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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
Despite the fact that the views of Georgii Valentinovich Plekhanov (1856–1918) on the World War cannot be studied in his voluminous collected works – the editor abruptly terminated the edition with an article Plekhanov published on the eve of the war's outbreak – his position is broadly familiar to students of Russian and international socialism. Thanks to his substantial published writings from September 1914 to March 1917 scattered through the press of at least five countries, a two volume collection of his articles and speeches for the remainder of 1917, and several brief secondary accounts, it is possible to trace Plekhanov's wartime outlook. By contrast, little is known of his political initiatives, associations and conflicts during the war years. A considerable share of his correspondence and other personal papers – the kind of material likely to illuminate these aspects – has been printed by the Dom Plekhanova, the Leningrad repository that holds almost all of them.
I am grateful to the University Research Council of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, for support that made this work possible.
1 Plekhanov, G. V., Sochineniia, , ed. by Riazanov, D. (24 vols; Moscow, 1923–1927). The last article reproduced (XIX, pp. 529–37) had appeared in the newspaper Edinstvo (St Petersburg) on June 29, 1914 (OS).Google Scholar
2 Some of his writings from July 1914 to March 1917 will be cited in subsequent notes. For his articles from April 1917 to January 1918, see Plekhanov, G. V., God na rodine (2 vols; Paris, 1921).Google Scholar To date, no one has fully utilized all these materials. Secondary accounts include Vaganian, V., Plekhanov, G. V. (Moscow, 1924), pp. 664–77;Google Scholar Baron, S. H., Plekhanov, : The Father of Russian Marxism (Stanford, 1963), ch. 16;Google Scholar Iovchuk, M. and Kurbatova, I., Plekhanov, (Moscow, 1977), pp. 307–15.Google Scholar A brief consideration from the Menshevik-Internationalist perspective is Dvinov, B., Pervaia mirovaia voina i rossiiskaia sotsial-demokratiia [Inter-University Project on the History of the Menshevik Movement, Paper No 10] (New York, 1962), pp. 67–78 and passim.Google Scholar A recent, not especially successful, attempt at a revisionist interpretation is Belfer, E., “Plekhanov and the First World War”, in: Slavic and Soviet Series (Tel Aviv), III (1978), pp.48–57.Google Scholar
3 Literaturnoe nasledie Plekhanova, G. V. (8 vols; Moscow, 1934–1940);Google Scholar Filosofsko-literaturnoe nasledie Plekhanova, G. V. (3 vols; Moscow, 1973–1974).Google Scholar Before the establishment of the Dom Plekhanova, P. A. Berlin, V. S. Voitinskii and B. I. Nikolaevskii brought out the valuable two-volume Perepiska Plekhanova, G. V. i Aksel'roda, P. B. (Moscow, 1925).Google Scholar
4 The letter to Rech' – it is dated September 30(17), 1914 – is reprinted in Golos (Paris), October 28, 1914. The letter printed in the Justice number of October 15 is reprinted in Gobs, October 25.
5 His letter to Bur'ianov, dated July 22, 1915, was printed in Rech', October 14, 1915; reprinted in Nashe Slovo (Paris), October 9, in Sovremennyi Mir, 1915, No 10, pp. 200–01, and in Prizyv, No 17 (January 22, 1916).
6 The letter, K soznatel'nomu trudiashchemusia naseleniiu Rossii (Paris, September 10 1915), written by Plekhanov, and signed by eleven others, stemmed from the meeting in September that led to the publication of the defensist Paris newspaper Prizyv. Cf. note 120.
7 Lenin's, speech of October 13 is reported in Golos, October 25 and 27. The quoted characterization, in which he coupled Plekhanov, with Karl, Kautsky, is from a brochure he wrote in the summer of 1915, “Krakh II Internatsionala”, in Polnoe Sobranie Sochineniia (55 vols; Moscow, 1960–1965), XXVI, p. 215.Google Scholar
8 A useful work on the two newspapers is Shaw, Michael E., “The Nashe Slovo Group and Russian Social Democracy During World War I” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, 1975).Google Scholar
9 Pis'ma, P. B. Aksel'roda i Iu. Martova, O., ed. by Dan, F., Nikolaevskii, B. and Tsederbaum-Dan, L. (Berlin, 1924), p. 305;Google Scholar Martynov, A. S., “Ot abstraktsii k konkretnoi deistvitel'nosti”, in; Nashe Slovo, September 15, 1915.Google Scholar
10 Plekhanov, G. V., voine, O. Otvet, tovarishchu Z.P. (Paris, 1914). A second edition (Petrograd, 1915) also contained Plekhanov's contribution “Eshche o voine” published in the collection Voina. Sbornik statei (Paris, 1915).Google Scholar
11 Id., La Social-Démocratie et Ia Guerre (Paris, 1916), p. 1. This brochure is the French translation of his letter to Petrov, with a new preface dated November 1916.Google Scholar
12 The interview was printed in Il Lavoro (Genoa), January 24, 1915, and reprinted in Nashe Slovo, February 2–3. Plekhanov later urged the American socialists to favor war credits as a way to oppose German imperialism. See Svobodnoe, Slove (New York), 1916, p. 523.Google Scholar
13 Tsekhnovitser, O., Literatura i mirovaia voina 1914–1918 (Moscow, 1938), pp. 214–17. The brochure (A. Panov, Rabochii narod i voina (Petrograd, n.d.)) began with Plekhanov's letter, and then went on to elaborate the following sentence included in it: “If Germany should succeed in fastening a yoke on Russia's neck, the Russian proletariat would suffer most of all.”Google Scholar
14 Dvinov, , Pervaia mirovaia voina, op. cit., p. 7.Google Scholar
15 Lande, L., “The Mensheviks in 1917”, in: The Mensheviks. From the Revolution to the Second World War, ed. by Haimson, L. (Chicago, 1974), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar
16 “Nuzhno li ubezhdeniia?”, in: Letopis’, 12 1915, pp. 323–28.Google Scholar
17 Replika Deicha, Plekhanov Archive, Box 2, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam.
18 Voina, op. cit. Senn, Cf. A. E., The Russian Revolution in Switzerland 1914–1917 (Madison, Wis., 1971), pp. 103–05.Google Scholar
19 “K ob”edineniiu sotsialisticheskikh partii”, in: Edinstvo, March 29, 1917.
20 Senn, , The Russian Revolution in Switzerland, op. cit., p. 19Google Scholar and ch. 8. See also Senn's, “The Politics of Golos and Nashe Slovo” in: International Review of Social History, XVII (1972). pp.675–704.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 Senn, , The Russian Revolution in Switzerland, pp. 66, 106–07;Google Scholar Alexinsky, G. A., La Russie et la Guerre (Paris, 1915), pp. 240–51;Google Scholar id., “O provokatsii”, in: Sovrernennyi Mir, 1915, No 3, pp. 50–64Google Scholar id., “Zaiavlenie”, in: Nashe Slovo, 04 25.Google Scholar
22 Piatyi, (Londonskii) s”ezd RSDRP, Aprel'-Mai 1907 goda. Protokoly (Moscow, 1963), pp. 44, 267.Google Scholar
23 Alexinsky, , La Russie et Ia Guerre, pp. 218–20, 304–05.Google Scholar
24 Id., “S kem bol'shinstvo”, in: Voina, , pp. 97–98.Google Scholar
25 Id. to Gor'kii (first half of 1916), Bakhrneteff Archive, Columbia University.Google Scholar
26 It was Plekhanov's tragedy, Dan, Martov and Martynov had written in 1912, and not without some reason, that he combined “a mind worthy of Chernyshevskii and the soul of a Don Basilio” – the crafty, conniving specialist in calumny of The Barber of Seville. Otkrytoe, pis'mo Aksel'rodu i Zasulich (Paris, 1912), p. 7.Google Scholar
27 Trotskii, L., “Otkrytoe Pis'mo T. Plekhanovu”, in: Nashe Slovo, 07 18, 1915.Google Scholar
28 Nashe, Slovo, 09 9–12, 1916.Google Scholar
29 An announcement to this effect appeared in Edinstvo, , 04 13, 1917.Google Scholar
37 Plekhanova, R. M., God na rodine, pp. 7–10, Plekhanov Archive, Box 12.Google Scholar
38 Albertini, L., The Origins of the War of 1914 (3 vols; Oxford, 1952–1957);Google Scholar Fischer, F., Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York, 1967).Google Scholar
39 I wish to express my appreciation to the administrations of these institutions for permission to publish the materials that follow. I am also indebted to Anne Booth, Karin Griffiths and Lydia Treml for assistance in transcribing some of the documents.
40 The actual date was October 11. This document may be compared with a more circumstantial first-hand report by I.K[iselev?] on Plekhanov's speech in Golos, October 18 and 20, 1914, and with Lenin's detailed notes on the presentation (Leninskii, Sbornik, XIV, pp. 124–31). The accounts differ in some significant respects. The Okhrana report is misleading in some particulars, and must be used with caution.Google Scholar
41 Hugo Haase (1863–1919) gave some such assurances at a mass peace rally sponsored by the International Socialist Bureau in Brussels on June 29, but his remarks at the closed meetings of the ISB were ambiguous. So, too, was the statement of Hermann Müller (1877–1931), when he came to Paris a few days later to confer with the French socialists. There were divisions among the German Social Democrats, he indicated, but it was his personal opinion that the party would not vote for war credits. Fainsod, M., International Socialism and the War (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), pp. 23, 26–27;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Haupt, G., Socialism and the Great War. The Collapse of the Second International (Oxford, 1972), pp. 199, 208–13,Google Scholar and the appended notes of the ISB meeting. The complexities of Müller's position at Paris are examined closely in Miller, S., Burgfrieden und Klassenkaf. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie im ersten Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf, 1974), pp. 51–53.Google Scholar
42 The conditions the French socialists reportedly set for their entry into the cabinet are not mentioned in the Gobs report of Plekhanov's speech. He may have been so informed by his intimate friend Jules Guesde (1845–1922), who joined the cabinet as Minister without Portfolio.
43 Marcel Sembat (1862–1922), another of the three French socialists who joined the war cabinet in late August 1914. He became Minister of Public Works.
44 Lenin's immediate reply to Plekhanov's speech is the subject of a report in Golos, October 21. A more considerable statement on the war which he gave a few days later at Lausanne is summarized ibid., October 25 and 27.
45 Charles Rappoport (1865–1941), a Russian socialist who emigrated to France and became a prominent member of the French Socialist Party. Plekhanov rightly assumed that Rappoport, his close collaborator and an editor of the pro-government La Guerre Sociale, shared his views. Before the year was out, however, Rappoport denounced Plekhanov for his defensist stance. See his “Istinno-russkii sotsializm B. Savinkova”, in: Golos, December 15.
46 Plekhanov is here reacting to a series of scathing attacks upon him in Golos, Nos 33–38, 41 and 43 by Lenin, I. Bezrabotnyi (Manuilskii), Martov and Voinov (Lunacharskii).
47 A. I. Liubimov, also known as Mark Z–r (1879–1919), was a founder of the Paris group of “Bolshevik conciliators” (1911–14). A defensist, he became one of the editors of Prizyv in 1915. The manuscript to which Plekhanov refers is the tract O voine, op. cit. Its publication provoked a new series of attacks in December numbers of Golos by Trotskii, A. Lozovskii and A. Balabanova.
48 Plekhanov's wife Rosaliia Markovna, a physician, ran a sanatorium at San Remo on the Italian Riviera each winter.
49 The older of his two daughters, Evgeniia, was married to Georges Batault. The couple resided at Rue Marbeau in Paris.
50 Edinstvo, a weekly newspaper put out by the St Petersburg Interdistrict Committee of United Social Democrats, began publication in May 1914. It had close links with non- factional groups abroad that were devoted to party unity, of which Plekhanov's was the most important. He contributed to all four numbers of Edinstvo that appeared. See his Sochineniia, , XIX, pp. 493–537.Google Scholar
51 I. A. Kiselev, a Russian resident of Zurich, was a follower of Plekhanov and a participant in various defensist activities. Senn, , The Russian Revolution in Switzerland, pp. 26, 108, 110–11.Google Scholar
52 Two representatives of the Edinstvo group, A. L. Popov (Vorob'ev) and N. Stoinov, had been sent abroad to consult with Russian Social Democrats in various West European towns about their views on the war and prospects for party unification. An informative account is given in Popov, A. L., “Stranichka vospominaniia o rabote v mezhraionke”, in: “Proletarskaia Revoliutsiia, 1923, No 10, pp. 95–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Pis'ma, Aksel'roda i Martova, op. cit., pp. 318–19.Google Scholar
53 From Popov's account, loc. cit., p. 102, it is apparent that the reference is to Liubimov.
54 The reference may be to Bernstein's, “Socialdemokratie und Imperialismus”, in: Sozialistische Monatshefte, IV (1900), pp. 238–51,Google Scholar and “Patriotismus, Militarismus und Sozialdemokratie”, ibid., XI (1907), pp. 434–40. Bernstein shortly became critical of the German government and the Majority Social Democrats.
55 Plekhanov's arguments failed to convince Popov and Stoinov or the Edinstvo group in Russia, most of whom adopted the internationalist line.
56 The volume referred to is Aleksinskii's La Russie et Ia Guerre. It was published simultaneously in London as Russia and the Great War.
57 Justice, the organ of the British Socialist Party, had printed Plekhanov's letter of October 1914 cited in note 4.
58 As it becomes apparent further along in this letter, a scheme of Parvus is at issue. Aleksinskii had earlier attacked Parvus for his connections with the German-subsidized Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine. Now he was prepared to brand him an agent provocateur in the pay of the Central Powers, with the mission of fomenting revolution in Russia. Further, he intended to denounce the Institute for the Study of the Social Consequences of War that Parvus had founded in Copenhagen, and into whose service he had recruited a number of emigrant Russian Social Democrats, as a nest of spies. Aleksinskii pressed his charges, partly on the basis of evidence provided by DrFridman, Ia., Kiselev, A. and Stepanov, P., in “Mezhdunarodnaia ober-provokatsiia”, in: Rossiia i Svoboda, 09 5 and 26, 1915.Google Scholar He subsequently repeated the charges and briefly summarized the evidence in L'Humanitá, October 3 and 19. see also Senn, , The Russian Revolution in Switzerland, pp. 110–11;Google Scholar Zeman, Z. A. B. and Scharlau, W. B., The Merchant of Revolution: The Life of Alexander Israel Heiphand (Parvus) 1867–1924 (London, 1965), pp. 159–64, 195–96.Google Scholar For a critique of the latter work, van Rossum, L., “A propos d'une biographie de Parvus”, in: Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviátique, VIII (1967), pp. 244–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
59 Mark Liubimov. This paragraph shows that Aleksinskii wished also to prove the existence of the links between Parvus and Nashe Slovo that he had frequently alleged, but he was obliged to temper that accusation in Rossiia i Svoboda, September 26. While the Social Democrats whom Parvus had recruited in Switzerland were supporters of Nashe Slovo, he claimed, he conceded that the efforts of one of them to secure the backing of the Nashe Slovo people in Paris for the Copenhagen Institute had failed. A. G. Zurabov, a Social Democratic deputy in the Second Duma and one of Parvus's employees in the Copenhagen Institute, wrote a partial reply to Aleksinskii's charges that was printed in L'Humanitá, October 19.
60 The charge that Golos (and its successor Nashe Slovo) was financed by German money was raised by French nationalist writers and Russian emigrants soon after the paper's creation. Such historians as Zeman and Scharlau (The Merchant of Revolution, op. cit., p. 155) and F. Conte (Christian Rakovski (1873–1941). Essai de biographie politique (Paris, 1975), I, pp. 141–47) argue that the charge was well-founded, that the paper was “mainly” financed by German money advanced through Rakovski. The evidence they present to support the charge is, however, inconclusive. A close study by a Dutch historian concludes that at least part of the financial support of the paper is rightly suspect. See van Goudoever, A. P., “Cristian Racovski and Nashe Slovo (1914–1916)” in: Romanian History 1848–1918, ed. by van Goudoever, A. P.(Groningen, 1979), p. 119.Google Scholar
61 This conversation occurred at the time of the founding of Prizyv in September 1915 (see note 66). Aleksinskii wrote this memorandum after the meeting of course, but it is impossible to date the document exactly. In the NB, Aleksinskii first wrote September 1915.
62 On these affairs, see Elwood, R. C., “Lenin and the Brussels ‘Unity’ Congress of July 1914”, in: Russian Review, XXXIX, pp. 32–49.Google Scholar
63 Within the limits of this contribution it is of course impossible to treat in extenso the much-debated question whether the Bolsheviks received money from the Germans in the course of World War I. After G. Katkov and Z. A. B. Zeman published the relevant German Foreign Office documents in the late ‘fifties, there could be no doubt that the German government allocated considerable sums to support various nationalist and socialist groups opposed to the Tsarist regime, the Bolsheviks among them. However, G. Bonnin, L. van Rossum and others have expressed serious doubts as to whether these documents prove that some of this money reached the Bolsheviks, as many Western historians have asserted. After reviewing all the pertinent evidence, A. E. Senn concludes: “That Tsivin, Parvus, Kesküla, and Moor worked as German agents of one sort or another, is not to be denied […]. Yet there is no evidence that they transmitted anything [before the February Revolution] from the Germans to Lenin.] See Senn, A. E., “The Myth of German Money during the First World War”, in: Soviet Studies, XXVIII (1976), p. 85.Google Scholar
64 V. D. Bonch-Bruevich (1873–1955), an associate of Plekhanov's Emancipation of Labor Group before the turn of the century, and later a collaborator in various Bolshevik publishing enterprises.
65 See, for example, Trotskii's anonymous article “Klevetnikam!”, in: Nashe Slovo, April 25, 1915; id., “Otkrytoe pis'mo T. Plekhanovu”, loc. cit.; and, for a later case, “Byvshii deputat ili gorokhovoe pal'to”, ibid., 11 5. These items involved insinuations against Rakovski, Trotskii and Bukharin.
66 On the meeting, which occurred September 5 to 10, 1915, see Senn, , The Russian Revolution in Switzerland, pp. 108–09. A manifesto (Izveshchenie), which Plekhanov probably wrote, outlined the views of the new group, and announced its intention to publish Prizyv.Google Scholar
67 Plekhanov's open letter to the Social Democratic deputy Bur'ianov had been a move to establish relations with the fraction. (The two had been associated in the Edinstvo group before the war.) Another deputy, I. A. Man'kov, had earlier voted for war credits, and as a consequence was expelled from the Social Democratic fraction. Prizyv, March 18, 1916, noted with satisfaction that Bur'ianov, Man'kov and all the Trudoviks had taken the defensist line at the Duma session that began on February 9 (22). Bur'ianov had declared his complete solidarity with Plekhanov's group.
68 The reference is probably to the Guiding Principles on the Question of War Aims adopted at the joint meeting of the Party Executive and the Reichstag group on August 14–16, 1915; and to Scheidemann's interpellation in the Reichstag on December 9, wherein he had pleaded that Germany take the initiative for peace without annexations, but with Germany retaining Alsace-Lorraine. See Miller, , Burgfrieden, und Klassenkampf, , op. cit., pp. 117–25, 190–200.Google Scholar
69 Charles, Dumas (1883–1955), French socialist and member of the Chamber of Deputies, was the Secretary of Guesde's ministry. Alexandre Bracke-Desrousseaux (1861–1955), another French socialist deputy, and a Guesdist, was a member of the Executive Committee of the French party. Both supported the war.Google Scholar
70 I have found no such interview in Prizyv.
71 The reference is to Plekhanov's Istoriia russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli, whose second volume appeared at the end of 1915.
72 Volonter was the pseudonym of M. Pavlovich-Weltmann (1871–1929), a collaborator of Nashe Slovo. Volonter penned a cutting attack on Plekhanov's O voine, and sent it to Nashe Zaria in Petrograd for publication. The editors refused to print it, but Plekhanov may somehow have learned of its contents. Pis'ma Iu, P. B. Aksel'roda i, Martova, O., pp. 335–36.Google Scholar
73 J. B. Sáverac, a French socialist writer, occasionally contributed to Prizyv. He had evidently proposed a publishing enterprise in which Volonter would collaborate with Plekhanov and Aleksinskii. To yoke the internationalist with the two defensists was likely to be more than difficult, and in fact no such enterprise ever materialized.
74 On March 24, Hugo Haase and seventeen others were expelled from the Social Democratic Reichstag group for voting against war credits. L'Humanitá carried reports on the German Social Democrats on March 24, 27, 29, 30 and 31.
75 This was a commentary on the speech that N. S. Chkheidze, head of the Menshevik faction in the Duma, delivered to that body on February 10, 1916. The article, “Esli khochesh dobrogo mira, vedi khoroshuiu voinu”, appeared in Prizyv, No 28 (April 8, 1916). Plekhanov evidently corresponded with his colleagues in Paris by way of Guesde, to avoid difficulties that might be created by French government surveillance of letters from abroad.
76 The reference is to Samozashchita (Petrograd, 1916), a collection of articles in support of the Russian war effort edited by A. N. Potresov, and including articles by V. Zasulich, P. Maslov, V. Vol'skii, Potresov and others. Plekhanov had bitterly fought the liquidator faction in the party in the pre-war years, but with the outbreak of the war his position and that of such liquidators as Potresov and Maslov turned out to be similar.
77 Plekhanov publicly opposed the Easter uprising in an article “Anglo-lrlandskaia drama”, in: Prizyv, No 33 (May 13, 1916).
78 I. I. Bunakov-Fundaminskii (1881–1942), a prominent Socialist Revolutionary, was a member of Prizyv's editorial board.
79 The meeting which established the Prizyv group. The principles are embodied in the Izveshchenie referred to in note 66.
80 No article by him appeared in Prizyv after No 31 (April 29) until No 38 (June 17), when Bunakov joined Avksent'ev in authoring a piece on the affairs of the SRs.
81 Albert Thomas (1878–1932), French socialist leader and Minister of Munitions in the war cabinet. With Rená Viviani (1863–1925), Minister of Justice, he visited Russia in May 5–7, 1916, to strengthen ties between the two allies. The Paris editors of Prizyv drafted a complaint to the Administrative Commission of the French party that spoke of the expected presentation of Thomas to the Tsar as something “unheard of in the history of socialism”, and tantamount to moral support of Tsarism's repressive policies. The letter is in Correspondence, Prizyv, Aleksinsku Collection, Columbia University. On the Thomas visit, see Paláologue, M., An Ambassador's Memoirs (3 vols; New York, n.d.), II, pp. 252–61;Google Scholar B. W. Schaper, Albert Thomas. Trente Ans de Ráformisme Social (Assen, 1959), pp. 128–29. The Russian socialists had reason for concern, for, according to Paláologue, Thomas privately advised a Russian Minister that the workers ought to be militaized in order to increase production.
82 A Duma delegation headed by A. D. Protopopov and including P. N. Miliukov visited Western Europe from mid April to mid June 1916. Miiukov's account of the delegation's activities constitutes a chapter (pp. 340–60) of his Political Memoirs. The French socialists to whom he talked, he remarks (p. 353), “conveyed distrust and concealed disapproval”, thus going beyond what Plekhanov probably deemed appropriate. On the other hand, L'Humanitá, (05 23, 1916) carried a front-page interview with Miiukov that was distinctly friendly in tone.Google Scholar
83 We have no information on the disposition of this matter, but it seems likely that Plekhanov's advice was taken.
84 Iu. Arzaev, a follower of Plekhanov and contributor to Prizyv. The article referred to is the concluding half of a two-part piece, “Lenin o voine”. The first appeared in Prizyv, No 30 (April 22, 1916), the second in No 32 (May 16). In the second part Arzaev juxtaposed Plekhanov's views to Lenin's, but why the former thought there was some distortion in Arzaev's piece is not readily apparent.
85 Nothing from Plekhanov's pen appeared in Prizyv between May 13, 1916, and July22 (No 43), when part of an article he had published in Svobodnoe Slovo was reprinted. The third volume of his Istoriia russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli came out in late 1916. Internal evidence makes it virtually certain that document No 10 should be properly dated August 12 rather than July 12.
86 Prizyv of course supported worker participation in the War Industries Committees. In an article entitled “Pokhod protiv voenno-promyshlennykh komitetov” (Prizyv, No 37, June 10), B. Voronov, a member of the editorial board and a regular contributor, brought together evidence culled from the Russian press concerning attacks on the committees, and especially their worker-group components. Articles on the War Industries Committees appeared also in the two following numbers of Prizyv. See Siegelbaum, , “The Workers' Groups and the War-Industries Committees”, loc. cit., p. 175.Google Scholar
87 Plekhanov evidently had in view an article by Voronov, , “Razlozhenie progressivnogo bloka”, which despite his objection was printed in Prizyv, No 46 (12 12).Google Scholar
88 In June 1916 Plekhanov met Miliukov in Rome, in the course of the latter's trip abroad with the Duma delegation. After returning, Miliukov reported to a Duma committee: “I had occasion in Rome to speak to Plekhanov, a prominent representative of our emigration, and I can state that the policy of the Parliamentary Progressive Bloc has the complete support of this prominent social-democratic politician.” “Russkaia ‘parlamentskaia’ delegatsiia za granitsei v 1916 g.”, in: Krasnyi Arkhiv, No 58 (1933), p. 23.
89 The reference is to an article marking the second anniversary of the assassination of Jaurès, published in Prizyv, No 44 (07 29). Plekhanov had earlier crossed swords with Jaurás on the question of opportunism, and therefore was not fully in agreement with the article's unqualified enthusiastic tone. On Jaurès on war and peace, he had expressed very positive views in a two-part article written for the first anniversary of Jaurès's death and published in L'Humanitá, November 2–3, 1915, under the title “Jaurès et la question de la paix”. It was subsequently reprinted in Svobodnoe Slovo, 1916, pp. 625–33, and as part of a longer essay, “Internatsionalizm i zashchita otechestva”, in Sovremennyi Mir, 1916, No 5–6, pp. 49–65.
90 “Knock Down”, an article critical of N. K. Chkheidze, appeared in Prizyv, No 49 (September 2).
91 The lead article in Prizyv, No 46, is devoted to the meeting of the National Council of the French Socialist Party on August 6.
92 An ironic reference to the collaborators in Nashe Slovo.
93 Plekhanov had in view the Third Conference of Nationalities, which had in fact been infiltrated by the German-inspired League of Alien Peoples of Russia. The Conference, which met in Lausanne from June 27 to 29, 1916, had a decidedly anti-Russian tone. See Senn, The Russian Revolution in Switzerland, ch. 14. Articles in Nashe Slovo, July 13, 29 and 30, reported and discussed the conference. Manuilskii, the author of the second and third of these charged that Russian patriotic and social-patriotic journalists had served as agents of Russian absolutism in the halls by spreading rumors – he implied they were false – that the conference was a tool of the German government.
94 Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis (1846–1919), Dutch anarchist, with whom Plekhanov had crossed swords more than once in meetings of the Second International.
95 Karl Branting (1860–1925), leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Labor Party. The editors had already arranged to publish his anti-Zimmerwaldist declaration in Prizyv, No 46. No 49 carried an article on the Spanish socialists which included a reference to Iglesias, one of their leaders. The paper did not take notice of the views of the Czech socialists in America on Austria, no doubt because it had already printed in No 35 (May 27) an appeal of the Czechs in the United States to the International on behalf of the creation of an independent Czechoslovak State.
96 The National Council of the French Socialist Party voted to convene such a congress in Paris in January 1917. It was to promote pressure on the governments against conquest, annexations, and economic agreements injurious to the working class. See Fainsod, , International Socialism and the War, op. cit., pp. 102–04.Google Scholar
97 Louis Dubreuilh (1862–1924), Secretary of the French Socialist Party, was evidently involved in organizing the congress. He had a letter printed in Prizyv, No 52 (October 1), congratulating the editors on completing a year of publication, and underscoring the solidarity of the French Socialist Party with the views of Prizyv.
98 Liubov' I. Aksel'rod-Ortodoks (1868–1946), disciple of Plekhanov and writer on philosophical subjects, joined Potresov and Maslov in 1916 in the publication of Delo, successor to Nashe Zaria (1914) and Nashe Delo (1915), which the government had suppressed.
99 Plekhanov had represented the Edinstvo group and Aleksinskii the Vpered group at the Brussels conference in July 1914.
100 Plekhanov and Aleksinskii had been invited to collaborate in Russkaia Volia, a newspaper which was to be published in Petrograd with financial support (as they learned) of several banks. The paper appeared from December 15, 1916, till October 25, 1917. Some information on this paper, though tendentiously presented, appears in O. Tsekhnovitser, Literatura i mirovaia voina, op. cit., pp. 111–18. A. D. Beliavskii, “G. V. Plekhanov, ‘Prizyv’, i gazeta ‘Russkaia Volia’”, in: Uchenye Zapiski Gor'kovskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, No 85 (1967), adds a number of interesting details to what is revealed by the letters here published.
101 Protopopov, A. D. (1866–1918), leader of the Octobrist Party and Vice Chairman of the Duma, who was named Minister of the Interior in September 1916.Google Scholar
102 Evidently a reference to I. D. Sytin (1854–1934), publisher of the Moscow daily Russkoe Slovo since 1897, which was close to the Kadets in 1905, and took the patriotic position during the World War. The word “evidently” is used because a number of persons figured prominently in the organization of Russkaia Volia, not only Protopopov and Sytin but S. A. Adrianov and A. V. Amfiteatrov (of whom more hereafter). Concerning Sytin's involvement, see Gor'kii, A. M. and Korolenko, V. G., Perepiska, stat'i i vyskazyvaniia (Moscow, 1957), pp. 75, 80.Google Scholar
103 N. I. Iordanskii (1876–1928), editor of Sovremennyi Mir, a monthly journal to which Plekhanov contributed frequently both in the pre-war years and during the war. After the February Revolution, he and Plekhano' jointly edited the new Edinstvo.
104 “My God, what will Princess Mar'ia Alekseevna say”, the last lines of Griboedev's play Gore ot uma, was a byword among Russians for timidity induced by fear of what others might say.
105 S. A. Adrianov, one of the editors of the moderate liberal daily Slovo, published in St Petersburg in 1906 to 1909. One of the organizers of Russkaia Volia, he had conducted negotiations with the Prizyv editors in Paris on the terms of their participation.
106 A. V. Amfiteatrov (1862–1938), journalist and novelist who was exiled to Siberia in 1902 for having lampooned the Tsar in one of his works. After emigrating to Paris in 1905, he later affiliated with the Socialist Revolutionaries. With the outbreak of the war, he assumed a defensist stance. He returned to Russia in late 1916 to take part in the establishment of Russkaia Volia. In Russia, on September 28 (15), Gor'kii advised Korolenko that, according to a telegram from Amfiteatrov to Sytin, Plekhanov had agreed to collaborate in Russkaia Volia. A few weeks later Gor'kii informed Korolenko that Plekhanov had telegraphed to deny the rumors concerning his participation. Gor'kii and Korolenko, Perepiska, op. cit., p. 80.
107 The anniversary number of Prizyv, twice the normal size, was published on October 1. Thereafter the paper did appear at two-week intervals.
108 Tatiana, Alexinsky, Parmi les blessás. Carnet de route d'une aide-doctoresse russe (Paris, 1916). Published in Eniish under the title With the Russian Wounded (London 1916).Google Scholar
109 Amfiteatrov changed his mind again, and became an editor of Russkaia Volia. When Plekhanov was advised by friends in Russia that the paper was financed by banking interests, he felt compelled to bow out. Nachalo, (Paris), 11 26, 1916;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Gor'kii, and Korolenko, , Perepiska, p. 80.Google Scholar
110 Gredeskul, N. A. (1864-?), jurist and leader of the Kadet Party. He quit the party in 1916.Google Scholar
111 Rabochaia Gazeta, a daily published in St, Petersburg 1906–1908,Google Scholar was ostensibly the organ of “The Independent Social Workers' Party”. In reality, it was run by an agent of Zubatov, S. V. (1863–1917), the well-known architect of police socialism.Google Scholar
112 Aleksinskii failed to take Plekhanov's advice, and this precipitated a crisis in Prizyv. His collaboration in a publication associated with Protopopov was intolerable, as Avksent'ev, one of the most important of the Prizyv editors, had blasted Protopopov in Prizyv, No 53 (October 28, 1916), for his irresponsibility vis-a-vis his party and the Progressive Bloc, and his apparent solidarity with the reactionary cabinet.
113 Aleksinskii's last contribution appeared in No 55 (December 2).
114 Georges Batault, see note 49.
115 The German government on December 12 had asked the United States to inform the Entente governments that the Central Powers were prepared to negotiate peace, though no terms were stated. On December 18, President Wilson suggested that the belligerents state their terms, and offered to assist in the inauguration of negotiations. The Swiss Federal Council on December 23 sent all the belligerents a note enthusiastically supporting Wilson's initiative. All three documents are printed in Papers Relating to the Foreign Affairs of the United States, 1916, Supplement (Washington, 1929), pp. 94, 97–99, 117.Google Scholar
116 The conference treated at some length in No 11. Originally scheduled for January, it was put off to March, 1917.
117 V. M. Purishkevich (1870–1920), a founder of the reactionary Union of the Russian People, was a member of the Second, Third and Fourth Dumas, and a participant in the assassination of Rasputin in December 1916. In the course of a long rambling speech in the Duma on November 19, he charged that Protopopov's projected paper was financed by German funds. He declared that efforts had been made to secure the collaboration of Leonid Andreev, Gor'kii and Korolenko, but did not mention Plekhanov, abusively or otherwise. Gosudarstvennaia, Duma, Stenograficheskii, otchet, Chetvertyi, sozyv, Zasedanie, Sessiia V. 6, 11 19, 1916, pp. 281ff.Google Scholar
118 From the beginning of the war, the Germans had permitted the internationalist Gobs and its SR counterpart Mysl', as well as Bolshevik literature, to reach Russian prisoners of war. Parvus had assailed Plekhanov for his “nationalist-chauvinist” position within months of the war's outbreak. See Senn, , The Russian Revolution in Switzerland. pp. 135, 138; Aleksinskii, , ”O provokatsii”, in: Sovremennyi Mir, 1915, No 3, pp. 60–61. It is thus entirely credible that the Germans would have distributed a Parvus brochure against Plekhanov and defensism, but I have not located it.Google Scholar
119 The editors of Prizyv demanded that Aleksinskii withdraw from participation in Russkaia Volia or be dropped from the board of Prizyv. They were no doubt strengthened in their resolve by the insistence of a group of Zurich supporters of Prizyv that Aleksinskii be expelled from the editorial board. Senn, , The Russian Revolution in Switzerland, p. 220.Google Scholar
120 In his article “Politicheskie zametki”, in: Sovremennyi Mir, 1915, No 10, pp. 196–200, Iordanskii reproduced the public letter mentioned above, p. 327. No 12 (pp. 159–61) carried a critique of the letter, “Vozzvanie oborontsev”, by the historian and Social Democrat N. I. Rozhkov (1868–1927). Immediately following Rozhkov's piece, Iordanskii set down a cogent critique of Rozhkov under the title “Slishkom strogaia kritika”, but it evidently did not go as far as Plekhanov wished.
121 An article in Russkie Vedomosti, November 29, 1916, by A. Maksimov (not Ekonomist) entitled “Ch'ia gazeta”, reports a denial by Protopopov that the projected newspaper is supported by banks, together with his admission that it has the support of a number of large industrial enterprises, whose names he listed. To Maksimov, it made little difference whether banks or industrial enterprises were the backers, and he doubted that this would be a democratic organ despite the participation of Amfiteatrov.
122 A note on the last page of Prizyv, No 58 (January 25, 1917), announced: “Beginning with this number, G. A. Aleksinskii no longer participates in Prizyv's editorial board.”
123 Avksent'ev's article “O mire”, in: Prizyv, No 57 (December 30, 1916), reported on the recent rash of peace initiatives. Though he had reservations about the sincerity of the German proposal, he urged that both sides be pressed to disclose their war aims, in accord with Wilson's suggestion. In “Nakanune”, in: Prizyv, No 60 (March 31, 1917), Plekhanov elaborated his objections to those whom he thought too trusting of the Germans.
124 Plekhanov's “Raznoglasie v ital'ianskom lager Tsimmerval'd-Kintal'tsev” appeared in Prizyv, No 58.
125 In the article “O mire”.
126 The members of the worker group of the Central War Industries Committee were arrested January 29, 1917 (OS). It had been seated a little over a year earlier, on December 3, 1915.
127 K. A. Gvozdev, a railroad worker and Menshevik, headed the workers group of the War Industries Committee. He was one of those arrested in January 1917. After the overthrow of the Tsar, he became a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, and he was Minister of Labor in the last Provisional Government coalition.
128 The arrest of the worker group touched off massive strikes, which may be thought of as the prelude to the February upheaval.
129 In his diary the French ambassador in Petrograd mentions the arrest of the worker group, but says nothing during the following weeks of instructions from his government to take the matter up with the Tsar. See Paláologue, , An Ambassador's Memoirs, op. cit., III, pp. 191f.Google Scholar
130 He did not, for after having been put off from January to March 1917, the projected conference of socialists of the allied nations was then postponed indefinitely.
131 Lydie was to have accompanied her parents to Russia in early April, but because of her health it was decided that she should remain in San Remo, and come later in the spring. Plekhanova, R. M. to Lydie, , London, 04 2, 1917, Plekhanov Archive, Box 10.Google Scholar
132 The only speech Plekhanov made in the month of May that is printed in God na rodine (I, pp. 89–93) was to a Congress of Delegates from the Front, an assemblage not likely to have numbered 10,000. A speech he gave June 19 on the Kazan Square, to mark the launching of a Russian offensive, was heard by a very large crowd. Ibid., pp. 219–20.
133 P. S. Sviatikov, deputy chief of the Provisional Administration for Police Affairs and Security of Person and Property, was ordered abroad on business by the Provisional Government in early June. Vestnik Vremennogo Pravitel'sta, June 2, 1917.
134 E. V. Tarle (1875–1955), Russian historian of France, did not initially support the Bolshevik Revolution. Indicative of his earlier relations with Plekhanov is his letter of 1913 printed in Filosofsko-literaturnoe nasledie Plekhanova, G. V., II, p. 286. Plekhanov wrote appreciatively of Tarle's work in his History of Russian Social Thought, Sochineniia, XX, p. 111, note. G. Diamandy, a Rumanian by origin, studied in France, became a radical student leader, a fervent supporter of Guesde, and an acquaintance of Plekhanov.Google Scholar
135 Academician V. N. Sirotinin, the senior physician at the French hospital in Petrograd, which Plekhanov entered in November 1917. Plekhanova, R. M., God na rodine, p. 4.Google Scholar
136 A laundered version of these events is given in Iovchuk, and Kurbatova, , Plekhanov, , op. cit., pp. 327–28.Google Scholar The day after the affair at Tsarskoe Selo, an order was issued that Plekhanov be protected against a recurrence. See Petrogradskii, Voenno-Revoliutsionnyi komitet, Dokumenty i materialy (3 vols; Moscow, 1966–1967), 1, pp. 539 and 548.Google Scholar
137 V. D. Aitoff was the junior physician at the French hospital who looked after Plekhanov.
138 The Finns had subscribed Tsarist loans, Plekhanov noted with indignation, but had done little for the “Liberty Loan” floated by the Provisional Government in March 1917. Plekhanova, , God na rodine, p. 3;Google Scholar Robert, Browder and Alexander, Kerensky, The Russian Provisional Government 1917 (3 vols; Stanford, 1961), II, pp.485–92.Google Scholar
139 Dumas made two visits to Russia in 1917. While there, he wrote several articles for Plekhanov's Edinstvo. In 1919 he published La váritá sur les Bolcheviks (Paris). C. J. Diamandy was the Rumanian ambassador to St Petersburg, 1913–1917.
140 Plekhanov's articles from Edinstvo were later published, untranslated, in God na rodine. A sketch of Plekhanov's life by lu. Arzaev, which serves as an introduction to the collection, adds some details to the account of the break-in at Tsarskoe Selo. See I, pp. xhi-xlv.
141 L. I. Aksel'rod and her sister Ida were devoted followers of Plekhanov for several decades.
142 The Bolsheviks suppressed Edinstvo three and one half weeks after they seized power. The paper re-appeared as Nashe Edinstvo on December 17 (30), but discontinued in a little over a month.
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