Toward a World Commune

(Von Geldern and Stites, Mass Culture in Soviet Russia, pp29-33)

PART I

Scene I: Communist Manifesto

The kings and bankers who rule the world erect a monument to their own power, the power of capital, with workers' hands. Above, the bourgeoisie's sumptuous cele­bration; below, workers' forced labor. The laboring masses produce a group of leaders, founders of the First International. The Communist Manifesto. Clearly visible are the words "Workers have nothing to lose but their chains, but they have the whole world to win." "Workers of the world, unite!"

Only a small group of French workers answer the call to battle. They fling them­ selves into an attack on the capitalist stronghold. The forward ranks are met by shots and fall. The commune's red banner flies. The bourgeoisie flees. Workers seize its throne and destroy the monument to bourgeois power. The Paris Commune.

Scene 2: The Paris Commune and the Death of the First International

The Communards celebrate a merry holiday. Workers dance the Carmagnole, a dance created by the Great French Revolution. The Paris Commune decrees the foundations of a socialist order. New danger. The bourgeoisie gathers strength and sends the legions of Prussia and Versailles against the First Proletarian Commune. The Communards build barricades, defend themselves bravely, and perish in un­equal battle, never aided by the workers of other nations still unconscious of their class interests. The victors shoot the Communards. Workers remove their fallen comrades' bodies and hide the trampled Red Banner for future battles. Women weep over their dead. The funereal black curtain of reaction envelops the frag­ ments of the Paris Commune.

PART II

The Second International

The Reaction. The bourgeoisie triumphantly celebrates its victory. Below reigns the forced labor of workers. Above, the leaders of the Second International, socialist compromisers, noses buried in books and newspapers.

Nineteen-fourteen and the call to war. The bourgeoisie shouts: "Hurrah for the war. Death to the enemy." The working masses murmur: "We don't want blood" Their indignation grows. Again the red banner flies. Workers pass the banner from hand to hand and try to present it to the Second International leaders.

"You are our leaders. Lead us!" shout the masses. The pseudo-leaders scatter in

confusion. Gendarmes, the bodyguards of the bourgeoisie, exult, and tear the hated Red Banner apart. The horror and moans of workers.

The prophetic words of the people's leader break the funereal silence: "As the banner has been rent asunder, so shall workers' and peasants' bodies be torn by war. Down with war!" A traitorous shot strikes the tribune. Triumphant imperialists propose voting for war credits. The Second International leaders raise their hands after a moment's hesitation, grab their national flags, and split the once unified mass of the world proletariat. Gendarmes lead workers away in different directions. The shameful end of the Second International and the beginning of fratricidal world war.

PART III

The Russian Commune

Scene I: World War

The first battle. The enthroned tsarist government of Russia herds long rows of bleak greatcoats to war. Wailing women try to hold departing soldiers back. Work­ers, exhausted by starvation and excessive labor, join the women's protest. Wounded are brought back from the front, and invalids crippled by war pass by.

The workers' patience is over. Revolution begins. Automobiles, bristling with bay­onets, charge by flying red banners. The crowd, swept away by revolutionary wrath, topples the tsar, then stops dead in amazement. Before the crowd stand the new lords: the ministers of the Provisional Government of appeasers. They call for a continuation of the war "to a victorious conclusion" and send the workers into at­tack. Workers launch another courageous blow supported by an unstoppable stream of soldiers returning from the front, and sweep the appeaser government away. Above the victorious proletariat flares the Second Commune's red banner with emblems of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, the hammer and sickle and slogans from the Declaration of Workers' Rights: "All power to the Soviets," "The Factories to the Workers," and "Land to the People."

Scene 2: Defense of the Soviet Republic —the Russian Commune

Having shed their weapons, workers and soldiers want to begin building a new life. But the bourgeoisie does not want to accept the loss of its supremacy, and begins an embittered fight with the proletariat. The counterrevolution meets with temporary success, manages to crush the unarmed workers, and the Commune is saved only by a great surge of heroism of the worker Red Guard. Foreign imperialists send the Russian White Guard and mercenaries into battle against the Soviet Republic. The danger increases. Workers answer their leaders' summons "To arms!" by creating the Red Army. Fugitives from areas razed by the Civil War appear. They are followed by workers from the crushed Hungarian Soviet Republic. The blood

of Hungarian workers calls for revenge. Welcomed by the people, lit by beams of the Red Star, the Red Army leads the heroic battle for Hungarian and Russian workers, and for workers of the whole world.
Red labor befits the Red Army: it battles against the dislocations of war. The Communist subbotnik? Allegorical female figures representing proletarian victory rally workers of the world to the Third International's banner for a final and decisive battle against world capitalism. The first lines of the workers' hymn.

APOTHEOSIS

The Third International. World Commune
A cannon salvo heralds the breaking of the blockade of Soviet Russia and the world proletariat's victory. The Red Army returns and is reviewed by revolutionary leaders in a ceremonial march. Kings' crowns are strewn at their feet. Festively decorated ships carrying the Western proletariat go by. Workers of the entire world holding labor emblems hurry to the World Commune's holiday. In the sky flare greetings to the Congress in various languages: "Long live the Third International," "Workers of the world, unite."
A public triumphal celebration accompanied by the hymn of the World Commune, the "Internationale."
2. A Saturday of voluntary labor.