Published in Sotsial-Demorkrat No. 43, July 26, 1915.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [1974], Moscow, Volume 21, pages 275-280.
During a
reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of
its government.
This is
axiomatic, and disputed only by conscious partisans or helpless
satellites of the social-chauvinists. Among the former, for instance,
is Semkovsky of the Organising Committee (No. 2 of its Izvestia),
and among the latter, Trotsky and Bukvoyed,[2] and
Kautsky in Germany. To desire Russia’s defeat, Trotsky writes, is
“an uncalled-for and absolutely unjustifiable concession to the
political methodology of social-patriotism, which would replace the
revolutionary struggle against the war and the conditions causing it,
with an orientation—highly arbitrary in the present
conditions—towards the lesser evil” (Nashe
Slovo No.
105).