Page:Boris Zakharovich Shumyatsky - The Aims of the Bolsheviki (1919).djvu/15

 ii. The Question of War and Peace.—The Bolsheviki had always maintained that the war was being waged by the capitalists of all countries for the annexation of territory, for the acquirement of new markets for their manufactured goods, and of new places for the obtaining of raw materials: in brief the capitalists needed the war in order to enrich themselves and to make enormous profits.

Under no circumstances could the war bring the workers anything but disaster and ruin. That is why the Bolsheviki were uncompromising opponents of the war and refused to support the capitalists of one side against those of the other, knowing full well that the capitalists of all countries are the enemies of the workers. In deeds, net merely in words, they waged a struggle for a universal people's peace.

A truce and subsequent coalition with the bourgeoisie, leading to the support of its annexationist military and commercial treaties, would have constituted a betrayal of the working class. The workers had already been betrayed by the participation of the Right Socialists in the Provisional Government which was committed to such treaties. This alliance even compelled the Right S.R.'s to acquiesce in the offensive undertaken by Kerensky at the instigation of the Anglo-French capitalists.

The Bolsheviki knew that the capitalists of all countries were deceiving the people by promising a speedy and just peace, whilst in reality they were prolonging an annexationist war. The Russian capitalists, who had the Provisional Government under their thumb, did not want to publish those secret, predatory treaties which the late Czar, Nicholas Romanov, had made with the capitalists of England, France and other countries in order to take Constantinople and Armenia from the