Comintern - First Session July 19, 1920 - Zinoviev
I propose to the Congress that it rise in honour of the fallen comrades. [All rise. The orchestra plays the funeral march.]We want furthermore to remember today those comrades who are at the present moment languishing in the gaols of various bourgeois republics. We wish to remember our French friends, Comrades Loriot, Monatte and a number of others who were thrown into gaol shortly before the Congress. To the countless fighters of the workers’ revolution who are languishing in German, Hungarian, French, British and American gaols we send hearty greetings. The American Communist workers, who have been particularly cruelly persecuted in the last year, we shake fraternally by the hand. The Communist workers and revolutionaries in general are being literally starved out by the American bourgeoisie. Our friends there cannot find work, they are kept under lock and key. There is no cruelty that is not applied by the American bourgeoisie against the workers who are in the ranks of the Communists or the ranks of the IWW or other revolutionary organisations following the same path as the Communist International.
We express the firm conviction that the words that a French comrade spoke recently, after the arrest of Loriot, Monatte and others, will come true. He said: ‘Yes, we are living at a time when the ruling bourgeoisie, the “democrats”, and the so-called “socialists” are throwing the best leaders of the Communists into gaol; but we are convinced that the roles will soon be reversed and that the working class will soon put into gaol those who are at the moment sitting in bourgeois governments and will bring to power tomorrow those who are being thrown into gaol by the bourgeoisie today.’ [Applause.]
Comrades, it is only a year and a half since the Communist International was founded. It is completely understandable that it had above all to cross swords with the Second International, with which we entered into an immediate struggle. Both enemies and friends must recognise, faced with today’s Congress, which has become a World Congress in the literal sense of the word, faced with the fact that representatives from the whole of Europe and also from America are taking part, that our fight against the Second International has been crowned with success. Today we have a complete right to declare that the Second International has been beaten over the head by the Communist International. [Stormy applause.]
Comrades, what does this fact mean? What does it mean: ‘We have beaten the Second International'? The struggle between us and the Second International is not a struggle of two factions of one revolutionary movement, it is not a struggle of shades of opinion, not a struggle of different tendencies within a homogeneous class camp, it is in fact a struggle of classes. Certainly there are many of our class brothers in the ranks of the Second International. And irrespective of that our struggle against the Second International is not a struggle of factions within a class but something significantly greater.
The collapse of the Second International reflects the collapse of the bourgeois order itself. That is the hinge around which everything turns. We have beaten the Second International because the ‘Twilight of the Gods’ of capitalism has begun. We have beaten the Second International because nowhere in the world can the bourgeoisie execute the testament of the imperialist war, nor will it be able to do so. We have beaten the Second International because the League of Nations and the whole Entente and the entire bourgeoisie are powerless to do anything at all for the restoration of Europe’s economic life.
[The League of Nations was created by the victors of the First World War in 1919 to serve as an instrument of imperialist policy. Helped to prepare the outbreak of the Second World War. Lenin called it the ‘thieves’ kitchen’. The alliance of France, Russia and Britain that fought the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the First World War. It was also joined by Italy, Rumania, Portugal and the United States.]
We have beaten the Second International because the bourgeoisie is powerless to finish the tasks which stand imperiously before it and which it must solve if it does not want to take its historical departure.
Since the first shot in 1914 the Second International has tied its fate to that of the bourgeoisie. The social patriots of every country supported their ‘own’ bourgeoisie and their ‘own’ bourgeois ‘fatherland’.
So it went on until the end of the war. When it was over the Second International once more linked its fate to the bourgeoisie, this time with the group of bourgeois countries who had carried off the victory in the imperialist war.
You remember the first attempt to recreate the Second International when the imperialist bloodbath was over. You remember the conferences in Berne and Lucerne where the so-called leading part of the Second International ‘wished to be associated with’ the League of Nations. The leaders of the ‘resurrected’ Second International hung onto Wilson’s coat-tails. You remember, comrades, that at the Berne conference the Chairman, in opening this conference , greeted Wilson and set him alongside Jaures – an insult to the shade of the fallen tribune of the French workers. When the war was over the Second International wished to unite its fate with the bourgeoisie, and what is more with the section of the bourgeoisie it assumed to be the strongest – the League of Nations. That was its wish. Therefore the blows that the working class of the whole world and its vanguard, the Communist International, have dealt the bourgeoisie in the course of this year have also hit the Second International. The yellow Second International has indissolubly bound its destiny to the class that is sinking before our eyes. That is precisely why our victory over the Second International is of such great significance. It is, I repeat, not the victory of one faction of the workers’ movement over another, it is not the victory of one party over another. No, here we are concerned with something immeasurably greater: every organisation that tries to tie its destiny to the bourgeois class will itself sink. That is the historic meaning of the victory of the Communist International over the Second International. As a young class the working class is a rising star. It is rising to power while the star of the bourgeoisie, which has choked itself on the blood of the working class, is finally setting. The bourgeoisie has become decrepit and is decaying. And as the dying man grasps at the living, so the bourgeoisie clings to the half-dead Second International and strangles it in its deadly embrace. They are both perishing before our eyes. The bourgeoisie like its assistant, the yellow International, is near its end – in the historical sense a year counts as a minute – the death rattles of both are already to be heard. Soon the world will be freed from the bourgeois yoke, from all the organisations that have held the working class in spiritual imprisonment. Soon the international association of workers will be able to start calmly on the construction of a new world on the basis of communism.
Comrades, in the course of this year the idea of ‘democracy’ has faded away before our eyes and is now at its last gasp. I think that the most significant document of the first, founding Congress of the Communist International, indeed the most important document of the Communist movement in recent years generally, is the Theses on Bourgeois Democracy that were adopted by the First Congress. The workers of the whole world and the enlightened part of the peasants and the soldiers have studied them. And the course of events in the last 15 to 16 months has confirmed step by step the correctness of the analysis that the First Congress of the Communist International gave in the evaluation of bourgeois democracy contained in these Theses. When, in the eyes of the whole world, the American bourgeoisie abolished all its own laws and all constitutional guarantees for the working class – it went so far that the Communists, elected on a legal basis according to all the rules of the parliamentary art, are not allowed into parliament but thrown into prison – when America, that classical country of bourgeois democracy, step by step violated the foundations of democracy, this was a visible lesson of how very correct the Communist International was to point out in its programme and in its theses the real historical role of so-called democracy.
Comrades, we have before us the World Congress of the Communist International. At this Congress is represented the vanguard, ready for battle, of workers from all over the world. We will pose to the Congress a number of questions which at present are being disputed inside the international communist movement. We have brought to the Congress a whole number of workers’ organisations which cannot yet be called completely communist and are still crystallising. The international situation of the working class after the long war and the desperate crisis is such that many workers’ organisations are standing at the crossroads; their voice is breaking, as happens in a young man. They have not yet finally established their tactics, they have not yet chosen their final path. We have called upon to work together with us all those workers’ organisations of which we are convinced that they honestly want to fight against capitalism. We will talk to them as to our companions in struggle and in suffering, as to our class brothers who are ready together with us to give their lives for the liberation of the working class. We will not do the same as the Second International, which only knew how to laugh at and persecute revolutionaries with opinions different from their own, which showed a Janus face: to the right – a sweet smile, to the left – spitefully gaping jaws. We are firmly convinced that life educates. The imperialist war taught the workers much. The honest revolutionary elements of syndicalism, anarchism, industrialism and the shop stewards will go over to the side of communism and are already doing so. Our business is to help them to do this faster.
On the other hand there are taking part in our Congress the representatives of the USPD, the French Socialist Party and the Italian Socialist Party who only recently – finally – left the ranks of the Second International.
[The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, formed in 1916-1917 when the Social Democratic Party split. Included centrists led by Kautsky as well as the revolutionary tendency of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. After the ‘Spartacists’ formed the Communist Party in January 1919, a current developed in the USPD which favoured affiliation to the Third international. At its Halle Congress in October 1920, the USPD voted to accept the conditions for entry into the Third International and a united Communist Party was formed. The rump of the USPD continued to function as a centrist party until it returned to the SPD in 1922.
In 1919 the right-wing leadership had taken part in efforts to revive the Second International. During the war the left wing had adhered to Zimmerwald and it called for affiliation to the Third International. At the party congress in February 1920 a large majority voted against affiliation to the Second International but an equally large one voted not to affiliate immediately to the Third. At the Tours Congress a majority favoured affiliation and formed the Communist Party.
The party formally broke with the Second International in March 1919 and at its Bologna congress in October declared support for the Third International but without taking action against Turati and the right wing.]
We are glad to form a communist alliance with the honest revolutionary workers who are in the ranks of these parties.
Comrades, you know that, as the Communist International has grown stronger, about ten big old parties – I shall not list their names – have left the ranks of the Second International. Already a new stage is now beginning: we see that the old parties are not only leaving the Second International but also making immediate attempts to join the Communist International. A number of representatives of these parties are, as I have already said, present here. The Communist Congress will openly broach all the sensitive questions in front of the French and German workers. Under no circumstances will the Communist Congress permit intellectual dishonesty, nor will it make the slightest concessions on principle. The basic questions of the proletarian revolution must be posed sharply. We need clarity, clarity and once more clarity. We will not permit the Communist International simply to become a fashion. The questions on the agenda interest millions of workers. We will put in front of the German workers who belong to the USP13 and the French workers who belong to the French Socialist Party our point of view on all the acute questions of the day. We will wait until the enormous majority of the French and German workers carry out the necessary purge of their ranks and are then able to join the ranks of the Communist International, so that no one can think that this is simply ballast for the Communist International, but that they come to us in order, in common and unanimous work together with us, to carry out the fight against the bourgeoisie.
We intend to lay the Statutes of the Communist International in front of the present Congress. We assume that, just as the Communists, in order to beat the bourgeoisie in their own country, need above all a centralised, powerful, strong party cast all in one piece, so too the time has come to take in hand the creation of such an organisation on the international scale. We are fighting against the international bourgeoisie, against a world of enemies who are armed to the teeth, and we must have an iron international proletarian organisation that is able to beat the enemy everywhere, which must be able to give any one of its troops the greatest possible help at any given moment, which must elaborate the most powerful, flexible and mobile forms of organisation it possibly can in order to face fully armed the enemy it has to fight. In the draft Statutes of the Communist International we quote a sentence from the Statutes of the First International Working Men’s Association, whose leaders were Marx and Engels. In these Statutes Marx and Engels say: ‘If the struggle of the working class has not yet been crowned by success, then this is the case among other things because the workers lack international unity, tight international organisation and mutual support on an international scale.’ Indeed, comrades, that is a simple truth. But we have had to wait for over fifty years, to experience the four years of the bloodbath and all the terrors that humanity has lived through in recent times, for this simple thought not only to be grasped by a few or by individual groups, but for it to enter the flesh and blood of millions of workers. We are firmly convinced that this idea at present has really become the property of the masses. We know that, for victory over the bourgeoisie, it is necessary to make a reality of this simple, elementary idea referred to by the First International, the first International Working Men’s Association, whose traditions and principles we now adopt on many questions in order to turn them into reality. There are present here representatives of the workers and women workers of Petrograd who were the first to begin the uprising in October 1917. I say to you: comrades, today a great historical event is being accomplished in Petrograd. The Second Congress of the Communist International entered history the moment this session was opened. Keep this day in your memory. Know this: that this day is the recompense for all your privation and your courageous and steadfast struggle. Tell your children of this day and describe its significance to them! Imprint this solemn hour on your hearts!
We have a finished event before us, sublime in its simplicity. What could be simpler? The workers of the various countries unite to free themselves from the yoke of the rich. And what could at the same time be more sublime? Comrades, do you not hear the wings of victory beating? Our Earth shall be free. Wage slavery shall be abolished, communism shall triumph ...
Comrades, at the end of my speech I would like to remind you that, in a few months, fifty years will have passed since the first great historical uprising of the European working class which pointed the way for us and for you. I speak of the Paris Commune. I speak of the heroic uprising of the Paris proletariat which, despite all its weaknesses and mistakes (we shall endeavour to avoid them) contributed a golden page in the history of the international proletarian movement and showed us the way that millions of toilers are now taking.
I permit myself to express the hope that by the fiftieth Jubilee of the Paris Commune we will have the Soviet Republic in France. [Loud, stormy applause.]
Comrades, in an article that was written immediately after the founding Congress of the Communist International and carries the title The Perspectives for the International Revolution I said, somewhat over-zealously, that when perhaps only a year had passed we would have already forgotten that a struggle had been carried out in Europe for Soviet power, since this struggle in Europe would already be over and it would have carried over into the rest of the world. A bourgeois German professor has seized hold of this sentence and a few days ago I read an article in which he takes malicious pleasure in quoting this passage and saying: Soon the Second Congress will open. More than a year has passed. It does not look as if the complete victory of the Soviet power has yet come about.
Hereupon we can calmly reply to this learned bourgeois: that is how it really is; probably we allowed ourselves to be carried away; in reality not one year but probably two or three years will be needed for the whole of Europe to become a Soviet republic. But if you yourself are so modest as to regard a reprieve of a year or two as unheard – of good luck, we can only congratulate you on your modesty; and we can express the certainty that, give or take a year or two – we will hold out for a while yet – we will have the international Soviet republic whose leader will be our Communist International.
Long live the working class of the whole world! Long live the Communist International! [Continuous stormy applause.]
Zinoviev: The Congress will proceed to the election of the Presidium. Comrade Bukharin has the floor on behalf of the Executive Committee.
Bukharin: On behalf of the Executive Committee of the Communist International the following candidates are proposed for the Presidium: Levi (Germany), Rosmer (France), Serrati (Italy), Lenin and Zinoviev (Russia).
Zinoviev: Are there any other nominations for the composition of the Presidium? No. The Presidium will be made up as proposed by the Executive Committee of the Communist International: Levi (Germany), Rosmer (France), Serrati (Italy), Lenin and Zinoviev (Russia) have been elected.
Comrades, a whole number of organisations wish to greet our Congress, but we must economise on our time. On behalf of the Executive Committee I propose to give the floor to the representative of the Russian Federative Soviet Republic which today has the great good luck to welcome the Congress on to its territory, to the Chairman of the All Russian Executive Committee, Comrade Kalinin. [Applause.]
Kalinin: Comrades, on behalf of the workers and peasants of Soviet Russia I welcome the Second World Congress of the Communist International. Comrades, members of the Communist International! The Communist Party of the Bolsheviks and the Russian working class have not been pampered in the past by legality and parliamentarism. The last few decades were years of hard, direct struggle by the working class against Russian Tsarism. In this dark period the Communist Party of the Bolsheviks never lost hope that the moment was not far off when the workers would rise under their leadership and overthrow Russian Tsarism and the Russian bourgeoisie. In the last three years, comrades, the Russian working class and the Russian peasantry have made countless sacrifices, they have had to overcome monstrous difficulties and prove the ability to fight unreservedly for the ideals of humanity. And, comrades, this three-year fight has steeled the Russian working class and peasantry and taught them to stand up and fight directly for the interests of the working class. It gave us the opportunity to set up our invincible and renowned Red Army which is at the moment dealing hard blows at the enemy on the Polish Front.
Comrades, the Russian worker and even the backward Russian peasant is better enlightened by the developing struggle against the Russian bourgeoisie and international capital, in which he is participating more and more, than by books and speeches. If earlier it had to be explained to the workers and peasants in propaganda that it was necessary to overthrow the world bourgeoisie too if one wanted to overthrow the Russian bourgeoisie, it is at present clear to every Russian worker and peasant that we are not only fighting against the bourgeoisie of Russia, against the Tsarist landowners – we could have finished them off long ago, we would have had peace long since – but behind their backs stands the world counter-revolution supporting them decisively. And thus it is completely natural that the Russian working class and the mass of the Russian peasants direct their gaze with the greatest attentiveness to the oppressed classes of the West and the oppressed masses of the East. They are awaiting the moment when the oppressed classes in unity with the Russian peasants and the Russian workers will plunge into the direct struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
From the bottom of my heart I wish that the opening of the Second Congress of the Communist International may become the beginning and the pledge of the direct struggle of the oppressed masses of the East and oppressed classes of the West, of the direct struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Long live the Second Congress of the Communist International!
Zinoviev: The first item on the agenda is the report of the Executive Committee, the second is the reports of the parties concerned. The Executive Committee has decided with regard to items one and two to confine itself to distributing written reports. Some of the reports of the individual parties have been presented, some are going to be presented. Thus all delegates will be able to familiarise themselves with the written reports. We will proceed to the third item on the agenda: The current international situation and the fundamental tasks of the Communist International.
Comrade Lenin has the floor for the report. [Loud applause. All present rise and applaud. The speaker tries to speak, but the applause and cries in all languages continue. The ovation goes on for a long time.]
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