Review
LENINtS CORRES PONDENCE WITH SECOND INTERNATIONAL
By Fernand Charlier |
CORRESPONDANCE ENTRE LENINE ET CAMILLE HUYSMANS 1905-1914, Edited |
by Georges Haupt. Editions Labor, 342 Rue Royale, Brussels &
Belgium, 1963, 164 pp. 99 Belgian francs [U.S. $2;
UKs 148.6d.]. (The book is available only in French, )
The upper crust of the Belgian Social Democracy, with Paul- Henri Spaak in the lead, turned out at a reception April 17 held by the publishers to promote a recently printed volume of the correspondence of Lenin and Camille Huysmans, the dean of the Social Democracy. :
In those years Huysmans was secretary of the Socialist International Bureau, He was the driving spirit, beginning with 1905, in this body created by decision of the Fifth Congress of the Socialist International held in Paris in 1900. And it was in his capacity as seoretary that he carried on correspondence with Lenin, ~
. The volume includes many documents which havé never before been printed. They enable us to gain fresh appreciation of the relations between the Bolsheviks and the Second International and to study the attitude of the latter toward the existence of the two factions, the Bolsheviks on the one hand and the Mensheviks -- who were linked by © strong affinities to the Western opportunists like Vandervelde ~- on the other,
The correspondence destroys in particular the simplistio image, drawn later by Zinoviev and especially Stalin, presenting the Bolsheviks as oriented from the very beginning of their struggle | against Menshevism toward a rupture with the opportunists and ocen- . trists of the Second International,
Lenin's letters show. how much the Russian party, in practice, stood alone in the International in taking really seriously the revolutionary traditions, the symbols of the solidarity of the workers, and the intransigeant slogans to which the International | gave lip service, This was particularly true for the 1907-12 period,
In the preceding period (1905), Lenin's correspondence with: Huysmans, whom.he did not know personally, was of purely administra tive character, It was dominated by Lenin's preoccupation with . overcoming the bias of the International and the wavering of his own Central Committee (Bolshevik), his. aim being to name a Bolshevik to the Bureau as representative of the Social Democratic Labor party of Russia in addition to -~ and if possible in place of ~-- Plekhanov, who did not recognize the validity of the Third Congress of the Rus-~ sian Social Democratic party (Bolsheviks) held in 1905,(1)
The relationship -- interrupted when Lenin left for Russia -was not resumed until the Seventh Congress of the International at Stuttgart in 1907, At the motient, the situation in the International was more favorable for Lenin as the representative of a party which had held its last two congresses ~- 1906 and 1907 -- as a reunited organization. Lenin was very satisfied with the Stuttgart Congress, which he considered to be a big victory for revolutionary Marxism over reformism, He attended all the meetings he could of the Socialist International Bureau. from 1908 to 1911, and the corres~ pondence shows this, For ‘example, he postponed a projected trip to meet the expiriocriticist Bogdanov at Maxim Gorky's home in Capri when he learned that a meeting of the Bureau was planned,
The correspondence in that period shows Lenin very confident of the future of the International, although the editor of the book, Georges Haupt, exaggerates in affirming that Lenin saw in the Socialist International Bureau the "General Staff of Socialism," None of the letters bears this out. .
After Lenin met Huysmans at Stuttgart, the letters became very cordial, In his comments, Haupt even cites a statement by Huysmans recalling his discussions with Lenin, indicating the lively interest Lenin displayed in the problem of: Belgium's nationalities,
The correspondence also shows the importance of Huysmans' role as secretary of the Second International. He succeeded in making the. Bureau a co-ordinating body, which was the maximum that could’ be done in such a heterogeneous International. :
(l)Russia -- like the other countries, had the right to two votes. in the Bureau, These were divided between the Social Revolutionaries and the Social. Democrats, The problem was thus to obtain the vote for a Bolshevik, or failing that, to gain part of the single
Lenin's relations with the Bureau of the International began’ deteriorating, however, after the Bolshevik conference of January 1912 where the formation of the Bolshevik party was consummated, It was this conference that “opened the era of the true existence of the Bolshevik party," as Trotsky was to put it later,
The majority of the delegates of the Socialist International Bureau, interested only in "Western" questions, considered it, —. without much concern, to be just another "split." Vandervelde be- . lieved, before checking the situation on the spot in Russia,: that the Russian "sectarianism" was a product of the backwardness of the. country. This was the context in which Kautsky -- whose opportunism was hidden under a varnish of orthodoxy -- and Rosa Luxemburg, because of her profound differences with. Lenin on questions of organization, took up the cudgels for the "Liquidators" (the current engendered by the main tendency of the Mensheviks) and constantly involved the indifferent Bureau in the unifying and conciliatory initiatives undertaken by the small émigré groups who stubbornly resisted the new Bolshevik unity.
These documents permit us to see the repercussions in the International of the conflict between Lenin and Rosa: Luxemburg, | which were troublesome for the Bolsheviks, They darkened Lenin's relations with the International and'reinforced the attempts of the Bureau to achieve "unification" of the Russian Social Democracy on. . the basis of the “August bloc” and wity with the liquidationist (reformist) current, a,
The correspondence also shows the high moral authority of the International, and especially its congresses, At the end of July 1914, we see Lenin still preparing his report for the congress which was soheduled to take place in Vienna, if the war had not broken out. ..
The Lenin~Huysmans correspondence likewise testifies in favor of the thesis that the Bolsheviks were deeply integrated in the Second International, According to Haupt, it is prooisely this inteation that must be taken as the startin oin o understan e import of the break of the Bolsheviks with the [International alter the betrayal of August 1914, = .
The doouments are presented in four large chapters (1905; 1907—11; 1912; 1913-14), fitting into the history of the struggle of tendencies in the Russian Social Democratic party. Each chapter. is preceded by a short introduction by Georges Haupt who is a professor at the Sorbonne.
The book provides very useful material for all those studying the history of Bolshevism and the Internationals,
= 26m
Tt'ts a Paradise on Earth
MULPIMILLIONAIRE HAS. ONLY