Then the problems and experiences which I came up against in Georgia, and which are set forth in the present book, will find added significance beyond the confines of Georgia, for the whole of Russia and its border States.
The immediate future will, no doubt, be terrible for the country both north and south of the Caucasus. And even when every dictatorship, White as well as Red, is replaced by democracy, the economic organisms of those districts will, for a long time, bleed from a thousand wounds, and exist in a state of painful convalescence.
Our tasks in Western Europe at the present time consist in strengthening and unifying the Socialist parties and their international organisation. The more we succeed in this, the sooner shall we be in a position, not only to raise our own working class and our own nations, but also to lend powerful aid to a speedy recovery in the East.
Only for astronomers, but not for Socialists, is the saying valid that light comes from the East. When we Socialists of the West are called upon to bring redeeming light to the world, this does not signify a compliment to us, but a task which imposes on us the most devoted activity for our great ideal of the emancipation of the oppressed.
Berlin-Charlottenburg,
September 8th, 1921.
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