Source: Leften Stavros Stavrianos, Balkan Federation. A history of the movement toward Balkan unity in modern times, Northampton, Mass., Dept. of history of Smith college, 1944, pp. 297-301;
Translated and reprinted: from Bulletin périodique du bureau socialiste internationale, no. 9 (1912), 5-7. Text also available in Archiv für der Geschichte der Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, VI (1916), 385-390;
Transcribed: by Zdravko Saveski
To the working people of the Balkans and Asia Minor. — To the Labour International! To public opinion!
War is at our doors. When these lines appear, it will, in all probability, be an accomplished fact.
But we, the socialists of the Balkan countries as well as of the Near East, whom the war touches more directly, we will not allow ourselves to be swept on by the chauvinist wave. We raise our voices still more loudly against war and we ask the labor and peasant masses together with every sincere democracy, to unite with us in opposing the policy of sanguinary violence, which carries such disastrous consequences in its wake, with our conception of international solidarity.
The proletariat of the Balkans has nothing to gain in this adventure, for both the conquered and the conquerors will see, rising from the mounds of corpses and smoking ruins, militarism, bureaucracy, political reaction and financial speculation with their usual aftermath of heavy taxes and increase in the price of food, of exploitation and profound misery.
Moreover, the war will have for the Balkan provinces other consequences resulting from their political and geographical situation.
In the event of their being victorious in the struggle and of the Ottoman Empire being divided up, the lion's share, that is the economically richer parts and the most important strategic points, may become the prey of the great capitalist powers who for centuries have been snatching the territories of the East, piece by piece.
Austria at Salonica, Russia on the Bosporus and in Eastern Anatolia, England in Arabia, Germany occupying the rest of Anatolia and Italy in South Albania — such will probably be the map of the East after the eventual downfall of the Ottoman Empire.
Therefore, on the day when they fall into the clutches of the powers, the Balkan states will bid goodbye to their independence. The political and public liberty of the people will be destroyed by militarism and monarchic autocracy, which, strengthened by its victory over the Turks, will demand new credits for its armies as well as new privileges for its sovereigns. And after these hard trials, the national struggles between the nations will not be finished. They will become still more bitter, each one aspiring to hegemony.
Should Turkey be the victor, we would have a recrudescence of religious fanaticism and Mohammedan chauvinism — the triumph of political reaction — the loss of the few improvements obtained at the price of so many sacrifices in the internal government of the country. It will, moreover, bring about the triumph of the imperialism of Austria and Russia, who will pose as the saviours of the conquered Balkan powers, in order to extend their interested protectorate to the ruined nations.
In order to justify the war, the nationalists of the Balkan States invoke the necessity of realizing their national unity, of obtaining political autonomy for their nationals under Turkish domination.
It is not the socialist parties which will oppose the realization of the political unity of the elements of each nation.
The right of nationalities to autonomous life is the direct consequence of political and social equality and of the abolition of all class, caste, race or religious privileges, demanded by the Labour International. But will this unity be realized by a division of the population and the territories of Turkey among the small Balkan States?
Will the Turks who have fallen under the domination of the Bulgarians, Serbs or Greeks, have their national unity? Will the Serbs of Novi-Bazar or of Old Serbia, the Bulgarians, the Greeks, the Albanians of Macedonia, who would, by a division be eventually placed under the yoke of Austria or of Italy, the Armenians and the Kurds of Eastern Anatolia, the Turks, the Greeks, the Bulgarians of the vilayet of Adrianople, who may become the prey of Russia, will they realize their national unity?
Bourgeoisie and nationalism are powerless to set up a true lasting national unity. That which is created by the war may be destroyed by another war.
National unity founded on the subjugation of the national elements of other races carries within it a basic fault which threatens it unceasingly. Nationalism only alters the names of the masters and the degrees of oppression, but it does not abolish them. Political democracy alone, with true equality for every element, without racial, religious or class discrimination, can create real national unity.
The nationalist argument is, really, nothing but a pretext for the Balkan governments.
The true motive of their policy is nothing but the desire for economic and territorial expansion which characterizes all capitalist countries. Turkey's neighbors seek for themselves the same advantages as the great powers, who are concealing themselves behind the small states: they want markets for the disposal of their goods, for the investment of their capital and for the employment of their superfluous personnel for whom there is no longer room in the offices of the city.
But if we emphasize the grave responsibility of the Balkan States in the prospective war, as well as in the past, when they hindered the internal reorganization of Turkey, if we accuse European diplomacy which has never desired serious reforms in Turkey, of duplicity, we do not wish to minimize, in any way, the responsibility of the Turkish governments. We denounce them also to the civilized world, to the people of the empire and particularly to the Mohammedan masses, without whose help they would not have been able to maintain their domination.
We reproach the Turkish regime for the complete absence of real liberty and equality for their nationalities — an absolute lack of security and of guarantee for life of the rights and privileges of citizenship — the non-existence of justice and of a well-organized and impartial administration. It has upheld a system of extremely heavy and onerous imposts. It has turned a deaf ear to all demands for reform for Mohammedan and other working men and peasants. It has supported only its feudal subjects and nomadic tribes who were armed against the defenceless agriculturalists.
By their proverbial inertia the Turkish governments have done nothing but provoke and perpetuate misery, ignorance, emigration and brigandage, massacres without number in Anatolia and in Roumelia, in a word anarchy which serves today as a pretext for intervention and for war.
The hope that the new regime would put an end to the past by inaugurating a new policy, has been unfulfilled. The successive "Young Turk" governments not only continued the errors of the past, they made use of the authority and prestige of a seeming parliamentarism granted to Turkey, in order to apply a system of denationalization and of oppression, together with an excessive bureaucratic centralism, smothering the rights of the nationalities and the claims of the labor masses.
The men of the new regime, in certain respects even surpassed the old which had elevated the systematic assassination of political adversaries to the height of a government system.
But we acknowledge that the people — and the people only — have the right to dispose of their fate. Against the war, which we repudiate with all our forces, as a means of solving political and social problems, we oppose the action of the conscious and organized masses.
To the outrageous ideal of the nationalists of disposing of the lives of their peoples by war, and of haggling for their rights and their territories, we reply by the declaration of the imperative necessity already proclaimed at the Inter-Balkan and Socialist Conference of Belgrade in 1909, of uniting all the people of the Balkans and of the Near East in the most democratic form of government, without racial or religious discrimination.
Without such a federation of the people of Eastern Europe, national unity is neither possible nor enduring for them. There will be no rapid economic and social progress for their development will be continually threatened by the perpetual return of internal reaction and foreign domination. With regard to the Ottoman Empire, more especially, we consider that only radical reforms in its internal relations can establish peace and normal conditions of life, remove foreign intervention and the danger of war, and finally, render possible the democratic federation of the Balkans.
It is not by trying to revive projects half a century old, inherited from shortsighted bureaucracy, that the Turkish government will be able to solve the problem of nationalities.
It is by a granting true equality, by granting complete autonomy to the nations for their educational institutions, — schools, churches, etc., — and by establishing local government (self-government) in districts, cantons and communes, with proportional representation of the ethnic elements, and of the parties, with equality of languages.
Only an administration in which the various ethnic elements of the empire are represented, will furnish the necessary guarantee of impartiality.
Only agrarian reform, a reform of the imposts, social legislation with guarantees of the right of organization and assembly, can give to the Mohammedan labor and peasant masses the minimum of satisfaction which will attach them to the new regime.
These reforms, will annoy Turkish bureaucracy, that is to say those few thousand individuals attached to their privileges. But they will benefit to the highest degree the Turkish people, whom the present regime reduces to the exclusive role of soldier and policeman, hurrying to every frontier and into every province to combat the disasters built up in this country by Turkish incapacity and oligarchy.
The solution of the great problems which trouble the people of the Ottoman Empire will guarantee the national security of the Mohammedans and will enable them peacefully to turn their attention to their economic, political and social development. Such is the program for the realization of which we make our appeal for help not only to the Balkan proletariat but also to international Socialism.
We, the socialists of the Balkans and of the Near East, have the deep consciousness of the double role we have to play in regard to the proletariat of the world and to ourselves.
Holding back the belligerent current let loose by the governments and by the chauvinistic press, struggling against the sentiments ingrained and nourished by a false education, destined to favour the struggle between nationalities and the domination of the ruling classes, we will not fail to fulfill our duty of international solidarity. In fact, we are simply the out-posts, for the Balkan war brings with it an imminent danger for general peace. By rousing all the capitalist appetites of the Great Powers, by giving preponderance in politics to imperialist elements, greedy for conquest, it may not only provoke a conflict between nations, but also a civil war. And, as the capitalist governments of several countries have been driven by the successful victories of the proletariat into their last strongholds, they will not fail to take the opportunity offered them of drowning the masses in blood or by enacting restrictive legislation in order to stifle our movement of emancipation, civilization and human progress.
For weeks and months we have led a campaign against war. But it is particularly at the present moment that we protest the most loudly. We express our firm determination to uphold with all our strength the fight of the world's proletariat against war, against militarism, against capitalist exploitation, for liberty, for equality, for the emancipation of the classes and of the nationalities, in a word, for peace.
Down with the war!
Long live the international solidarity of the people!
The Socialists of Turkey and of the Balkans.
Note
[1] The precise date of this manifesto is not available. The International Socialist Bureau published it on October 12 with the statement that it had just been received.