How do they disarm (About the League of Nations) - Lunacharsky 1930
On November 9, Geneva hosted the last meeting of the session of the Commission for the preparation of an international conference on disarmament set up by the League of Nations.
Now we can give ourselves a final account of what prospects have opened up as a result of the work of the commission, what lies behind the scenery that was arranged in Geneva to divert eyes, and what can actually be expected from the real policy of those bourgeois governments whose representatives spoke in Geneva as friends of the world.
First of all, it is necessary to find out why the imperialist governments needed to engage in disarmament?
You know, comrades, that during the World War the slogan was in full swing, that this was the “last war,” the “holy war,” which should put an end to German militarism and create the prerequisites for the peaceful coexistence of all peoples on the globe. Most of all, the Americans were crucified on this occasion, apparently, to rehabilitate their President Wilson, the false prophet and apostle of general disarmament.
The war is over. The victorious capitalist countries ruined and robbed the peoples of the defeated countries and placed them in a humiliating position. Germany was not only deprived of an army, navy and air fleet, but also exhausted her economy with endless predatory exactions. But the victors still did not feel firmly and confidently - so much blood was shed by their peoples, so much was undermined by their economy, so great was the discontent of millions of people who experienced what war is or lost their loved ones. The imperialists saw that they could not immediately renounce the promises they had made during the war, and they began to pursue a systematic policy of delays, promises, delays, deceptions, which were supposed to ensure them public peace. Even Germany was promised that if she disarmed almost completely, then after some time, when the world created by the Treaty of Versailles would freeze a little and gain a foothold, a rapid disarmament of other powers would follow.
In reality, of course, no one thought about it. Everyone understood very well that there could be no real disarmament. The bourgeois governments knew this, and the vanguard of the working class also knew this. As long as capitalism exists, militarism will also exist, wars will arise. Both the capitalists and the advanced workers of all countries understood perfectly well that this was by no means the last war, that after the post-war wounds were healed, production would begin to grow again, again, given the poverty of the masses, it would turn out to be excessive for domestic markets and again they would have to rummage around the whole earthly ball, where to get new raw materials, where to open new markets, and then we will have to fight again. Anyone who by the beginning of this war will not be armed to the teeth, who does not use not only the technology that exists at the moment, but also the upcoming inventions, whoever does not care about these inventions, about the growth of technical power aimed at homicide, at the destruction of human property, will be kicked out of the ranks of competitors. Therefore, not a single capitalist government, except those that were forcibly disarmed and with gnashing of teeth went for it, because they could not resist, not a single one of the capitalist governments for a single moment seriously thought about disarmament. We must also remember that the army has always been considered the best bulwark of the bourgeoisie against the revolution, against the civil war. And the capitalists had reason to be afraid of revolution. The dissatisfaction of the working class reached its peak, because after the war they took away even the crumbs with which they were coaxed during the war. The capitalists needed to step up pressure on the workers so that at their expense, to heal the wounds inflicted on the economy by the war by reducing wages. This dissatisfaction of the working class was correctly presented by the capitalists as a tremendous danger to the entire bourgeois system, all the more so since our Moscow fire had ignited, a gigantic working-class power had been created, and Western capitalism had to prepare to give an armed rebuff to any attempt by the working class to imitate its brothers in Soviet country.
True, the bourgeoisie is now raising this question more cautiously, because there is no longer any confidence in the soldier, nor is there any certainty that the officer will be able to hold the soldier firmly enough in his hands.
Comrade Litvinov recalled at one of the meetings of the commission that the experience of our revolution shows that the army does not always protect capitalist sacks stuffed tightly, and sometimes turns out to be the best instrument of the revolution. The bourgeoisie has to seriously think about how to organize the army so that there are as few workers and peasants in it as possible, to carry out the greatest possible mechanization in it, so that the number of people plays a smaller role than equipment, shells and combat vehicles, and it is possible to fill this army perhaps more loyal people. But in any case, the armament of the state in the event of a civil war plays a colossal role. We understand very well that the bourgeoisie would indeed act contrary to its own interests and contrary to its nature if it did not arm itself.
An extremely strong opposition to disarmament is exerted under all circumstances by a large alliance of sharks interested in the military industry. It is a gigantic industry that delivers weapons to the government of its own country, but also trades them, sells them to weaker foreign countries. The military-industrial capitalists are waiting for more and more billions, which are poured into their pockets from the pockets of the peoples, and do not disdain to bribe deputies, and ministers, and influential journalists for this.
In every country (in France, perhaps more than anywhere else) there is a conspiracy of various groups of the bourgeoisie, who distribute among themselves colossal profits from supplies for the construction of fortresses, the construction of new warships, the conversion of artillery, etc. The main interest of these capitalist groups is to invent new, more advanced forms of both defensive and offensive warfare, declaring everything old imperfect, out of fashion, worthless, demanding many billions for new weapons and again making countless capitals on this. And woe to that radical pacifist who seriously considers attacking the interests of these greedy groups. They perfectly know how to deal with such people and interrupt their spine.
How then, with such an internal and external political and economic interest of the bourgeoisie in armament, can one think that the imperialists will really begin to disarm?
But with shamelessness and cynicism to declare that this is real politics, that militarism will not only not disappear, but will grow, the bourgeoisie cannot. There is an extremely wide front of pacifists, although this front is sluggish, unstable and unintelligent. Real pacifists, "friends of the world", are in essence only communists, but they are quite special pacifists. They are for peace among peoples, for the final destruction of all possibility of war.
But as soon as you leave the ranks of the left flank of the fighters for peace, you immediately find yourself in a petty-bourgeois mess, in a petty-bourgeois swamp. There you will find all sorts of Christian, Tolstoyan, anarchist and humanistic-liberal phrases and arguments on the topic “Thou shalt not kill”, “man is brother to man”, etc. any serious protest. Only chatter and tears about the misfortunes of mankind, an extraordinary ability to close both eyes to what governments are doing to prepare for war; an extraordinary ability to hand your nose to diplomats, so that by this nose they will lead them wherever they want (Laughter.)
The Geneva comedy of sham disarmament is the tribute that militarism pays to pacifism. You can’t bare your animal teeth and say: “I am preparing a war.” Such a government will not find support. After all, parliamentary battles are not a street where, with a rifle in hand, you have to expose your chest to the bullets of police detachments; it's all about putting the ballot in the ballot box, and in this fight the pacifists can show their courage.
A government that openly takes the line of preparing for war will lose several hundred thousand and even millions of votes in favor of the party that will say: we are for peace, we are for disarmament. Therefore, even the most recent swindlers, fanatics of militarism, with a few exceptions, do not dare to speak in an openly militaristic spirit, only the Nazis, the German National Socialists openly defend war as an ideal state, the necessary moral support of a healthy nation, etc. But they are on a special position, because they play on the strings of national resentment of the general population of Germany. They explain such an economic state, hopeless crises, by the fact that the German bourgeoisie was defeated in the world war; now, they say, Germany needs a victorious war. The rest do not dare to speak of war as their goal, but they are preparing it, preparing steadily and intensely.
Reading in the newspapers reports of the French or the British, shamelessly arming themselves, that they have cut something there, you do not attach any importance to this. The whole point here is to reduce the size of the standing army in terms of the number of men under the banners and make up for it with equipment, reinforced weapons, and trained reserves. This is the main striving, this is the present style of the general staffs. Such measures actually only strengthen the armies, and they pass them off as disarmament. You will not find any other concessions anywhere. Military budgets are growing, growing exorbitantly, so that on the whole, 2½ times more is spent annually on the army than before the war of 1914. Of course, one must possess the immeasurable gullibility of pacifists in order to attach importance to talk of disarmament while such frenzied armaments are being waged.
The League of Nations, which to some extent took upon itself the guarantee that the obligations given during the war, the governments of the "allies" would actually carry out, was the body that was supposed to arrange all this hypocrisy, all this comedy, all this eyewash more magnificently and tighten for the longest possible time.
The General Staff of every country says: by such and such a date we will arm ourselves in the main in rough outline and after that we will no longer need such large expenses, we will only make small corrections.
France believes, for example, that she will be armed by 1932, and the French staff put the question this way: until 1932 there should be no talk of a convention. And we'll see.
You know that the disarmament preparation commission has been working for 4 years. A myriad of speeches have been made, mountains of paper have been written. For four years they pounded water in a mortar, pretended to care about the world. Everything would have gone smoothly, without a hitch, if not for our participation. This was already clear at previous meetings. Why were we still invited to the fourth, last and most important session? We were forced to be called, because in our absence the whole comedy would be so obviously empty, meaningless, that it would lose its meaning - no one could be deceived by it. It is quite clear that if such a peculiar, stand-alone great power as ours is excluded from the convention, if it has not assumed any obligations, has not coordinated its actions with others, then all music has no meaning.
Of course, we knew from the very beginning that it was impossible to achieve real disarmament under bourgeois domination; we knew perfectly well in advance that this was complete nonsense.
In Geneva, I received an interesting letter from a Swiss citizen who called himself an enlightened bourgeois. He wrote: “Only now, carefully reading all the protocols of the commission - I have friends who deliver them to me - I see what a blatant deception this is. I ask myself: why are you there? Wouldn't it be better for you to say outright that this is a blatant deception?
I answered him in a nutshell that even before we arrived at the session, we knew that this was a blatant deception; but we came to see what will happen next and to see more people who have seen the light like you, and realized that all this is a blatant deception. (Laughter, applause.)
Our tactics throughout the disarmament work were very broad and logical. Our diplomacy - I can say this without mistake - can add this work to its track record as a significant success.
From the very beginning we proposed immediate general disarmament, worked out the corresponding project extremely carefully and proved that from a technical point of view it is quite feasible. We have shown how it is possible to immediately burn out the methods of covert militarization of the industry, the preparation of armaments, the preparation of people for combat among themselves, burn out all the militaristic apparatuses as if by fire, and carry out an operation that will radically knock weapons out of the hands of the governments of the whole world. And we have definitely stated that if they disarm, then we will disarm completely to the same extent as them. (Applause.) It goes without saying that the project was rejected in their great embarrassment, since they could not make any sensible objection, except that “we have begun to work along a different line and will continue this line, that the League of Nations has suggested that we should not disarm, but only reduce weapons."
Of course, after that we could say: “Well, now it’s clear that you really don’t want peace, we thought so,” and leave. But then they could say that it is terribly difficult to disarm, that it is necessary to think about it, to try it out, but the Bolsheviks, having set such an unattainable goal as complete disarmament, left and thwarted any possibility of an agreement. Therefore, when they failed this project, we immediately presented a second project, a project of proportional, partial and relatively long-term disarmament. So we became, so to speak, opportunistic (laughter)point of view. We said, since you do not want to disarm at all, let us proceed to gradual disarmament. This made them even more horrified. They fiddled with this project for a whole session, during which all their best speakers tried to prove that it was impractical. And why it is impractical, they could not prove. This project, of course, was also rejected. It was at that time that I had to speak the final word on behalf of our delegation, and I bluntly stated: “Obviously, everything that happened here will be published, of course, will be published by us. And we will turn to public opinion, let it evaluate the arguments that you opposed to what the Soviet delegation proposed.
But even after that, we did not leave, but said: We will now work on your project. We claim that there is nothing in this project, that it is a solid hole (laughter) and you want the world to flaunt in this solid hole, like in the best dress. Despite this, we will work with you and, parsing paragraph by paragraph, expose your tricks that hide the emptiness behind high-profile names, we will counter your "proposals" with measures that could have real significance for disarmament. We know that we will be isolated, that everything we offer you will be rejected. But we will do this, because we do not shy away from boring, dirty work in order to show everyone how, at the cost of all sorts of diplomatic tricks, you are constantly sabotaging disarmament.
The peculiarity of the last session was that the League of Nations declared to the leaders of the commission that it was time to stop, because there is a time limit for all patience (laughter). This session was called the second half of the 6th session, and the interval between the first and second half was one and a half years (laughter). It was impossible to postpone the session any longer, because public opinion was too nervous, and therefore it was necessary to finish with the elaboration of this convention. But, of course, at the same time there was a tacit agreement - to work out this convention so that not only would it not be a real foundation on which anything could be built, but to make it useless and, if possible, harmful, i.e., so complicate the work conference so that she can have an excuse for not doing anything. This task the Preparatory Commission had to accomplish again through imaginary skirmishes and disputes (sometimes not entirely imaginary; I will briefly discuss this below), in a word, through very subtle and complex work.
We, of course, stood in the same position. We could not introduce anything essentially new, but we had to complete our work to the end. During the long period that has separated the last two sessions of the Preparatory Commission, significant changes have taken place in the international situation. In particular, the position of Germany has changed. You know that Germany was formerly dominated by politics associated with the name of the late Foreign Minister Stresemann. This policy was moderate and almost Francophile. Stresemann held Germany on its knees before France, begged for mercy and asked for Germany to be restored to its national dignity. At the same time, he followed the path of renouncing any energetic demands and, of course, renouncing any military alliances, any threat of Germany joining some new grouping of nations. The only exception to Stresemann's policy was the commercial treaty of Rapalle* which Germany concluded with us. Stresemann always adhered to this agreement with us, just in case, to show France that Germany is not completely alone, that she can find somewhere some kind of support. This policy of Stresemann led to the Dawes Plan,** to the Young Plan,*** and if a severe world crisis had not broken out in the capitalist countries, then Germany would have received large loans on such terms, at such usurious interest rates, which inevitably, sooner or later, must would have ended up in a half-dead state, and the whole huge labor and scientific upsurge of industry, which the German intelligentsia and especially the German proletariat really developed with genius, would have been used up to fill the pockets of enemies. Despite, that such loans are a noose for the German people, they could create a temporary improvement. But a crisis broke out, and Germany was literally put on the brink of death - 3 million unemployed, of which a million are starving and two million receiving far from satisfactory benefits, more and more suspensions and reductions in production, the outflow of capital from Germany to other countries, the gradual fading of all affairs .
* The Rapallo Treaty of 1922 was concluded between the RSFSR and Germany. This treaty settled mutual claims and established normal diplomatic and consular relations between both states. Signed in Rapallo (Italy) on April 16 during the Genoa Conference. — Approx. ed.
** The Dawes Plan is a reparation plan for Germany, developed in 1923–1924. committee of experts chaired by the American banker Charles Dawes. The plan was approved on August 16, 1924 at the London Conference of the victorious powers. The main goal of the plan was to revive the military-industrial potential of Germany. — Approx. ed.
*** The Young Plan is a reparations plan for Germany. They replaced the Dawes plan Developed in 1929 by a committee of experts led by the American financier Owen Young. It was finally approved at the second Hague Conference in January 1930.
The Young Plan, like the Dawes Plan, was aimed at restoring German military power. - Note ed.
When I visit Germany, I have to meet various people there, sometimes even big capitalists, of course, from those who in one way or another do business with us and with whom there is therefore some kind of connection. One of these capitalists, a very rich man, told me directly: “Yes, in essence, arguing from the point of view of common sense, there is no salvation for us. We see quite clearly that all our efforts were in vain - we cannot export our goods even at negligible prices, our domestic market is melting. How to be saved from this? There is no way to be saved. Other countries should come to our aid. We should be given a lot of money and postpone our death, and then, when the time of reckoning comes, forgive these debts. “Yes,” I say, “but no one will.” “From the point of view of common sense, of course, no one will, but while you live, you hope. Maybe life will find an unexpected way out. It cannot be that a whole cultured people perished.” - I say: “And what do you see in death? If this death comes, what will happen? “Well, there will be various upheavals, but in the end there will be a proletarian revolution.”(Laughter) "So, simply put, do you think that in order to save yourself from the proletarian revolution in Germany, you should be hired and supported by other, stronger capitalist countries?" “Yes,” he replied, “like that; I must say frankly, we will be lost, but, of course, the neighbors' house will also catch fire when we start a fire.
This is what the cautious, thoughtful capitalists of Germany say. And whoever you meet in Germany, from the top to the starving man, everyone will say: "our situation is desperate." As a result of the search for a way out of this despair, the communist movement grew very strongly. In the central city of Germany, Berlin, we (communists. - Ed.) are the strongest party; do you realize how much that means? In general, the growth of our votes in the last elections was very large.
But the backward workers and the petty bourgeoisie rushed along another path, the reactionary one. This so-called National Socialism. It is an extremely disgusting brew of anti-Semitism, which they call socialism (Engels once said that anti-Semitism is socialism for fools), of the glorification of the German race as supposedly some first-class biological human type, of the glorification of war as a divine, holy principle. , especially inherent in the militant race of the German Teutons, from the preaching that you need to come to revenge. And their practical policy is this: "We are against capitalism," they say, "and as soon as we have power in our hands, we will return to the people the unjustly acquired capital." What is this - "unjustly acquired capital?" - "Jewish capital". — What about German “own” capital? “No, of course, German capitalism is our own, dear, it will have to develop further, but we will be able to keep it within the framework and make it take care of the working class.”
But so far, the only thing they have shown themselves in real politics, after they have won the majority, is that they have broken windows in all the big Jewish shops on Leipzigstrasse. But practically, nothing will be done in this line, in the line of struggle against Jewish capital, just as in the line of struggle against capitalism in general, and very many Jewish capitalists, along with the German capitalists, give money to the Nazis, because it is their main bulwark against the communists, whom they fear much more. The Nazis are wholly at the mercy of the capitalists, because the capitalists are well aware of the profitability of these foolish tales about the abolition of Jewish capital, about an era of justice and humanity. The Nazis are doing everything possible to trap the backward workers and the non-proletarian poor. To some extent, they succeed. The first statistical record of which party how many women voted for showed that the Nazis received 66% of the electoral votes of women, in most cases housewives; among them are the wives of workers - not working women who understand little politically - often it is the fault of their husbands, who did not enlighten them. They know that everything is expensive, they see capitalist luxury, and there are quite a few Jews among the Berlin capitalists, and it is easy to speculate on this. Hitler says: “These are all Jews! They are robbing us Germans, sucking out our blood,” and they listen with their ears hanging, they believe all this, they are convinced how terrible it is that German imperialism has been defeated, that Wilhelm with a beautiful mustache had to flee, and they dream of how good it would be restore beautiful parades, bring back the Junkers with spurs and German glory, and at the same time bring back the time when ham and cabbage were cheap.
It must be said that, in addition, the Nazis have many hired people who have been bought with handouts given by the capitalists. Finally, the criminal world joined them; all the rabble, the scum of the big city, are at their service.
Thus the movement was born. It impresses a lot of people - there are many voices; they often arm their men like real fighting units; throw a bridge to the Reichswehr - a small German army of 100,000 people, organizing their cells, conducting agitation. They say: “There it will be seen how we get along with the capitalists, on what we will agree with them in our national socialism. First, we will crush the communists, smash the communists to smithereens, flood the streets with their blood, and the rest will be seen.” This is the basis of their tactics, this is their program setting.
This formation, based on the real masses, although unskilled and politically incomprehensible, supported openly by a large number of capitalists and secretly by the rest of the capitalists, this party puts pressure on the German government. By the time of the last session of the Preparatory Commission, the German government had become semi-fascist.
The Brüning government, the government, of the Catholic priests directly declared to the Reichstag: "If you do not support our laws, our tax policy, then we will dissolve the Reichstag and rule with the firm hand of Hindenburg's orders on the basis of paragraph 48" *
* A special role in the German constitution was given to the president. According to § 48 of the constitution, the President of Germany had the right to cancel all constitutional guarantees and introduce a state of emergency in the country.
In the history of the German revolutionary movement, a number of cases of the application of § 48 are known (the suppression of the workers' uprising in Saxony in 1923, the prohibition of the Union of Front-line Soldiers, numerous demonstrations, etc.). —Approx. ed.
They had to dissolve the Reichstag, because the Social Democrats, who constitute the largest party there, interfered with them, did not go with them. But now the Social Democrats support Brüning unconditionally and are ready to defend the open dictatorship of the bourgeoisie if necessary. They are the main organizers of the police force. More than half of the police force is made up of Social Democrats and is headed almost exclusively by Social Democrats: Zergibel, Grzezinski, and others. And so they placed their police forces, their influence on the workers, their press, without any promises from the bourgeoisie, at its disposal. They stuttered, squeaked, so that Brüning would take back the decrees that had passed through the non-parliamentary way, but Brüning answered them: “If you are such-and-such es-decks, you will talk to me in such a tone, then I will expel you from the ministerial office and invite Hitler ' and they fell silent.
When, at meetings, confused workers (as you know, there is considerable opposition within the working section of the German Social-Democratic Party) ask: “Why do we support Brüning, why do we follow him like a thread after a needle, wherever he leads us, what's the matter?", the Social Democratic leaders answer thus: "Because Brüning is still better than Hitler, and if Brüning does not hold out, then Hitler will be in power."
Anointed with a priestly constitution, the semi-fascist Brüning rests solely on the Social Democrats and on the forces of the section of the working class that follows them, because they fear the worst—they fear the power of the fascists.
Have you read in the newspapers about the famous conference of the Social Democratic police bigwigs, at which they discussed the question in a fit of despair: “Should we conclude an alliance with the Communists and kill all this Hitlerite rabble? How many of them will go out? Housewives will not go, and the criminal bastard will hide in the corners. If the entire working class takes to the streets, it will cost nothing to purge Germany of them. But for this, some kind of temporary militant association of all the workers, Social Democrats and Communists, is needed. And no matter how timidly this thought was expressed, the entire “high assembly” shouted in panic: “No way, not this! Anything is better: the fascists, the dictatorship of the military, but not an alliance with the communists. This is the main enemy, the main danger.”
Of course, with such a treacherous policy of the Social Democrats, it is possible that fascism will temporarily triumph. But, having won, he will immediately show himself and lead the country to such a state that anyone who has at least a little brain in his skull will begin to think about how to free himself from this fascism. And, of course, there will be a gigantic outflow of the working masses towards communism.
Undoubtedly, Germany is on the eve of very big events. And this had an effect even at the Geneva Conference, it had an effect in the fact that Bernstorff spoke in a slightly different way. It must be said that until now Germany has spoken at conferences in a pleading tone, approximately in the sense that since we could disarm, then you can disarm, especially since you promised us this, there is even a written promise, there are speeches by your speakers, where it was directly said that first Germany must disarm, and a little later you yourself will disarm.
To this, France usually declared that in fact she had not promised, that she had been misunderstood, that the treaty was a drawbar: wherever you turn, it happened (laughter), that all this talk is simply ridiculous. Such relationships were constantly established at conferences between Germany and other imperialist countries.
But now Bernstorff, not in such a rude form as Hitler does, but in a more cautious way, declared: “If you do not want to disarm, then let us arm ourselves” (laughter).
This, comrades, I consider it necessary to note - our relations with the Germans are quite good. In particular, in Geneva, they often supported us and we: we really strive for peace, while they are disarmed and, of course, as disarmed, they stood for disarmament, but despite this, we must always keep our ears open. It may also happen that the French imperialists and their allies, on the one hand, greatly frightened that the Germans are planning revenge, and on the other, because the despair of the masses, embittered by insults such as the Polish Corridor and all sorts of geographic and political bullying, will be a source of constant ferment, they will come to the conclusion whether it would not be better to arm Germany voluntarily, without further struggle, but not too much, not so that she could measure her strength with France, but in such a way that the Hitlerites who want war should be given this consolation on some battlefields to which they would drag along a significant part of the German people?
But what are these battlefields? Of course, not with them, in the West, but in the East. And this could be done if it were possible to break the stubbornness of Poland, take away from her some areas along her western border and give Germany a certain compensation, then this new German army will support the Poles and other limitrophes when they begin to rush to the East. Sometimes the German imperialists, the German military, speak quite frankly about this: “Why not destroy such a misunderstanding as Lithuania? It's a misunderstanding, nothing more! Why not incorporate Lithuania into Poland!” In reality, we are talking here about Soviet Belarus and about the possibility of establishing a bourgeois Ukraine instead of the Soviet one, etc.
Germany behaved at the last session much more energetically than before, and Bernstorff made angry, demanding speeches, rejecting the draft convention with us and declaring that it was not worth a farthing. But we cannot especially rejoice at this turn in German sentiment, because the increase in activity is under the sign of fascism, and German fascism, although it threatens the victorious imperialists, can in fact very easily turn the bayonets in the opposite direction.
However, the conference revealed the possibility of another political combination. In general, although this conference is a fake business, but through these cloudy glasses you can still see more what is happening in the bourgeois diplomatic and government kitchen than at a great distance.
Immediately, from the very first meetings, the new position of Italy became clear. Why did Italy's position become new? Fascist Italy, in fact, like all other bourgeois states, tried to protect itself from disarmament and in this sense played into the hands of the rest against us, defended the deception called disarmament. But there was a huge difference between her and France. France is so rich, the general economic crisis has spared her for so long (it is true that now she is also drawn into it) that she could throw innumerable means into her arms, she has elaborated in the most subtle way all sorts of combinations of war in case of need, and militarily is the most powerful country.
You know that France has a number of vassals - Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland. Massigli, the representative of France, is sitting at the meeting, the delegates of the governments of these countries are sitting around him, and on his raised finger they stand up and vote. And if they take the floor, then you can be sure that Massigli authorized their speech. And when they fail to say what France needs, Massigli himself gets up and repeats the same thing, only more deftly, in more authoritative French terms. Then it becomes clear that the dummy figure did not do what she was instructed, and Massigli had to speak himself - this is how everyone understood. These vassal countries increase the military importance of France.
Italy was in the worst position. As a result of the Peace of Versailles, she received weak compensation, her economic development is on less successful paths, she has large debts, high unemployment, she is threatened with a crisis almost as acute as that of Germany. She needs places where she could send colonial emigration; she looks at Africa, at the East and says with hatred: “Savoy, Corsica and Tunisia were taken away from us, we are not given the opportunity to develop on the Balkan Peninsula, in a word you will not move anywhere. Mussolini promised a "great Italy", but there is no great Italy." In words, everyone glorifies the state genius of Mussolini, but their situation is bleak, and even the Nazis themselves understand this very well.
One prominent fascist journalist said in a conversation with me: “What is the difference between the position of the USSR and Italy? Outwardly, if you like, life in Italy seems to be easier than in your country. But you are building and you know what you are building. Life is not easy for you and you say: “It is difficult for us because we give everything in order to build our tomorrow.” What do we have? We do not believe in the possibility of socialism. What is left for us? War. We can't build anything else, we can't prepare for anything else. War is the only thing that can improve our situation. Of course, it would be better if, without a war, these lands were given to us, if a territory so large was cut off so that we would become a great empire. But nobody will do it; you have to be a fool to hope so. This means that we need to fight, but we are weak, we are poorly armed. Here is the situation - desperate: desperazzione.
I agreed with him: “Absolutely correct. The only way of salvation from war and destruction is socialism. (Laughter, applause.)
But how can Italy be under these conditions? In order to make possible the prospect of a successful war, in order to be able to really threaten France, for this it is necessary to reduce French armaments, that is, to delay French armaments and increase ours. You know that in London the gap between France and Italy occurred because Italy demanded the same fleet as France. If France builds as much as it can and Italy builds as much as it can, then France will tune in more. Therefore, the Italian delegation in London said: “You must build not as much as you can, but as much as we can. As much as we build, so much you build." The French, in response to this, laughed in the most impudent way - and indeed, it is impossible not to laugh. That is why Italy began to speak in the Preparatory Commission about disarmament, albeit with more caution. The meaning of her delegation's statements was that others should disarm to her level, while she herself should not disarm. So we had another ally who sometimes voted with us.(Laughter.)
It seemed that the position of England was also to be new. When the time came for us to go to Geneva, Maxim Maximovich Litvinov did not want to go and said: “Either I won’t go, and you go alone with technical assistants, or we’ll simply send our declaration, because this session will not add anything to the previous ones - the situation, in essence, the old remains. I, a person less experienced in international politics than he, objected: “After all, the situation in England has changed - now it’s not Keshendun, but Cecile, not a member of the Conservative government, who will go to Geneva, but the Labor leader, the cunning Cecile, “the apostle of universal peace”, who will have to “apostle” and it will be more difficult to expose him than Keshendun.”
In fact, everything turned out just as Comrade Litvinov predicted. There was no significant difference between Keshendun and Cecil. Comrade Litvinov, convinced of how right he was, left in the middle of the conference, not believing that anything really serious and significant could come as a surprise to us in the future.
Indeed, the British first of all asked the French for money, and if you ask someone for money, it means that you are selling something. The British delegation was selling what cost it the cheapest - its political conscience and imaginary emotional principles. The Labor government considers it necessary to follow the same political line as the Conservatives, and Lord Cecil had to confirm what Keshendun said, and this means double hypocrisy - the same deception of the masses and the surrender of the position of France, moreover, loud phrases about the peaceful policy of the "worker" governments, glossing over what is actually there, etc. But when I said that it would be more difficult to expose it, I expected that the British delegation would to some extent, albeit a weak one, make concessions to pacifism. As a matter of fact, Lord Cecil did not change anything decisively in the position of the Conservatives, in everything he literally followed the French, he did not contribute anything of his own. Even in phraseology, the changes were not so significant. It was not difficult to expose the "peaceful intentions" of the Labor Party.
America stands apart - it is not part of the League of Nations. Its representative, Gibson, reminds us at every opportunity that his government does not assume any responsibility, that the American delegation is only present and watching. But, being present and watching, he was always terribly hostile towards us - more than all the others. The Americans never called any of us by our last names, they never said "representative of the Soviet delegation", but always said "one of the previous speakers".
When I objected to the statement of Gibson, who said that gas warfare could not be abandoned for internal use, he said "a catchphrase" that the police used this drug against "criminals and against an agitated crowd", I said that we were protesting against that one of the previous speakers (laughter) pointed out that if the gas war is inhumane, then it should still be left in reserve for the government to crack down on the insurgent people, that this is clearly a class, police stroke, and that we note this and emphasize.
Gibson was in the most disgusting position. He washed his hands, like Pilate, immediately stepped aside when something needed to be signed, to take on some kind of obligation. All the time he led such a line until the last, very significant meeting. On the last day of the session, when everyone gave their declarations (it was caused by us), Gibson gave an icy assessment of the results of the commission's work, emphasizing the disappointment of the Americans in this commission.
There has already been an attempt at a similar performance once before. America then declared that disarmament did not produce results, but that "daddy" Kellogg said that war in general is a very bad thing and that "we will try not to fight." This is how the Kellogg Pact arose, and it was signed by representatives of other states. But then Comrade Litvinov called them in for an explanation. When the first version of the text of this famous pact became known, we declared that if everyone signed it, then there was no point in arguing about disarmament. Since there will be no war, since everyone has renounced war, everyone will easily agree to our arguments about disarmament. Then the Pole Sokal jumped up, as if stung, and said: “This pact has nothing to do with armaments, this is a purely moral judgment, and real politics is completely different.”
Now America, in order to improve Hoover's shattered reputation, will say that the conference gave very poor results and that America is taking the cause of the world into its own hands, and such hypocrisy will again go on, such deceit that all the geese will cackle again, will cackle for a long time, and Hoover or another some president will do this until the hour of war breaks out.
The bureau of its presidium was also very characteristic of the whole spirit of the commission. President Loudon is a chairman and an extremely clumsy politician. He sometimes got so entangled in his speeches that he had to be rescued either by members of the bourgeois delegations or by his very intelligent and dexterous assistant. But even this cunning diplomat, the Greek representative of Politis, a man of great rhetorical eloquence, which distinguished all ancient Greek orators, delivered one of his brilliant speeches, which quite unexpectedly was water to our mill.
This speech was about the gas war.
Lord Cecil pretends to be a friend of mankind and therefore he invented that there is no danger of a gas war, since an agreement has been concluded according to which all states have refused to use poison gases. We replied that since such an agreement exists, we demand a ban on the production of gases and their storage in warehouses. Of course, we know that this will not work, that all states produce gases and keep them in warehouses, counting on the fact that if a war breaks out, then we will see, they say, who will forbid us to use them! Lord Cecile knows more about this than we do, but he hasn't said anything about it. When we pointed this out to him, Cecile (and it must be said that he always smiled tenderly when speaking against us) declared: “You are absolutely right. How good it would be to forbid the production of gases and their storage in warehouses! But, unfortunately, this is not possible for us. that would mean interference in private production, and we cannot do that. Here you can: You have socialism.(Laughter) You can order not to produce - and they will not produce in your country, but we have private capitalism. But in order to give himself a little pacifist coloring, Cecil declared that he would like the powers to express themselves in what sense they understand the prohibition of gas war: in the sense of the prohibition only of deadly gases or tear and sneezing and all sorts of others? Almost everyone said that they meant the prohibition of all gases in general (except for the Americans, as I mentioned above, who declared that it was necessary to leave gases in case of a revolution).
And then Politis spoke: “I protest against the prohibition of the use of gases in time of war. Whatever we forbid, nothing will come of it during the war. When the war starts, we will beat with anything (laughter). No arbitration courts, no public opinion, no conventions will hold us back, everything will fly into the oven. It would be a reckless and very harmful illusion if we began to rub glasses on the peoples that we could forbid something for the duration of the war. We can forbid only for the time of peace. And insofar as we slow down the pace of armaments during peace, we also indirectly influence the possibility of war. But it is necessary that mankind should know that war will be a terrible disaster and that no one can prevent it.”
This is recorded in the minutes, we reported about this in our correspondence, we wrote about this in our communist newspapers. The bourgeois press, on the other hand, tried somehow to sidestep, to hush up this speech, printed it in the smallest letters and in a few lines, knowing that this was tactlessness on the part of Politis, that this was a slip of the tongue by one of the most intelligent people. Let this be a slip of the tongue (i.e., Politis let it slip), but how characteristic it is and how clearly it shows how seriously the bourgeois governments themselves take the work they are doing in Geneva!
During all these meetings, the feeling of an approaching war hung over the commission. Even the dim-witted Loudon in his first speech said that disarmament must be hastened, that if the conference failed, it would be the greatest disaster, because public opinion is restless and the danger of war is obvious.
This mood was emphasized in a sharp and vivid speech by the Soviet representative, who pointed out that during these eighteen months a lot of water had flowed under the bridge, the situation had become different and incomparably more formidable than before. He cited various kinds of evidence for this, among other things, quoting the speeches of bourgeois statesmen. And indeed, all the time, until the very last meeting, no, no, someone will say: "Yes, the war is not far off, something must be done." This was said in order to make everyone think that the general desire is this: “We know that there is a danger of war, and that’s how we try, how we fuss, how we fuss to prevent it - how many paragraphs we wrote, how many speeches we made!”
The last day arrived. The commission, having completed its work, decided to prepare its report to the League of Nations, and the chairman declared that this report would be a tribute to the upcoming conference on disarmament and would be sent to all those states that did not take part in the commission. We immediately made a statement that we are not participating in this report, since we are not members of the commission. Loudon persuaded me for a long time: “After all, this will be an objective report, we will include all your demands; everything that you said and did, you can present yourself and participate in the general report, you cooperated with us, cooperate to the end. I objected that this was in no way possible: “You will make a report on your work and say that you really worked and developed something positive, but we do not agree with this. We believe that you did not work, but deceived, have not developed anything and you want to pass off this nothing as something. Therefore, we must make our special report.”
They were terribly opposed to it. When we sent our report in writing, they returned it to us and said that they could not accept it. We took advantage of some moments of their rules and declared that we would make the last declaration, and, having made a declaration, demanded categorically that it be attached as a separate report to their own report and sent to all addresses.
They resisted and made a huge mistake.
Lord Cecile wanted to take advantage of our alleged blunder and said: “Ah, you do not want to take part in the report? So we will cross out everything that the Soviet Delegation did, everything that it proposed. And they crossed out half of the report, and then they gasped - what happened? They said that the report would be an objective photograph, but it was not a photograph that came out, but the devil knows what, some kind of flux. (Laughter) We took advantage of this, and when the time came, we said: “If you don’t want to set out in your report what we did, then we demand that you write: “In view of the fact that the Soviet delegation did not participate in the report, and in view of the fact that we crossed out everything she did in it, the report turned out to be completely one-sided and unlike the truth, ”and with this note it was sent to the League of Nations and individual governments.
The speaker himself, the representative of Spain, Koblan, a man not stupid, saw that they were caught. He began to speak like this: “We ourselves are to blame and now we are a victim; we have made mistakes and we have no choice but to send this declaration separately, attaching it to the report, in order to mitigate the situation.” And he added: "Let all other countries, if they wish, make the same declarations." (Laughter.)
Among these "declarations" was the last speech of Lord Cecil, very significant and curious. Immediately after I read our declaration and drew the appropriate conclusion from it, he stood up and, turning to the Soviet delegation, said: “You subjected the commission to horrendous, annihilating criticism, but we declare that you are 50% right.” ("Fifty percent right" - that's a confession!) He tried to fish out the smallest, most insignificant paragraphs on which something was done, and said that if it is very small, then for the first time it should be so and that public opinion should be satisfied with this. His speech was pathetic.
This report was followed by a categorical statement by Count Bernstorf, who said that Germany was not satisfied with the convention and would not sign it.
Since America, as I said, also gave the "work" of the commission an extremely cold assessment, this last hour of the session was much more like a funeral than the birth of a new project.
After that, having finished with the report, they moved on to pompous phrases, mutual praise. They told the unfortunate chairman that he was the smartest diplomat, Lord Cecil, that he was the apostle of peace, they greeted each other, and even this environment - the delegates themselves, bourgeois journalists, experts - all this was so tired that the "triumph" took place under liquid pops, and only when they expressed their gratitude to the technical secretary, a very nice girl who was kind to everyone, gave various certificates and documents on time, loud applause was heard.
Our last word was a statement that we would nevertheless come to the conference: “We know that at the conference you will do the same thing as in the Preparatory Commission, but we will come to do the same thing that we have done so far ".
Thus ended the session of this Preparatory Commission for Disarmament. You know her assessment from the press.
Of course, the military-political situation does not change at all. Armament goes forward. A war may break out between one configuration or another; perhaps they will be able to prepare an intervention against us, although they are afraid of it, not knowing whether their armies can be counted on in a war with such a peculiar enemy as we are. Revolutionary events may be brewing in any country - most likely in Germany. Perhaps, before the conference, which is scheduled for February 1932, some decisive events will occur. And if not, then the conference will meet to continue the deception and play for time. But since there will be ministers of foreign affairs of all countries, leading diplomats, and not minor persons gathered in the Preparatory Commission, then, of course, all this will be repeated on a larger scale, the world pulpit will be raised still higher.
It would be a big mistake on our part if we said: "Serve your mass there, deceive fools as you like, but we will not take part in this comedy."
No, we will take part!
We will take part, but as destroyers of deceit, internal exposers, as real defenders of peace against the imperialist bourgeoisie and the treacherous Social Democracy.
(Prolonged applause.)
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