Page:Arthur Ransome - The Truth about Russia.djvu/14

 matter. Many German soldiers, to their eternal honour, refused to advance, and were shot. The demobilisation of the Russian army meant little, because it had long ceased to be anything but a danger to the peaceful population in its rear. The Soviet had only the very smallest real force, and that, as yet, unorganised, with enthusiasm but without confidence, utterly unpracticed in warfare, consisting chiefly of workmen, who, as was natural, were the first to understand what it was they had to defend. It soon became clear that serious resistance was impossible. The Soviet Government was faced with a choice: to collapse in a quite unequal struggle; or to sign a shameful peace. Many thought that the cause of revolution would be best served by their deaths, and were ready to die. Lenin doubted the efficacy of such a rhetorical gesture, and believed that the secession of Russia from the war would insure the continuation of the war by the imperialistic groups until such time as other countries reached the same exhaustion as had been reached by Russia, when, in his opinion, revolution would be inevitable. He held that, for the future of the World Revolution, the best that could be done would be the preservation even in seriously limited territory of the Soviet Government, as a nucleus of revolution, as an illustration of the possibility of revolution, until that moment when the workers of Russia should be joined by the workers of the world. His opinion carried the majority, first of the Executive Committee, then of the fourth All-Russian Assembly. The Germans replied to the Russian offer to sign peace with a statement which was an ironic parody of the Russian declaration at Brest: the Russians had said, "We will not sign peace, but the war is ended." The Germans said, "We agree to peace, but the war shall continue."

And, indeed, while the Soviet Government moved to Moscow, the Germans, using in the south the pretext of the Ukrainian Rada and in the north that of the bourgeois Finnish Government, advanced through the Ukraine to the outlet of the Don, and in the north to the very gates of Petrograd. The matter stands so, as I write these lines. By the time you read them much will have happened that it is impossible now to foresee.

From the moment of the October revolution on, the best illustration of the fact that the Soviet Government is the natural government of the Russian people, and has deep roots in the whole of the conscious responsible part of the working classes and the peasantry, has been the attitude of the defeated minorities who oppose it. Whereas the Bolsheviki worked steadily in the Soviets when the majority was against them, and made their final move for power only when assured that they had an overwhelming majority in the Soviets behind them, their opponents see their best hope of regaining power not in the Soviets, not even in Russia itself, but in some extraordinary intervention from without. By asking for foreign