GAPON, as is well known, has lately sent out a call through the secretary of the International Socialist Bureau to the Russian
socialists urging them to unite and the
Vorwärts has published a comment thereon in which it talks about the “chaos of divisions and conflicts that disrupt the socialist camp” as well as of the “note of union” which the Revolutionary Socialists have brought into this chaos. A few remarks that I have made regarding this in the
Leipziger Volkszeitung have brought requests to me from various directions that I explain this Russian chaos to the German Comrades and I respond all the more willingly to this request since I believe that it has become necessary to set the comrades of Germany right concerning the Russian differences. The less they know of these differences the more they have, simply the indefinite idea of a chaos, in which the friends of socialist unity are seeking in vain to bring order, and so much the greater the danger that they will condemn our Russian comrades falsely, and that their support will be weakened. Such a result would be a great misfortune to socialists not only in Russia but throughout the world.
I would have been glad to have left a description of the Russian differences to some other pen, to a comrade who stood closer to Russian affairs than I. But if such a comrade is a member of one or the other of these different parties, his description no matter how non partisan, would be open to the suspicion that it was colored.
If we seek to find the truth about the “chaos” in the midst of the Russian dissensions we will soon notice that not all of these divisions are of the same nature but that they fall naturally into certain groups. Things that, to the superficial observer appear an inextricable chaos are then easily distinguished.
Three groups can be plainly distinguished.
The first is that based upon national divisions, Russia includes many more nations than Austria. Some of these, like Poland, previous to their union with Russia, led an independent political existence. Others such as the Armenians had long ago lost this independent existence, or had never had it, and constituted simply the ruins of peoples, often nomadic, when they came beneath the rulership of the Czar. Out of this confusion of peoples the proletariat of Russia is recruited. The mixture of peoples is even more varicolored, the further capitalism extends and the greater the number of new circles which are opened. The socialist propaganda must naturally be conducted among each people in their own speech. This in itself, since the party has become of any strength leads easily to a certain
independence of
organization, into many national party groups, even if they agree with the main party on programme and tactics. The backwardness of commerce and the impossibility of a popular organization strengthened still further the independence of individual groups. But independence of organization leads always to differences of opinion and this naturally will never fail to bring about slight friction, conflicts of authority and conflicts of all kinds. There is need not only of great theoretical and tactical agreement, but also a personal unselfishness and the greatest possible tact if the solidarity is to avoid all rocks.