Page:Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin - Two Years of Foreign Policy (1920).pdf/6

 once with imperialistic traditions by the publication of the secret treaties as well as by the renunciation of all the agreements dictated by the imperialistic policy of the czarist regime, thereby opening for the peoples of the East a new page in their political development and leading them by this action to the path of liberation from the oppression of European imperialism. These first three months of the existence of Soviet Russia constituted a period of amazingly rapid successes of the new system, of the almost concurrent spread of the workers' and peasants' revolution through the whole territory of Russia, and of decisive victories on the internal fronts.

But the first period of exhilarating victories was soon over. Soviet Russia was immediately confronted by Western imperialism, first of all in its nearest neighbor—Germany. The Berlin strikes ended in failure, the hour of revolution in Germany had not yet come, and, with the aid of the reactionary petty-bourgeois Petlura Government which, after it was driven out of Ukraine and had obtained the support of France, soon sought the support of Germany, the imperialistic victors dictated the Draconian peace terms of Brest. The workers' and peasants' Russia had to break away from the imperialistic world war, but at the same time it refused to sign an annexationist peace. All those who lived through this period will never forget the trying days of the German advance, of the evacuation of Petrograd and the swiftly approaching threat to the very existence of the Soviet Republic. At last the Central Executive Committee was forced to accept the beastly German ultimatum: a new delegation went to Brest and declared that they would sign the peace under compulsion, that, in view of the gun held at the heart of Soviet Russia, they would sign the treaty without even entering into any discussion of its contents, and on March 3, 1918, the treaty was signed.