Page:Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin - Two Years of Foreign Policy (1920).pdf/9

 to present new drastic demands on Russia. The Soviet Government consciously faced the severe trials resulting from the Brest treaty, knowing that the workers' and peasants' revolution would prove stronger than imperialism and that a respite would insure victory. Consenting to the oppressive terms of the treaty, the Soviet Government in no way consented to German interference in the internal regime of Soviet Russia or to any kind of change in this regime. The treaty, moreover, provided for the recognition of the principle of Soviet nationalization, and the question of reparation for the losses incurred by German nationals through nationalization were to be settled by later agreements. Thereby Soviet Russia saved everything, since the Soviet Regime constituted the irresistible force which was bound in the future to transform the Brest treaty into a fatal crisis for German imperialism itself, which after this moved rapidly to its fall, and into one of the most important stages of the revolution on the road to victory over imperialism. "Clause 2", which prohibited either government from carrying on agitation against the institutions of the other, could not halt the course of history.

The period of revolutionary offensive was at first only a period of retreat and tacking. The Brest treaty marked a change in the history of the foreign relations of Soviet Russia. In a struggle of unprecedented difficulty the latter was destined to demonstrate concretely to the toilers of the whole world that a Soviet regime was capable of bearing the combined attacks of internal counter-revolution and of the imperialism of all countries. The first six months after the conclusion of the Brest treaty were characterized by the struggle to overcome its oppressive consequences and to combat the resulting possibilities of further military and economic aggression by German imperialism. The latter, in addition to the constant complications, the threatening troop concentrations and the threats of the local commanders along the boundary line, immediately after the Brest peace flooded Finland and Ukraine