The Fifth Anniversary of the establishment of Soviet Georgia

[p046] fifth anniversary of the establishment of Soviet Georgia FEBRUARY 25, 1926 (Translated from ‘Collected Works’, Vol. XXI, pp. 405-409, Moscow, State Publishing House, 1927, by Brian Pearce) CoMRADES, allow me to offer you my fraternal greetings on this happy occasion which we are celebrating together, the fifth anniversary of the establishment of Soviet Georgia. The history of Georgia, its revolutionary history, constitutes an extremely instructive chapter in the story of the struggle of the people of former Tsarist Russia. We Marxists can learn a great deal from the fate of the Georgian people. This anni- versary celebration is not a suitable occasion for historical researches, especially as I have little right to go in for them, possessing as I do far too little knowledge of Georgian history. But even a general acquaintance with the history of the Georgian people is sufficient to disperse a number of pre- judices and to establish certain truths. First and foremost there must be dispersed that ideological prejudice according to which every people has an eternal and unchanging national character. The Georgian people are an illustration precisely of the fact that national character is something that has changed as a result of changing objective conditions. To ascertain what in the past were the features of the Georgian character, let us take our classical poetry. True, I haven’t studied it specially, but it so happens that I recall some verses of Lermontov’s. Now, if we take the classical characterisation of the Georgians and compare it with the mental picture of the Georgian people which we have nowadays, what do we find? Lermontov writes that ‘the timorous Georgian fled’, and in another place he writes of ‘the sleepy Georgians’.

[p047] May 1920. S. M. Kirov, G. K, Ordzhonikidze, M. Efremov, M. K. Levandovski Red Army men and Bolsheviks at the Baku Station, Georgia. Armoured train in the background. A. |, Mikoyan Speech at meeting to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the establishment of Soviet Georgia FEBRUARY 25, 1926 (Translated from ‘Collected Works’, Vol. XXI, pp. 405-409, Moscow, State Publishing House, 1927, by Brian Pearce) ComRaDES, allow me to offer you my fraternal greetings on this happy occasion which we are celebrating together, the fifth anniversary of the establishment of Soviet Georgia. The history of Georgia, its revolutionary history, constitutes an extremely instructive chapter in the story of the struggle of the people of former Tsarist Russia. We Marxists can learn a great deal from the fate of the Georgian people. This anni- versary celebration is not a suitable occasion for historical researches, especially as I have little right to go in for them, possessing as I do far too little knowledge of Georgian history. But even a general acquaintance with the history of the Georgian people is sufficient to disperse a number of pre- judices and to establish certain truths. First and foremost there must be dispersed that ideological prejudice according to which every people has an eternal and unchanging national character. The Georgian people are an illustration precisely of the fact that national character is something that has changed as a result of changing objective conditions. To ascertain what in the past were the features of the Georgian character, let us take our classical poetry. True, I haven’t studied it specially, but it so happens that I recall some verses of Lermontov’s. Now, if we take the classical characterisation of the Georgians and compare it with the mental picture of the Georgian people which we have nowadays, what do we find? Lermontov writes that ‘the timorous Georgian fled’, and in another place he writes of ‘the sleepy Georgians’.

[p048] 40 There you have two definitions: sleepiness and timorousness. Timorousness and sleepiness to- gether give an impression of something inert, lazy. That description applies to the old Georgia of the nobles with its unhurried, serf-owning way of life. But then the years 1905 and 1917 blazed up. The events of those years show us that national character is infinitely flexible, for the character of a young people with fresh powers is re-forged in the fire of revolution in periods not of hundreds but dozens of years. The people of Georgia came late into the arena of revolutionary struggle. For this reason their petty-bourgeois leaders could not be content with the old petty-bourgeois ideas of democracy, and we see that in the history of the Georgian revolu- tion the leaders of Georgian democracy, though of noble or semi-noble origin, were obliged to disguise their bourgeois-cultural programmes with the ideas of Marxism. Let us examine how they worked over, falsified and castrated Marxism so that it might temporarily fulfil a transferable function and enable the Mensheviks, the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, to deceive themselves about their own nature and their tasks and make them for a certain time the leaders not only of the peasant masses of Georgia but also of the entire working class of central Russia.* The Mensheviks and the Georgian intelligentsia deceived themselves with their castrated Marxism. But history has remorselessly exposed this de- ception. We now see to what depths the Georgian Mensheviks have sunk, what foul deeds are being perpetrated against Soviet Georgia under their leadership throughout Europe. This highly interesting phenomenon—the transformation of revolutionary ideas in accordance with which class becomes their bearer—could provide the subject for most interesting historical studies by the young Marxists of Georgia. Deceiving others is a universal human character- istic; deceiving oneself is a characteristic common to capitalist politicians all over the world. But we can draw yet another important lesson from the history of Georgia, the lesson that in the conditions of present-day world economy, when the globe has been transformed into an economic whole, not a single people, even though it be cast by fate upon the Caucasian Mountains, can remain hidden away from world-wide material and ideo- * Georgians—e.g., Tsereteli, Jordania, Chkheidze— were particularly prominent in the leadership of the Menshevik wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. (Trans.) FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, JANUARY 1966 logical connections. And we see that in Georgia at a certain period very complex threads of world-wide connections crossed each other, and Georgian Menshevism found itself amid the mighty clash between the first proletarian revolution in the world and the imperialist counter-revolution, first led by the Hohenzollerns, then by the Entente. And just at that moment when this wonderful country—wonderful by virtue of nature’s gifts and for its versatile, talented, active and receptive people—just when Georgia found itself between the two millstones of the revolution and the counter- revolution, at that moment the course of events made it possible for Georgia to cut the umbilical cord that bound it to Menshevism, which had passed over to the camp of counter-revolution, and to seek a fresh orientation along the line of the proletariat and of the socialist state. The fate of Georgia, the fate of its young but already successful economic construction, is a kind of large- scale laboratory experiment which must provide the answer to the question whether the peoples of the East, the peoples of Asia, are obliged to pass through the stage of capitalism before they have the right to knock at the door of socialism. Georgia is not a country of highly developed industry. It is a peasant country predominantly, and here, in this country, which has indissolubly linked itself with the victorious proletarian regime, we now observe, and in the next few years will observe still more, how a peasant people, bringing forth from its own midst leaders, builders, econo- mic executives, can build socialism without passing through the inferno of capitalist relations. This is a question of gigantic historical importance. Of course, we have all learnt in the school of Marxism that the road to socialism lies through capitalism. But this does not mean that the road to socialism for each people lies through capitalist development carried through to the end, i.e., to the proletarianisation of the bulk of the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie. No, capitalism brings its fundamental work to completion at that moment, or period, when it has prepared the material and mental conditions for the proletariat, as leader of all the oppressed, to be able to take power into its hands and go forward to the organisation of the economy. From that moment the possibility of building socialism opens up for a peasant people too. We apply this also to the Soviet Union as a whole. But in Georgia the overwhelming majority of the people consists of peasants to a much greater degree than in other parts of our Union. Just for

[p049] THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF SOVIET GEORGIA this reason it is here that we can carry out an economic experiment which will be a most impor- tant lesson for the peoples of the East. What Vladimir Ilyich said about electrification, which, united with Soviet power, leads on to Communism, is certain to be applied with the greatest of success in Georgia with its mountain streams, those sources of cheap power We shall be some years, some decades, in need, for the service of the peasant parts of our Union, including Georgia, of a skilled revolutionary intelli- gentsia, wholly devoted to their people, drawn from generations now coming to maturity. Whereas the old intelligentsia was obliged to falsify Marxism in order thereby, at the head of the masses, to open the road for a bourgeois regime; whereas history said to that intelligentsia, ‘No, you have come too late’-—the new intelligentsia, the students of today, will not be compelled by history to resort to self-deception and falsification. What is the essence of the Soviet regime? That it fully reveals what social relations really exist, without any con- cealment or deceit. The feudal nobility, the clergy, the monarchy had need of deceit. Lies and falsi- fications in the form of self-deception were necessary for the democratic intelligentsia, even in the best revolutionary epoch. The genuine revolu- tionary socialist intelligentsia of the rising genera- tion, which was born ideologically in the conditions of the Soviet regime, has no need of this self- deception. What it needs is complete transparency of social relations, it needs exact measuring instru- ments so as to know, evaluate and measure every step along the road to the new social order. That is why the new Georgian intelligentsia which sup- ports Soviet Georgia, the new students of Georgia _ —especially here, in proletarian Moscow—are fully . able to receive a revolutionary tempering, together 41 with a knowedge of a Marxism which is not falsified but that Marxism which we learnt in war and revolution and which our leader Vladimir Ilyich taught us. We want to bring about a union of people’s republics, in the formation of which there will be taken into account all the special characteristics of the different peoples, all their psychological, cul- tural and other peculiarities, and in which such financial and material conditions of existence will be created that there will be neither oppressed nor wretched. But in such a structure the North will, of course, be distinguished from the South, and the East from the West. I think that within ten years—at the celebra- tion of a fifth anniversary we have the right to be optimistic — Georgia, Soviet Georgia, will have built up its economy and will be a jewel of our Soviet land. Comrades, the bourgeoisie of the world also possess some places of wonderful natural beauty, such as Monaco, but they were befouled and be- smeared by the privileged aristocracy of the world. Georgia, by its natural endowment, by the beauty and gifts of its people, has every ground for be- coming a splendid jewel for the workers, for the peasants, when they cease to be workers and peasants, when all our life has become splendid. And we can with complete confidence affirm that the sacrifices which Georgia has suffered, which its workers, peasants and intelligentsia have made, that these sacrifices were not made in vain; not in vain was shed the blood that has soaked the entire soil of Georgia. This soil will give a splendid harvest. We offer to-day our fraternal greetings to the workers and peasants of fraternal Georgia! (Applause, followed by the singing of the International.)

[p050] 42 Trotskyism In the HE United States of America is not only the main centre of the power of world capitalism. It is also the most vital sector of the world proletarian revolution for the overthrow of the capitalist system. For this reason, no international revolutionary movement is worthy of the name if it does not accept the responsibility of seeking every possible path to assist in the building of a revolutionary party in the very citadel of world imperialism. The reconstruction of the Fourth Inter- national cannot be successful without an advance on these lines inside the United States. It is in the context of the preparation of the international conference of the Inter- national Committee of the Fourth Inter- national that this step forward can be con- sciously prepared. Those who go on impressions and moods, the professional opportunists and centrists, can always be relied upon to leave out of their political calculations one overwhelming factor in the world situation: the American working class. Blinded by the mighty wealth of American capital, its military power and its ability to corrupt politicians on an international scale, these re- formists see the American workers as an inert and passive mass, victims of all the illusions of the American way of life, including anti-Communism and racialism. They mistake the appearance, where everything is dominated by bourgeois ideology, relayed to the working class by its treacherous leaders as well as by the capitalist institutions themselves, for the fundamental process of production and class struggle. The American worker is inevitably driven to the sharpest class struggle. At the point of production, he experiences the consequences of unprecedented changes in the forces of production. Capitalism has been able to introduce automation