You must know that zeal without reason is sometimes worse than complete indifference.  Every act of agitation in the rear of the army, fighting against the enemy, would be equivalent to high treason, as it would be a service to the foreign enemy.

The thunders of the war certainly cannot make the Russian manufacturers and merchants more idealistic than they were in time of peace.  In the filling of the numerous orders, inevitable during the mobilization of industry for war needs, the capitalists will, as they are accustomed to, take great care of the interests of capital, and will not take care of the interests of hired labor.  You will be entirely right if you wax indignant at their conduct.  But in all cases, whenever you desire to answer by a strike, you must first think whether such action would not be detrimental to the cause of the defense of Russia.

The private must be subject to the general.  The workmen of every factory must remember that they would commit, without any doubt, the gravest mistake if, considering only their own interests, they forget how severely the interests of the entire Russian proletariat and peasantry would suffer from German victory.

The tactics which can be defined by the motto, “All or nothing,” are the tactics of anarchy, fully unworthy of the conscious representatives of the proletariat and peasantry.  The General Staff of the German Army would greet with pleasure the news that we had adopted such tactics. Believe us that this Staff is ready to help all those who would like to preach it in our country.  They want trouble in Russia, they want strikes in England, they want everything that would facilitate the achievement of their conquering schemes.

But you will not make them rejoice.  You will not forget the words of our great fabulist:  “What the enemy advises is surely bad.”  You must insist that all your representatives take the most active part in all organizations created now, under the pressure of public opinion, for the struggle with the foe.  Your representatives must, if possible, take part not only in the work of the special technical organizations, such as the War-Industrial Committees which have been created for the needs of the army, but also in all other organizations of social and political character.

    The situation is such that we cannot come to freedom in any other
    way than by the war of national defense.

That the foregoing Manifesto expressed the position of the vast majority of Russian Socialists there can be no doubt whatever.  Between this position and that of the Porazhentsi with their doctrine that Russia’s defeat by Germany was desirable, there was a middle ground, which was taken by a not inconsiderable number of Socialists, including such able leaders as Paul Axelrod.  Those who took up this intermediate position were both anti-Czarists and anti-German-imperialists.