Obedient to this watchword, you must be as wise as serpents. Although in your hearts may burn the flame of noble indignation, in your heads must reign, invariably, cold political reckoning. You must know that zeal without reason is sometimes worse than complete indifference. Every act of agitation in the rear of the army, fighting against the enemy, would be equivalent to high treason, as it would be a service to the foreign enemy.
The thunders of the war certainly cannot make the Russian manufacturers and merchants more idealistic than they were in time of peace. In the filling of the numerous orders, inevitable during the mobilization of industry for war needs, the capitalists will, as they are accustomed to, take great care of the interests of capital, and will not take care of the interests of hired labor. You will be entirely right if you wax indignant at their conduct. But in all cases, whenever you desire to answer by a strike, you must first think whether such action would not be detrimental to the cause of the defense of Russia.
The private must be subject to the general. The workmen of every factory must remember that they would commit, without any doubt, the gravest mistake if, considering only their own interests, they forget how severely the interests of the entire Russian proletariat and peasantry would suffer from German victory.
The tactics which can be defined by the motto, "All or nothing," are the tactics of anarchy, fully unworthy of the conscious representatives of the proletariat and peasantry. The General Staff of the German Army would greet with pleasure the news that we had adopted such tactics. Believe us that this Staff is ready to help all those who would like to preach it in our country. They want trouble in Russia, they want strikes in England, they want everything that would facilitate the achievement of their conquering schemes.
But you will not make them rejoice. You will not forget the words of our great fabulist: "What the enemy advises is surely bad." You must insist that all your representatives take the most active part in all organizations created now, under the pressure of public opinion, for the struggle with the foe. Your representatives must, if possible, take part not only in the work of the special technical organizations, such as the War-Industrial Committees which have been created for the needs of the army, but also in all other organizations of social and political character.
The situation is such that we cannot come to freedom in any other way than by the war of national defense.
That the foregoing Manifesto expressed the position of the vast majority of Russian Socialists there can be no doubt whatever. Between this position and that of the Porazhentsi with their doctrine that Russia's defeat by Germany was desirable, there was a middle ground, which was taken by a not inconsiderable number of Socialists, including such able leaders as Paul Axelrod. Those who took up this intermediate position were both anti-Czarists and anti-German-imperialists. They were pro-Ally in the large sense, and desired to see the Allies win over the Central Empires, if not a "crushing" victory, a very definite and conclusive one. But they regarded the alliance of Czarism with the Allies as an unnatural marriage. They believed that autocratic Russia's natural alliance was with autocratic Germany and Austria. Their hatred of Czarism led them to wish for its defeat, even by Germany, provided the victory were not so great as to permit Germany to extend her domain over Russia or any large part of it. Their position became embodied in the phrase, "Victory by the Allies on the west and Russia's defeat on the east." This was, of course, utterly unpractical theorizing and bore no relation to reality.
V
Thanks in part to the vigorous propaganda of such leaders as Plechanov, Deutsch, Bourtzev, Tseretelli, Kerensky, and many others, and in part to the instinctive good sense of the masses, support of the war by Socialists of all shades and factions—except the extreme Bolsheviki and the so-called "Internationalist" sections of Mensheviki and Socialist-Revolutionists—became general. The anti-war minority was exceedingly small and had no hold upon the masses. Had the government been both wise and honestly desirous of presenting a united front to the foe, and to that end made intelligent and generous concessions to the democratic movement, it is most unlikely that Russia would have collapsed. As it was, the government adopted a policy which could not fail to weaken the military force of the nation—a policy admirably suited to German needs.
Extremes meet. On the one hand there were the Porazhentsi Socialists, contending that the interests of progress would be best served by a German victory over Russia, and plotting to weaken and corrupt the morale of the Russian army and to stir up internal strife to that end. On the other hand, within the royal court, and throughout the bureaucracy, reactionary pro-German officials were animated by the belief that the victory of Germany was essential to the permanence of Absolutism and autocratic government. They, too, like the Socialist "defeatists," aimed to weaken and corrupt the morale of the army and to divide the nation.