‘Export of Revolution’, 1917-1924

[p011] ‘Export of Revolution’, 1917-1924 Brian Pearce ‘On the great Lenin’s teaching, “export of revolutions” was nonsense.’ —Y. A. Malik, Soviet Ambassador in London, in a television interview, reported in the Manchester Guardian, February 3, 1958. “The victorious proletariat . . . having expropriated the capitalists and organized its own socialist production, would confront the rest of the capitalist world, attract to itself the oppressed classes of other countries, raise revolts among them against the capitalists, and in the event of necessity, come out even with armed force against the exploiting classes and their States.’ —V. I. Lenin, “The United States of Europe Slogan’ (1915), Selected Works, English edition, vol. v (1936), p. 14. “Therefore, the development and support of revolution in other countries is an essential task of the victorious revolution. Therefore, the revolution which has been victorious in one country must regard itself not as a self-sufficient entity, but as an aid, as a means for hastening the victory of the proletariat in other countries.’ —J. V. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism (April 1924), Works, English edition, vol. vi (1953), p. 111. “The export of revolution is nonsense.’ —J. V. Stalin, interview with Roy Howard, March 1936, published as Is War Inevitable? by the Friends of the Soviet Union, 1936, p. 8. CURRENT discussion around the idea of peaceful ‘co- existence’ necessarily involves considering the relations that exist between the Soviet Union and the inter- national working-class movement. Is peaceful co- existence between the Soviet Union and the capitalist States compatible with active help by the former to the workers’ struggle in the latter? Or does it mean that the Soviet authorities must be indifferent or even hostile towards forces that threaten their partners in co- existence? Recently this question has arisen with par- ticular sharpness in connexion both with Soviet foreign policy and with the ‘line’ promoted by the Soviet Gov- ernment, through’ the communist parties which it controls, regarding unilateral nuclear disarmament by this country, and also in connexion with the Algerian revolution. For example, was it correct for Khrushchev, as leader of the strongest workers’ State, to declare that Algeria must remain within the French Union, to in- dicate through his Ambassador in Paris that he con- sidered Bizerta ought to remain under French control, and to be the first ‘foreign statesman to greet de Gaulle with a personal message on his coming to power in France? If the Soviet Union wishes to come to some sort of agreement with de Gaulle, does it follow that it should turn its back on, restrain, or even actively discourage, the fight of the French workers and the Algerian. workers and peasants against him? Consideration of these and similar topical questions is leading increasing numbers of socialists, especiaily members and recent members of the Communist Party, 104 to re-examine Soviet and communist policy in inter- national affairs since the war, during the war and before the war. As the technique of the Stalinists in trying to hinder and frustrate such reconsideration of the past is, first and foremost, to pretend that the Soviet Communist Party has always pursued essentially the same foreign policy which it has followed since the later twenties, it may be useful to recall the theory and practice of that party in the sphere of foreign affairs during the early years after the October Revolution. There appears to be a good deal of ignorance and misinformation around where this is concerned: many imagine that Trotsky and the Left Opposition were putting forward new, unheard-of ideas when they began criticizing Stalin’s foreign policy, and it is supposed also that what they advocated was the use of the Red Army to ‘make revo- lutions’-—rather as was done by Stalin in the Baltic States in 1940! The fundamental approach of the Bolsheviks in power to the conduct of relations with the capitalist States encircling them was defined by Trotsky, as Com- missar for Foreign Affairs, on December 12, 1917, in his introduction to a new edition of ‘What Is a Peace Programme?: We have to open negotiations with those governments which at present exist. However, we are conducting these nego- tiations in a way that affords the peoples the fullest possi- bility of controlling the crimes of their governments. and so to accelerate the rising of the working masses against the imperialist cliques. We are ready to support this uprising with all the forces at our command. The Soviets could not refuse to deal with the sur- rounding world as they found it. Their dealings, how- ever, would be guided by concern to facilitate the changing of that world in the same direction in which Russia was being changed. They put all their cards frankly on the table at this stage, when a rapid advance of the world revolution seemed probable. On Decem- ber 24, 1917, the Council of People’s Commissars passed the following decree: Taking into consideration that the Soviet Government is based on the principles of the international solidarity of the proletariat and on the brotherhood of the toilers of all countries, and that the struggle against war and imper- jalism can be brought to a completely successful conclusion only if waged on an international scale, the Council of People’s Commissars considers it necessary to offer assist- ance by all possible means to the Left internationalist wing of the Labour movement of all countries, regardless of whether these countries are at war with Russia. in alliance with Russia or neutral, For this purpose the Council of People’s Commissars decides to allocate two million roubles for the needs of the revolutionary international movement and to put this sum at the disposal of the foreign repre- sentatives of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.! The key words in this decree were: ‘regardless of whether these countries are at war with Russia, in ' The decree was published in Izvestia of December 26 and is reproduced in J. Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, vol. i -(1951), p. 22.

[p012] ‘EXPORT OF REVOLUTION’ alliance with Russia, or neutral’, Their implications were made clear when the central committee of the Bolshevik Party voted, on February 22, 1918, in favour of accepting aid from the Allied Powers, if it could be obtained, in the form of supplies and military instruc- tors, for resistance to German attack. The motion, which was put by Trotsky and passed by a majority of one, included the provision that ‘at the same time the party . . . undertakes no political obligations toward the capitalist governments’.* When proposing to the American Colonel Robins that American engineers help to get Russia’s ruined railways back into operation, with as quid pro quo the right to bring out of danger of capture by the Germans certain munition-dumps located near the front, Trotsky summed up the principle be- hind the suggested bargain in the words: ‘Mutual services, mutual benefits, and no pretences!’ This was put more formally in a note from Trotsky to Robins regarding possible more extensive forms of aid: ‘All these questions are conditioned with the self-under- stood assumption that the internal and foreign policies of the Soviet Government will continue to be directed in accord with the principles of international socialism and that the Soviet Government retains its complete independence of all non-socialist. governments.’? There could be no question of Soviet Russia, in return for military help from the Allies, calling on the workers of the Allied countries to abandon their struggles against their own capitalists; the imperialist war re- mained imperialist. When Allied aid failed to materialize and Russia was forced to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, this turn of events necessitated a change in the form—though not in the content—of Soviet foreign relations. Addressing the Petrograd Soviet. Lenin on February 23, 1918. replied to the objection that the treaty obliged the Soviets ‘to put a stop to agitation against the [German] imperialists, to give up the preparation for a world revolution’. I did not think (he said) that I had to do with political children here, but with old, illegal party people. who know right well how one could carry on agitation under the Tsar. The Kaiser is no cleverer than Nicholas . .. The central executive committee [of the soviets] signs the peace, the Council of People’s Commissars signs the peace, but still that is not the central committee of the party. For the behaviour of the latter the Soviet Government is not responsible.+ At the Seventh Party Congress, in March, Sverdlov explained that the practical significance of this section of the treaty was that international propaganda work would have to be transferred from the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to the organs of the party; and the Con- gress reaffirmed that ‘the socialist proletariat of Russia will do everything within its power and will use all its resources to help the fraternal revolutionary movement 2 David Dallin, Russia and Post-War Europe (1944). p. 146, n.4. See also W. H. Chamberlin. The Russian Revolju- tion (1935), vol. i. p. 404. and E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. iit (1953). p. 46. 3 W. Hard, Raymond Robins’ Own Story (1920), p. 100: Degras, op. cit. pp. 56-7. 4 Adolf Joffe. in V. Astrov (ed.), Hlustrated History of the Russian Revolution (Lawrence, 1928), vol. ii, p. 507. See also J. T. Wheeler-Bennett. Brest-Litovsk: The Forgotten Peace (1938). p. 261. of the proletariat of all countries’.> The fight of the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine against the German occupying forces received clandestine support from Soviet Russia during the entire period between Brest-Litovsk and the German withdrawal. It is note- worthy that Trotsky, now Commissar for War, warned against methods of ‘help’ to the Ukraine which were ill-considered. At the Fifth Congress of Soviets, in July 1918, he denounced the provocative behaviour of irres- ponsible bands operating on the Russo-Ukrainian frontier, which ‘were very brave when it came to cutting off small parties of Germans and annihilating them by overwhelming force. But they would be the first to dis- appear at the sight of a company of German helmets.’ (This roused the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to fury; accusing Trotsky of selling the pass to Hohenzollera imperialism, they walked out of the Congress.)¢ The situation was further complicated when Allied intervention began while German forces were still in occupation of Russian territory. In August 1918, Foreign Commissar Chicherin agreed with the German Ambassador that the German troops in Estonia and Finland might move across Karelia to take on the Bri- tish who had landed at Murmansk, so as to enable the Red Army to be withdrawn from the northern front and redeployed to defend Moscow. In mentioning this episode, the historian Dallin appositely notes that Joffe, the Soviet Ambassador in Berlin, was at this very time redoubling his activities in support of the revolutionary movement in Germany.’ Whatever tacking between the rival imperialist camps might be forced upon the Soviet Government, support of the anti-imperialist fight in all countries without ex- ception remained a constant element in its policy. Men- tioning in his report on foreign relations to the central executive committee on September 2, 1918, that Ger- many had protested against aid coming from Russia to strikers in the Ukraine, Chicherin declared that ‘we can- not forbid private persons and workers’ organizations collecting money for the strikers, or forbid Russian citizens in general from spreading revolutionary ideas. Some of the German demands go beyond the limits of what the workers’ and peasants’ revolutionary govern- ment can do's Lenin summed up this entire phase of Soviet foreign relations in a speech on November 27, 1920, when he said: It might seem that what we had was a kind of bloc of the first socialist republic and German imperialism against the other imperialism. But we did not make any bloc; nowhere did we overstep the line beyond which injury or shame might have been brought upon the socialist power; we only exploited the difference between the two imperialisms in such a way that in the long run both lost. Germany gct an Carr, op. cit. p. 72: Degras, op. cit. p. 61. 6 M. Philips Price. Reminiscences of the Russian Revolu- tion (1921), p. 318. 7 ‘For a proper understanding of this policy of zigzagging and manoeuvring. one must bear in mind that simul- taneously with it the Lenin Government was transforming its Berlin Embassy into a leading centre of communist activity in Germany, an effort directed against the very government whose military intervention in Russia Lenin was so anxious to secure’ (Dallin, op. cit. pp. 68-9). See also Carr. op. cit. p. 83. 8% Degras, op. cit. p. 101. 105

[p013] LABOUR REVIEW. nothing from the Brest peace except a few million poods of grain, but it brought Bolshevist disintegration into Ger- many. We won time, in the course of which the Red Army began to form... .9 Chicherin, formulating the principles of Soviet foreiga policy for the future, had already affirmed, in the Communist International for October 1919, that Soviet Russia’s task was ‘to live in peace with all govern- ments, or to try to do so, but to keep itself carefully apart from any coalitions and combinations serving imperialist appetites’ .!° Thus the ideas that are nowadays widely thought of as ‘Trotskyist’ were the generally accepted foundations of Soviet foreign policy in 1917-19, and Trotsky had distinguished himself from other Bolshevik leaders in this sphere only by leading the fight for acceptance of aid from imperialist powers and by opposing adven- turistic methods of aiding a revolutionary movement beyond Russia’s borders. In 1920 the repulse of Pilsudski’s march into the Ukraine gave rise to a dispute in the Bolshevik Party leadership whether or not to invade Poland and try to ‘revolutionize’ that country by armed force. According to what was the official history of the Bolshevik Party before the notorious Short Course appeared in 1938, ‘Trotsky was opposed to the advance on Warsaw... due to a social-democratic prejudice to the effect that it was wrong to carry revolution into a country from the outside. For these same reasons Trotsky was opposed to the Red Army aiding the rebels in Georgia in February 1921’.!! Trotsky’s side of the story is given in his autobiography. A point of view that the war [with Poland], which had begun as one of defence, should be turned into an offensive and revolutionary war began to grow and acquire strength. In principle, of course, I could not possibly have any objection to such a course. The question was simply one of the correlation of forces. The unknown quantity was the attitude of the Polish workers and peasants. Some of our Polish comrades, such as the late J. Marchlewski, a co- worker of Rosa Luxemburg’s, weighed the situation very soberly. His estimation was an important factor in my desire to get out of the war as quickly as possible... . After mentioning the disastrous outcome of the ‘march on Warsaw’, Trotsky comments: The error in the strategic calculations in the Polish war had great historical consequences. The Poland of Pilsudski came out of the war unexpectedly strengthened. On the other hand, the development of the Polish revolution re- ceived a crushing blow. The frontier established by the Riga treaty cut off the Soviet Republic from Germany, a fact that later was of great importance in the lives of both countries. !2 As regards Georgia, what happened there was that the invasion began on the initiative of the local Red Army Command; Ordzhonikidze, the party represen- tative involved, who was backed by Stalin, convinced the political bureau that a revolt with strong popular backing had broken out in Georgia and Red Army intervention would shorten the struggle. In fact, the 9 Ybid. p. 222. _ 10 hid. p. 344. iL N. N. Popov, Outline History of the CPSU (Lawrence, 1935), part ii, p. 101. 2, L. D. Trotsky, My Life (1930), pp. 389-92. See also the chapter on ‘The Polish War’ in K. Zetkin,; Reminiscences of Lenin (1929). August-September 1958 rising did not enjoy such backing as had been claimed for it, and it took the Red Army a fortnight of heavy fighting to reach Tbilisi. Trotsky was in the Urals at the time and learnt of the operation only after it was under way; his view was that it would have been better to carry on some underground preparatory work first. and develop the revolt, and only later, should this prove necessary, come to its aid with the Red Army.'* In the book about the Georgian affair which he wrote, on party instructions (and which was a best-seller in Bri- tish communist circles in the early twenties), Trotsky affirmed the right of the Red Army to assist a fully- fledged revolutionary movement, while evading a direct answer to the question whether such a movement had existed in Georgia. The passage deserves quoting: Soviet Russia does not by any means intend to make its military power take the place of the revolutionary efforts of the proletariats of other countries. The conquest of proletarian power must be an outcome of proletarian politi- cal experience. This does not mean that the revolutionary efforts of the workers of Georgia or any other country must not receive any military support from outside. It is only essential that this support should come at a moment when the need for it has been created by the political development of the workers, and recognized by the class- conscious revolutionary vanguard, who have won the sym- pathy of the majority of the workers. These are questions of revolutionary strategy, and not a formal democratic ritual.!* The discussion in the international communist move- ment around the lessons of the unsuccessful ‘March action’ in Germany in 1921 gave Trotsky occasion to clarify still further the relation between the activity of Soviet Russia as a State and the progress of the revolutionary movement abroad. Some had been say- ing that the Russian communists had deliberately incited the Germans to a premature, doomed revolt. in order to relieve the pressure on themselves at the time of the Kronstadt mutiny. Not only was this not true, but ‘if we were capable of such treachery, we would all deserve to be lined up against the wall and shot down one by one’. Others, however, had said that subsequent Russian criticism of the ‘offensive’ tactics of the German communists resulted from concern lest revolutions in the West should disturb the working of the trade agreements which the Soviet Government had newly concluded with certain capitalist States. This was absurd, “because our rather tenuous trade relations with the West will never provide us with such aid as we could receive from a victorious proletarian revolu- tion’—which, moreover, would enable Russia to reduce her burdensome expenditure on defence. Soviet Russia was “interested only in the internal, logical development of the revolutionary forces of the proletariat. and not at all in artificially speeding up or retarding the revolu- tionary development’. Furthermore, ‘Moscow does not at all hold a “Muscovite” point of view. For us, the Russian Soviet Republic constitutes only the point of departure of the European and world revolution. The interests of the latter are for us decisive in every major question’.!5 '3 Trotsky, Stalin (1947), pp. 266-8. 14 Trotsky, Between Red and White (1922). p. 86 13 Degras, Communist International Documents, 1919-22 (1956), p. 216: Trotsky, speech to Second Congress of Young Communist International, July 14, 1921. in The First Five Years of the Communist International, vol. i (1945), pp. 305-6: ‘Letter to Comrades Cachin and Frossard’, ibid. p. 162.

[p014] ‘EXPORT OF REVOLUTION’ The year 1922 provided the experience of Soviet aid to a bourgeois State fighting against other bourgeois States—in this instance a semi-colonial country, Turkey. fighting for its freedom against imperialist Britain and the latter’s stooge, Greece. According to the historian Louis Fischer, when Kemal asked for Soviet help, Stalin was against this being given, on the grounds that a strong Turkey would be a menace to Caucasia, but Trotsky, together with Lenin, supported the giving of aid.6 While arms and other supplies were sent to Kemal, there was no attempt to whitewash his régime: and when he took to persecuting the Turkish com- munists, the Communist International, in an open letter to the working people of Turkey, denounced this de- velopment, warned that it would alienate from Turkey the sympathy of the world’s workers, and pointed to the connexion between the suppression of the working-class movement and moves towards compromise with the imperialists.'?7 Addressing the executive committee or the Comintern, Karl Radek, in words that seem pro- phetically to refer to the disastrous cult of Chiang Kal- shek that was to emerge later, bluntly stated that Soviet Russia’s support for the Turkish national struggle did not involve ‘faith in every pasha who calls himself a people’s commissary and sends a telegram to Lenin’. Turkish independence was in the interests of Soviet Russia and the international working class; that was why the nationalist forces had been helped.'® The year 1922 saw also Soviet Russia's first political treaty with a major European State—the Treaty of Rapallo whereby Russia and Weimar Germany re- cognized each other and cancelled reciprocally all out- standing claims. Asked whether Rapallo constituted a Russo-German alliance against other States in Europe, Trotsky declared: Germany is separated from the Soviet Republic by the samz basic contradictions of property system as the countries of the Entente. This means that the possibility of talking of the Rapallo Treaty as of some defensive-offensive alliance to counterbalance other States is excluded. It is a question of the re-establisnment of the most elementary’ inter-State and economic relations. On the principles of the Rapallo Treaty, Soviet Russia is ready to sign today a treaty with any other country.!9 The limited character of the Rapallo Treaty was underlined by the central executive committee of the soviets in its resolution of May 17, 1922, wherein it said that it ‘recognizes as normal for relations between the RSFSR and capitalist States only this type of treaty’.20 The diplomat Joffe wrote frankly that ‘whether or not this is to the liking of the German bourgeoisie and its lackeys, the Treaty of Rapallo in any case not only breaks up the united bourgeois front but also estab- lishes a firm rapprochement between the working people of Russia and Germany and foreshadows a united revolutionary front. That is what guarantees its last- ingness’.2! The executive committee of the Comintern lo L. Fischer, introduction to second printing (1950) of The Soviets in World Affairs, vol. i. p. xv. 17 Degras, CI Documents, 1919-22, pp. 380-1. 18 K. Radek, The International Outlook, speech of June 15. 1923 (Communist Party of Great Britain, 1923), p. 19. 19 Yzvestia, May 18, 1922: quoted in L. Kochan, Russia and the Weimar Republic (1954), p. 55. 20 Degras, Soviet Documents . . ., vol. i. p. 320. 21 A. Joffe, ‘The Treaty of Rapallo’ in Ot Genui do Gaagi (From Genoa to the Hague) (Moscow, 1925), p. 32. spoke similarly to clear away any misconception that could arise from the treaty as regards its interest in a German revolution: On the German side the treaty was signed by the present bourgeois-Menshevik government, but everybody under- stands that while the position of the bourgeois-Menshevik German government is a temporary thing. the German working class remains. The German working class will one day inevitably conquer power in their own country. Ger- many will become a Soviet republic. And then, when the German-Soviet treaty brings together two great Soviet republics, it will provide such unshakable foundations for real communist construction that the old and outworn Europe will not be able to withstand it for even a few years. In this sense the fate of humanity in the next few years will be determined by the successes of the German working class.*2 Taking into account the experiences in relation to Turkey and Germany. Soviet participation in the Genoa and Hague conferences, the trade agreement with Britain and other connexions with capitalist States established by Soviet Russia in 1921-22, Bukharin included the following in the draft for a programme of the Communist International which he submitted to the latter's Fourth Congress, towards the end of 1922: In view of the fact that the power cannot be seized by the proletariat simultaneously in all, or even in the most im- portant countries, and that single proletarian States come into being—compromises on the field of foreign diplomacy by the proletarian States (commercial connexions abroad, loans, policy of concessions. participation in general con- ferences. and other forms of agreements. including military agreements) are possible. permissible and at times even obligatory. This policy, dictated in each case by the necessity of attaining some purpose. has. however, nothing in common with pacifism as a principle. On the contrary, the Communist International recognizes in the fullest degree the right of the proletarian republics to intervene in the interests of the oppressed and exploited. The question of defending a native country can no longer be put in so general a form as at the beginning of the war. before a proletarian State was established. In the first place. the proletariat of all countries must aid the defence of this proletarian State, and even aid in its extension as the extension of the base of international revolution. The question of the attitude to be adopted towards war is further complicated by the perfect admissibility in principle of the formation of blocs between proletarian States and many bourgeois States. against other bourgeois States. in accordance with the particular war in question. The question must be solved with regard to concrete expediency of pur- pose, and the strategy of the general struggle is to be worked out by the Communist International.23 When the suggestion was put forward that what he had said meant that Soviet Russia might sacrifice the interests of the working class in certain countries for the sake of an alliance with the bourgeoisie of these countries, Bukharin wrote in reply: What is under discussion is my statement that a proletarian government might. under certain conditions, conclude agree- ments with bourgeois States, and that these temporary agree- ments. in so far as they are directed to serving the interests of the revolution and are carried out under the supervision of the International, must, naturally, be supported by the International. 22 _Degras. CI Documents, 1919-22, p. 347. 23 N. Bukharin, ‘Draft Programme of the Comintern’, Labour Monthly, February 1923. p. 91. 107

[p015] LABOUR REVIEW If a revolution were to break out in Germany, and Poland struck at Germany from the Easf, then revolutionary Russia would probably be obliged to attack Poland. And, in these circumstances, should ‘petty-bourgeois Lithuania decide to take the opportunity offered to attack Poland for her own ends, conclusion of a military-political agreement between Russia and Lithuania would be fully admissible’. In the course of the decades through which the social revolution might have to pass, many proletarian States might be obliged to make temporary agreements with ‘oppressed or semi-oppressed bourgeois States, with weaker and threatened States against stronger and threatening ones’. Each possible instance of such an agreement would have to be carefully considered. It goes without saying that no agreement is permissible by which workers’ States could be made directly or indirectly into the tools of imperialism, tools for the oppression of other peoples. Agreements of the nature mentioned must be evaluated not in the light of the superficially-interpreted and actually non-existent interests of one workers’ State, but in the light of the world proletarian movement as a whole. The Communist International is the organ to carry out such international supervision.?+ Bukharin’s idea of a revolution in Germany being helped by Soviet Russia, if necessary by forcing the frontiers of a hostile Poland, occurs also in the fascinat- ing fantasy published in 1922 by the well-known economist Preobrazhensky, in the form of lectures delivered in 1970 on ‘how socialism had come to Europe. He describes how Soviet Russia’s industry made big advances but came up against a brake in the backwardness and stagnation of agriculture, and the country felt increasing need of economic help from the West. If the revolution in the West had delayed too long, this situation could have led to an aggressive socialist war by Russia against the capitalist West, with the support of the European proletariat. This did not happen, however, be- cause at that time the proletarian revolution was already, through the working of the laws of its own internal de- velopment, knocking at the door. True, as you know, the further development of events did bring war too, but this war assumed the character not of the principal means for solving an unsolved historical problem, not the role of mid- wife, but the role of her technical assistant in easing the birth-pangs. Revolution in Germany led to intervention by France and Poland, followed by counter-intervention on Russia’s part. From this conflict emerged a socialist federation of Europe. The new Soviet Europe opened a fresh page in the province of economic development. Germany’s industrial technique was united with Russian agriculture, and on the territory of Europe there began rapidly to develop and consolidate a new kind of economic organism, which opened up im- mense possibilities and gave a mighty impetus to the de- velopment of the productive forces. And therewith Sovict Russia, which had previously outstripped Europe in the political field, now modestly took its place as an economic- ally backward country in the rear of the advanced industrial countries of the proletarian dictatorship.25 - Trotsky himself took up the general question of the 24 N. Bukharin, ‘Letter to Suvorin’, Izvestia, January 11, 1923: partially quoted: in-Kochan, ‘op. -cit. p. 67. 25 E:.Preobrazhensky, Ot NEPa k Sotsializmu (From NEP to Socialism) (Moscow, 1922), pp. 114, 119-20, 134ff. “108 August-September 1958 international duties of the first workers’ State in an original way in an article written in late 1922 for the benefit of French communists who had found ‘contra- dictory’ the entertainment by the Soviet authorities of Herriot, the leader of the French radicals, while a com- munist who advocated alliance between the radicais and communists in France was expelled from the party. We might compare our negotiations with M. Herriot, a prominent representative of the country which during five years opposed us with arms and blockaded us, to the nego- tiations carried on by locked-out workmen with the repre- sentatives of that section of the capitalists willing to discuss terms. Such negotiations between the workers and capitalist magnates are only an episode in the class struggle, just as any strike or Jock-out is. Comparing the position of Soviet Russia in the capitalist world with that of a communist worker em- ployed in the Renault works, Trotsky wrote that of a man in his position ‘we should demand that in his dealings with the capitalists he shall not undermine the solidarity of the working class, shall not act as a strike- breaker, but on the contrary, that he combat all forms of strike-breaking. The same is required of the Soviet Government in its dealings with the bourgeois govern- ments’. Good relations between the Soviet Government and the radical leader in no way modified the com- munist line in France: ‘The Comintern will as hereto- fore expel from its ranks every renegade who attempts to preach Left-Bloc-ism to the French workers.’°6 The French invasion of the Ruhr in 1923 and the revolutionary crisis in Germany to which it gave rise turned into questions of immediate practical politics what had been until then matter for speculation. A Ger- man workers’ revolution would be threatened by blockade from the West and military attack from the East, from Poland. Accordingly. the Soviet authorities accumulated large stocks of grain in Petrograd and at other points along the western frontier, ready to be rushed to Germany. Diplomatic soundings were made in the Baltic States and in Poland with a view to these countries according free transit to this grain.*? Soviet policy was directed towards ensuring the victory of the German workers, peacefully if possible, by other methods if necessary. Interviewed by the Manchester Guardian in March, Trotsky, then still Commissar for War, insisted that there was no contradiction between the interests of the Soviet State and those of the Com- munist International. Soviet Russia is interested in the growth of powerful Labour organizations and in the heightening of their class consciousness . . . The national interests of Russia coincide with the interests of her ruling class. i.e., the proletariat. But the genuine interests of the working class cannot be satisfied otherwise than by international means, i.e., by means of the establishment of a world federation of repub- lics based on Labour and its solidarity. War would be most undesirable from the point of view of the revolution, in that it would mean that the proletariat of Europe would take over in the midst of 26 Trotsky, ‘ “Contradictions” in Soviet Policy’, November 3. 1922: translated in Communist Review, December 1922. Cf. Theodore Rothstein’s: comparison, in Pravda, March 12, 1924, of the task of Soviet diplomacy to that of com- munists in bourgeois. parliaments—to expose the bour- . geoisie and to educate and arouse the masses. 27 Degras, Soviet Documents . «1 vol. i, p. 421. (CONTINUED ON PAGE 117)

[p016] a SB. SSS Se 3 «J Ole ‘ wee Ghana’s Struggle The New -Ghana, by J. G. Amamoo (Pan Books, 2s. 6d.) THIS book is an interesting account of the Gold Coast (Ghana) struggle for freedom and some of the problems that are facing that country today. Up till 1947 there was no strong national movement that could struggle effectively against British imperialism. The native petty bourgeoisie and the chiefs were too weak to organize the people for such a struggle. But the arrival of Dr Nkrumah from England in 1947 and of the ex-service- men who had served in the Burma war and had seen their Asian brothers fighting for freedom, changed the situation overnight. Having been associated with the British Labour movement and knowing the power of the working class, Dr Nkrumah lost no time in mobilizing the trade unions, the poor farmers, the youth and the rest of the working community for the national struggle. It was then that the imperialists became panicky. Bullets and jails could no longer hold back the masses whom Dr Nkrumah had mobilized. Nor could the chiefs, through whom the imperialists used to rule the colony, retard the struggle. The Burma war veterans and Dr Nkrumah had broken the traditional power of the chiefs. A display of trigger-happiness by the imperialist police force began. The first blood had been shed for independence. When the workers, poor farmers, youth and ex-servicemen saw their comrades’ blood flowing in the streets, as a result of cold-blooded massacre by the imperialists, they took up arms in self-defence. The railway workers struck.. The rest of the toiling masses downed tools. Imperialist big business was paralysed by a general strike. The masses, once mobilized. are mightier than any weapon the imperialists have. Fighting was the only way left—freedom could not come by having cocktail parties with the viceroys as the chiefs and the native capitalists did. One sad side of the story was that the Labour Government was doing the dirty work for the imperialists, by shooting and jailing freedom fighters. But the more they shot, the more determined the fighters were. The struggle was assuming a class character. The workers started to fight the native petty bourgeoisie as well. The author does not seem to like this fact. The imperialists grew more panicky. Their capital was now in danger. They could no longer afford to postpone the birth of a nation indefinitely. ‘Changes must be made or revolution would result’, says the author. To avoid losing everything the Tory imperialist Government made concessions and granted political independence to Ghana in March 1957. The author in his concluding chapters tries to make his readers believe that it is only by inviting foreign capitalists and allowing them to exploit the Ghana working class that the country can be industrialized and become a paradise. But the imperialist powers are not interested in developing colonial, semi-colonial or backward countries. Their main interest is to keep these countries as backward as they are, to get raw materials out of them, ta serve their home indus- tries. Colonial and semi-colonial countries are markets for the imperialists where their commodities are disposed of at a high rate of profit. India, Burma, Ceylon and the Middle East countries are good examples. The turning down of the Aswan dam and the Volta River project by British and American imperialism and Canada should be a good lesson to Prime Minister Nkrumah and his CPP Government and to all those who cling to the imperialist powers for aid. By now the author must be having second thoughts about his reference to Mr Habib Bourguiba, President of Tunisia. For the author would like to see Ghana and British imperial- ism have the same kind of relationship that Tunisia has with French imperialism. Today we see the disastrous effects of Bourguiba’s policy of being pro-French and pro-imperialist. Poor peasants and their families are being murdered in North Africa by the bombs and bullets of French imperialism. If Ghana and Dr Nkrumah follow in the footsteps of Bourguiba. British imperialists will only be too pleased to follow in the footsteps of their French brothers should a similar situa-. tion arise in West Africa. The author clearly shows in the book that Dr Nkrumah is not a socialist. ‘Although the Government claims to be socialist, it does not in the foreseeable future contemplate any nationalization programme,’ On another page he puts it 109

[p017] LABOUR REVIEW like this: ‘It has no intention of nationalizing foreign con- cerns.’ One need not ask whether Prime Minister Nkrumah can continue the struggle against imperialist big business in Ghana and for the emancipation of Ghana’s working class and poor farmers. As far as the emancipation of the working class is concerned, it is only when the working class itself, small though it may be, with the backing of the poor farmers, proves able to carry forward the fight for the final overthrow ~ of imperialism and native capitalism that freedom will be really won. EKIOMENESEKENIGHA