.

On the eve of May Day, Pravda reported on Zinoviev’s speech at a Petrograd Soviet meeting, dealing with the Genoa Conference, in which he said that the Rapallo Treaty was an event “of the greatest historical importance” and, until then, the only achievement at Genoa. According to Pravda, Zinoviev said that “This is the germ of a close working alliance between a multi-million agricultural nation and a multi-million technical country. This alliance marks a new stage in the history of humanity.”

All this was carefully watched by the leaders of the Second International who waited in vain for any sign from the Comintern that they were putting into effect the three Berlin “conditions.” In order to discuss the entire situation in detail, they summoned their Executive and addressed a demand to the representatives of the other two Internationals to postpone the first meeting of the Committee of Nine, fixed for May 7, in Düsseldorf.

On behalf of the Comintern delegation, Radek replied by publishing a statement in the Berlin Rote Fahne of May 7, accusing the leaders of the Second International of breaking the Berlin agreement by sabotaging the idea of the World Workers’ Congress. Then, on behalf of the Vienna Union, Adler addressed a circular letter to all the members of the Committee of Nine, refuting Radek’s accusations and stating that Vandervelde had asked for a short postponement of only a week. At the same time, Adler’s letter stated that the renewed persecutions of the socialists in Russia after the Berlin Conference and the recent Communist split-activities among the Scandinavian (Norwegian) trade-unionists, did not make it easier to reach a final understanding on the prompt summoning of the World Congress.¹¹⁵

On May 11, Pravda published an editorial, “Our Answer,” to the letter received by the Soviet authorities from the Second International with the list of names of the ten persons who, according to the Berlin agreement, intended to come with Vandervelde to Moscow as the defense counselors at the coming Socialist Revolutionary trial. Among them were three Russian lawyers, Sukhomlinov, Kobiakov, and Gurevich. The tone of Pravda’s editorial was extremely bitter and aggressive; it called the list “shameless” and “provocative” because the names of undoubted “spies” and “conspirators” were included in it, and concluded that, although in accordance with the Berlin agreement, everybody, even the most notorious spies and anti-Soviet agents, would be admitted to the court room during the Socialist Revolutionary trial, the Soviet authorities would take the necessary precautions to prevent them from spying and conspiring outside the court room. The full text of the official Soviet answer to the letter of the Second International was published in Pravda on May 31 in an interview with the People’s Commissar of Justice Kurskii. The opening of the Socialist Revolutionary trial was fixed for June 1 and the entire Soviet press started an abusive campaign against the accused and their would-be defenders.

On May 10, Adler informed Clara Zetkin by telegram of MacDonald’s proposal to call a meeting of the Committee of Nine on May 22 at Cologne. He repeated this proposal on May 14, in a letter to the Communist members of the Committee of Nine, and, at the same time, wrote in some detail about the increased persecutions of socialists in Russia and the hunger strikes of the latter in Soviet prisons, and asked them not only to collect and present at the meeting of the Committee of Nine all relevant materials but also to intervene immediately with the Soviet authorities in order to stop the “shame of the hunger strikes.”¹¹⁶

On May 18, Pravda published an article by Zinoviev, dated May 17, and entitled “When Will the World Workers’ Congress Take Place?” Zinoviev affirmed in this article that there was no doubt that the World Congress would take place (sostoitsia neizbezhno), the only question was when. Until now, according to Zinoviev, the leaders of the Second and Second-and-a-half Internationals have been sabotaging the summoning of this congress and their resistance must be broken. A definite answer must be received “at any price” (vo chto by to ni stalo) by May 21; either the leaders of the Second and Second-and-a-half Internationals will agree to summon the World Congress in the immediate future or will not have anything to do with the Committee of Nine. There could be no question of any kind of “organic union” and cooperation between the Communists and the reformists.

On May 19, Pravda published a letter addressed to the Comintern Executive and signed by Stalin on behalf of the Russian Communist Party, stating that since the papers edited by the Second International affirmed that the tactics of the “united front” were nothing but a Machiavellian Russian move to exploit the workers’ world movement in the interests of the foreign policy of the Russian state, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party was ready to withdraw all watchwords calling for Russia’s defense, in any joint appeals or declarations. In the same issue of Pravda a lengthy Comintern Executive statement on the Socialist Revolutionary trial was published, stressing the alleged monstrosity of the crimes involved and appealing to all workers to follow the development of the trial. At that time, the Soviet press in general was full of propaganda against the accused and their would-be defense counselors; under the influence of such official propaganda, demonstrations were staged along the lawyers’ train route to Moscow. ¹¹⁷

While the Socialist Revolutionaries’ defense counselors were traveling to Moscow, the Committee of Nine gathered for their delayed first meeting in Berlin’s Reichstag on May 23, 1922.¹¹⁸ A declaration submitted by MacDonald was read, containing evidence that none of the “three conditions,” which had been considered indispensable for united action, had been fulfilled by the Communists. It came to the conclusion that:

The present situation forces the Second International to stress the pure imperialist and capitalist character of activity of the delegation of the Soviet government in Genoa, and to emphasize most strongly the differences between the Second and Third Internationals in fundamental conceptions of socialist liberty and methods, and to declare that a General Conference would be possible only when the difficulties pointed out had been removed.

After an interval, Radek read a lengthy declaration on behalf of the Comintern delegation, full of counteraccusations against the Second and Second-and-a-half Internationals. With regard to the question of Georgia, it stated that the Third International would only agree to put the promised documents before the Committee of Nine when the General Conference had been convoked, and declared that if the latter were not convoked within the shortest possible time, the Committee of Nine would have lost all justification for its continued existence. The declaration concluded that, in any case, the freedom of defense granted by the Soviet government for the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries would not be curtailed, and that the “Comintern will double its effort in the struggle for a united front, and, if the non-Communist working masses succeed in changing the attitude of their leaders toward the united front, the Executive of the Third International will always be ready to send back its representatives to a common organ of the three Internationals.”

Adler then read a statement in which, after having quoted Zinoviev’s article of May 17 in Pravda and several other statements of both the Third and the Second Internationals, he said that the Vienna Union, which started the action for unification, to its deep regret had realized that the latter was impossible at the present moment. Its Executive agreed that at the present time no agreement existed between the Second and the Third Internationals either for summoning a General Conference or even for the continuation of the activity of the Committee of Nine. He asked that the three delegations should report to their Executives for possible changes in their standpoints.

After a short exchange of arguments, Radek officially announced that the Comintern withdrew from the Committee of Nine, which, in consequence, ceased to exist. On May 27, Pravda published an unsigned editorial “The Social-Traitors Are Breaking the United Front (The Decomposition of the Nine).” A wild campaign in the Soviet press, in the streets of Moscow, and in the court room forced Vandervelde and the other Western lawyers to renounce the defense, in full accordance with the defendants, and to leave Soviet Russia before the end of the trial. Despite a flood of protests the Moscow court passed 12 death sentences. For a long time they were neither commuted nor executed; the prisoners were held as hostages to prevent any anti-Communist action.

On the other side, on May 24, 1922, the Vienna Union delegates to the Committee of Nine published an appeal “To the Workers of All Countries” in which they accused both the Second and Third Internationals of breaking off the negotiations on the united front, expressed their hope that the break would be only temporary and announced their intention of continuing their efforts on behalf of the united front.¹¹⁹ After a year of labor, they ultimately gave up their hopes of reaching any agreement with the Communists and, in May 1923, united with the Second International at a congress in Hamburg to form the Labor Socialist International without Communist participation.