International Socialist Committee

International Socialist Committee 

the execu tive body of the Zimmerwald group elected at the first International Socialist Conference in September 1915; its headquarters were in Bern, Switzerland. It published the Bulletin of the International Socialist Committee in Bern in English, French, and German.

The committee’s proclamations called on socialists to refuse to vote for war credits, to support the workers’ movement, and to organize mass demonstrations against the imperialist war. The Bolsheviks headed by Lenin belonged to the International Socialist Committee but felt that its tasks should be spreading the idea of struggle against the imperialist war, advocating proletarian revolution, and building a genuinely proletarian International. However, the centrist members of the committee (R. Grimm, C. Naine, and O. Margari) did not accept the Bolshevik slogans on questions of war, peace, and proletarian revolution. The committee ceased to exist in early 1917.

REFERENCES

Lenin, V. I. “V International’nuiu sotsialisticheskuiu komissiiu.” Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 27.
Lenin, V. I. “Pervyi shag.” Ibid.
Lenin, V. I. “Proekt postavnovleniia o sozyve vtoroi sotsialisticheskoi konferentsii.” Ibid.
Lenin, V. I. “K konferentsii 24 aprelia 1916 g.” Ibid.
Lenin, V. I. “Patsifizm burzhuaznyi i patsifizm sotsialisticheskii.” Ibid., vol. 30.
Lenin, V. I. “Otkrytoe pis’mo k Sharliu Nenu.” Ibid.
Korolev, N. E. Lenin i mezhdunarodnoe rabochee dvizhenie, 1914–1918. Moscow, 1968.
Temkin, Ia. G. Lenin i mezhdunarodnaia solsial-demokraliia. 1914–1917. Moscow, 1968.
Lenin v bor’be za revoliutsionnyi International. Moscow, 1970.

V. V. ALEKSANDROV