an antiwar movement whose adherents believe that the principal means of preventing war is to condemn its immoral character. Pacifists condemn all wars, denying the legitimacy of just wars of liberation. They believe that by means of persuasion and peaceful demonstrations it is possible to prevent wars, without eliminating the socioeconomic and political conditions that give rise to them. Associated with bourgeois liberal ideology, pacifism draws fairly broad democratic circles under its influence.
The first pacifist organizations were founded in Great Britain and the USA after the Napoleonic Wars. By the late 1880’s and early 1890’s the pacifist movement had a large following. International congresses of pacifists repeatedly made proposals for the prohibition of wars, the implementation of universal disarmament, and the settlement of disputes between states in international courts of arbitration. Pacifism distracted the masses from an active struggle against imperialism during periods of revolutionary upsurge. Under the conditions that emerged during World War I, V. I. Lenin regarded the pacifists’ abstract preaching of peace—pronouncements without any relation to the anti-imperialist struggle—as “one of the means of duping the working class” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 26, p. 165).
Since World War II the balance of forces in the world arena has shifted in favor of socialism, and broad strata of the population in various countries have become involved in the struggle for peace. In connection with these postwar developments, the Communist and workers’ parties, noting the inadequacy and the limitations of pacifism, have endeavored to unite all peace-loving forces—including pacifists who sincerely seek to prevent war— in a struggle against the threat of war posed by imperialism. Many pacifists and some pacifist organizations have joined the peace movement.