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One of the Secret Treaties

Marxist Theory · 1917-05-23

Core Argument

Lenin's central thesis is that the Provisional Government's refusal to publish the tsarist secret treaties is not a matter of diplomatic propriety but of class interest. The war being waged under the banner of "defending the revolution" is in fact an imperialist war for territorial plunder, and the treaties reveal this with brutal clarity. The argument is twofold: first, that the treaties expose the predatory character of the war itself; second, that the "defencist" socialists who support the Provisional Government are actively complicit in concealing this predation from the workers and soldiers who are dying to fulfil it. The claim is not merely that the treaties are secret, but that their content — annexations of territories with overwhelmingly non-Italian populations, carve-ups of Persia and Turkey, seizures of Galicia and Armenia — proves the war is one for redivision of the world, not for national liberation or revolutionary defence.

Theoretical Grounding

This article sits squarely within Lenin's wartime analysis of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, though it predates the full theoretical elaboration of that work by a few months. The theoretical operation here is the exposure of the gap between the appearance of the war — as a defence of freedom, revolution, or national sovereignty — and its essence as a struggle between rival capitalist powers for territory, markets, and spheres of influence. Lenin draws on the Marxist method of demystification: the treaties are not an incidental detail but the material proof that the war's stated aims are ideological cover for annexationist greed. The article also exemplifies Lenin's polemical method of using the enemy's own documents against them — a tactic derived from Marx's treatment of parliamentary debates and official reports. The theoretical tradition invoked is that of revolutionary defeatism: if the war is imperialist on both sides, the task of socialists is not to support "their" bourgeoisie but to turn the imperialist war into civil war.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was published in Pravda on 23 May 1917, barely two months after the February Revolution and the formation of the Provisional Government. The conjuncture is defined by dual power: the liberal-bourgeois Provisional Government under Milyukov (Foreign Minister) and the Petrograd Soviet, in which Mensheviks and SRs held the majority and pursued a policy of "revolutionary defencism" — support for the war on the grounds that Russia's revolution must be protected from German militarism. Lenin's intervention is directed precisely at this position. The treaty with Italy, signed in early 1915, promised Italy Southern Tyrol, Trient, the Dalmatian coast, Valona in Albania, Aegean islands, and railway concessions in Asiatic Turkey — territories whose populations were overwhelmingly non-Italian. Vodovozov's figures, which Lenin cites approvingly, show that Italy was to receive over a million people "absolutely alien to Italy ethnographically and in point of religion" in exchange for entering the war on the Entente side. The article's relevance to the immediate conjuncture is devastating: if the war is being fought for this kind of plunder, the "defencist" argument collapses.

Where the Argument Continues

This article is a fragment of a much larger polemical campaign. Lenin's full theoretical case against the imperialist character of the war and the treachery of the Second International is developed in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (written 1916, published 1917), which provides the economic analysis of monopoly capitalism, finance capital, and the export of capital that underlies the territorial scramble. The political conclusions are drawn in The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (April 1917) and The State and Revolution (written August–September 1917). Within the IDOM corpus, the analysis of secret treaties and imperialist diplomacy is continued in articles on the Paris Peace Conference, the Treaty of Versailles, and the carve-up of the Ottoman Empire. The broader tradition of Marxist analysis of "secret diplomacy" extends to Trotsky's publication of the tsarist secret treaties in November 1917 — the practical implementation of Lenin's demand here — and to later Marxist historiography of the origins of the First World War.

Connections

  • Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism — the theoretical foundation for the claim that the war is about redivision of the world.
  • Lenin, The April Theses — the political programme that flows from this analysis: no support for the Provisional Government, all power to the Soviets.
  • Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution — particularly the sections on the February Revolution and the Provisional Government's foreign policy.
  • Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy — a contemporary theoretical work that complements Lenin's analysis.
  • IDOM articles on the Treaty of Versailles and the Paris Peace Conference — the continuation of the analysis of how imperialist peace treaties reproduce the logic of the secret wartime agreements.
  • The Zimmermann Telegram — a comparable case of secret diplomacy being exposed, though from the German side, and often discussed in Marxist analyses of US entry into the war.

Key Quotes

  1. "Soldiers and workers! You are told that you are defending 'freedom' and the 'revolution'! In reality you are defending the shady treaties of the tsar, which are concealed from you as one conceals a secret disease."

  2. "These annexations exceed any national claims ever advanced by Italy many times over. In addition to regions with an Italian population (Southern Tyrol and Trieste) of nearly 600,000, Italy, under this treaty, is to receive territories with a population of over a million who are absolutely alien to Italy ethnographically and in point of religion."

  3. "This is the only treaty concerning the present war whose contents we know of, and this treaty is grossly predatory. Whether similar predatory instincts are or are not reflected in other treaties, we do not know."

  4. "No, Mr. Vodovozov, we know it very well: the secret treaties concerning the carve-up of Persia and Turkey, the seizure of Galicia and Armenia are just as dirty and predatory as the rapacious treaty with Italy."

  5. "Why do the supporters of the imperialist war guard the secret of these treaties so zealously? Do you want to know why, comrade workers and soldiers?"