Source: Leften Stavros Stavrianos, Balkan Federation. A history of the movement toward Balkan unity in modern times, Northampton, Mass., Dept. of history of Smith college, 1944, pp. 289-291;
Reprinted: from Bulletin périodique du bureau socialiste internationale, no. 2 (1910), 64-66;
Transcribed: by Zdravko Saveski
Under the enforced guardianship and by the preponderating influence of European diplomacy, instrument of the political expansion of European capitalism, there has been created, in the historic past of South-Eastern Europe and especially in the Balkan peninsula, territorial and national situations, which hinder the modern economic development and the culture of the people, and which are most strenuously opposed to their interests and to their needs. From these contradictions arise all those crises, perturbations and events, which serve as pretexts for European diplomacy and its monarchic reactionary agents, to uphold their policy of interference, guardianship, conquest and reaction.
The first Balkan social-democratic conference declares, in opposition to this policy, that the movements and the struggles of the nations of South-Eastern Europe and of the Balkans, who possess all the conditions of culture for autonomous development, are the expression of inevitable aspiration to economic and political enfranchisement.
The fewer the countries not under foreign rule, the more will capitalism without any consideration, hurl itself on those agricultural countries, which are industrially undeveloped and incapable of political resistance, in order there to place its surplus gained from the exploitation of the workers in its own country. By the interest to be paid on State loans, by the super-profits gained on undertakings of unlimited concessions, and finally by commercial treaties and taxes on transport, European capitalism has drawn the Balkans and the countries of South-Eastern Europe into the sphere of its ruthless exploitation. In acting thus, the economic forces of the Balkan countries are exhausted, their development and their progress are kept down and their very existence is threatened.
This territorial and national subdivision is not in accordance with the transformation which the triumphal march of capitalism has created in the conjuncture of economic life. All the progressive force of the people must strive to enfranchise itself from Particularism and from Isolation which only satisfies patriarchal life and the limitation of such to the clan and to the village; they must aspire, moreover, to do away with the numerous frontiers, which, on the one hand separate people of identical language, nationality and culture and on the other, separate countries whose economic and political destines are united; they must finally aim at shaking off the yoke of direct or indirect foreign rule, which takes away from the people the right to dispose of their own fate.
However, while the working class, by class struggle, aim at the realization of this aspiration, the capitalists, supported by the monarchy, and thanks to the economic, political and national conditions, existing in South-Eastern Europe, create a new national antagonism which prevents the solution of the Balkan question by the amalgamation of the nations.
While recognizing the necessity and the justification of the aspirations of the people of South-Eastern Europe, the Balkan conference is of the opinion that these aspirations cannot be realized except by the coalition of economic forces, by the suppression of artificially created borders, by the complete reciprocity and community of existence and protection from a common danger. For this reason the Conference of Social-democracy thinks it advisable to combat all antagonism existing between the people of South-Eastern Europe, bring about an understanding between them and support, with all their might, all aspirations tending to materialize the complete democratic autonomy of the people and the independence of the nations, which are the first conditions needed to wrest the lives of these people from the hands of their reactionary, foreign and native rulers, in order thus to open the path to union demanded by modern economic and political autonomy. Social-Democracy must formulate these desires first because this solution of the question corresponds best with the interests of the social and united development, and also because the activity of social-democracy is permanently determined by the development of the people, whom it influences, and because the strength of the class struggle develops most completely in independent nations.
The first social-democratic conference in the Balkans points out especially that this inevitable transformation cannot be realized in the sense of the interests of the people by the militarist policy of the Balkan monarchies and by reactionary bourgeois rule, because these stir up antagonism between nations, sow hatred and distrust, and destroy the economic and political force of the people. Nor can the policy of appeal to the capitalist states of Europe be of use to the people, for the governing classes, whether they be monarchist, or republican, whether they be united nationally or composed of different nations, never can or will give up their privileged position. Social-democracy, acting as representative of the working class, which is divided by the antagonism dividing the governing classes, has undertaken the important mission of constituting itself the most conscious, energetic and consistent champion of the idea of the solidarity of the nations of South-Eastern Europe, and, by the struggle of the proletarian class, of strengthening the force of resistance of the people against the policy of conquest of European capitalism. It raises itself especially against the imperialist tendency of Austria-Hungary and against the influence of Russian Czarism, which throws itself with more vigor into its profit earning and sanguinary policy in the Balkans, now that it has been repulsed in the Far East and lives in greater enmity with the people of its own country.
It is the duty of the secretaries of the social-democratic parties of the Balkans and of South-Eastern Europe, through the intermediary of the secretary of the social-democratic party in Belgrade, to remain in close touch with each other, and thus to make it possible to act simultaneously, uniformly and in agreement in carrying out the present resolutions. For the next conference, which will be held in 1911 at Sofia a detailed programme of our political and national claims must be drawn up, as well as an outline of the organization of the relations of social-democratic parties in the Balkans and South-Eastern Europe.