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International Viewpoint, the monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International, is a window to radical alternatives world-wide, carrying reports, analysis and debates from all corners of the globe. Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates that are shaping the left of tomorrow.

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  • Part 5 of the Series: Centenary of the Russian Revolution and the Repudiation of Debt

    The French press in the pay of the Tsar

    6 October 2017, by Éric Toussaint

    With the overthrow of Tsarism in February 1917 and the seizing of power by the Bolsheviks and their Socialist Revolutionary allies in October, numerous previously confidential documents were made public (see further on). This allowed Boris Souvarine, a Franco-Russian communist activist to consult Russian imperial archives. He discovered a vast organisation of complicity with the French press that pre-dated the First World War, aimed at promoting Tsarist bond issues to French investors. This affair, in which influential people were corrupted and became accomplices, was denounced by the communist daily L’Humanité in a series of daily articles entitled ’The abominable venality of the French press’ that appeared over a period of several months during 1923 and 1924.

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  • Part 4 of the series: Centenary of the Russian Revolution and the Repudiation of Debt

    The Russian Revolution, Peoples’ Right to Self-determination, and Debt Repudiation

    6 October 2017, by Éric Toussaint

    The Versailles Treaty was eventually signed on 28 June 1919 without Soviet Russia being involved. Even so, this treaty cancelled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Under Article 116 of the Versailles Treaty, Russia could claim compensation from Germany;yet, consistent with its demand for peace without any annexation or any claim for compensation, it did not do so. What mattered most to Soviet Russia was that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk should be cancelled and the territories that Germany had annexed in March 1918 be given back to the peoples to whom they had belonged (the Baltic, Polish, Ukrainian and Russian peoples), in accordance with the principle of peoples’ right to self-determination upheld by the new Soviet government.

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  • Part 3 of the Series: Centenary of the Russian Revolution and the Repudiation of Debt

    The Russian Revolution, Debt Repudiation, War and Peace

    6 October 2017, by Éric Toussaint

    In early January 1918, the Soviet government suspended payment on foreign debt, and in early February 1918 it decreed that all Tsarist debts were repudiated as were those contracted to continue the war by the provisional government between February and November 1917. At the same time, it decided that all assets of foreign capitalists in Russia would be confiscated and returned to the national heritage. In repudiating these debts, the Soviet government was implementing a decision made in 1905 by the soviet (people’s council) of Petrograd (St Petersburg) and the various parties that supported it. This triggered a wave of unanimous protest from the capitals of the major allied powers.

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  • Part 2 of the Series: Centenary of the Russian Revolution and the Repudiation of Debt

    From Tsarist Russia to the 1917 revolution and the repudiation of debt

    6 October 2017, by Éric Toussaint

    The Napoleonic wars ended with Russia emerging as a great European power and participating in the Holy Alliance of three European monarchies, founded on September 26, 1815 in Paris, at the behest of Tsar Alexander I. The Alliance had won over the Napoleonic Empire and they wanted to consolidate their positions and protect themselves from revolutions. Originally, the Russian Empire, the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Prussia were the constituents, while France (where the monarchy had been restored) joined in 1818 and London extended its support.

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