Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Nicolai Lenin, His Life and Work (1918).djvu/47

 ing that Lenin's propaganda was not to the taste of the International bourgeoisie. The German bourgeois professors would write entire books to announce that a certain lunatic had arisen, who was preaching a mad propagandist doctrine. But we laughed and said, "Why then do you write books and articles, why concern yourselves with the ravings of a lunatic?" But Comrade Lenin steadily and quietly pursued his labors, and now things have reached such a pass that the German bourgeoisie has had to sign a treaty with Comrade Lenin as representing hundreds of millions of peasants and workers of entire Russia. We shall yet, comrades, see the moment when our proletariat through its leader Lenin will dictate its will to old Europe, when Comrade Lenin will, perhaps, make treaties with the Government of Karl Liebknecht, and when Lenin will help the German workers to draw up the first Socialist decree in Germany (applause).

In March, 1917, Comrade Lenin returned to Russia. You remember, comrades, the witches' sabbath which broke out when Lenin and ourselves, his disciples, came from abroad through Germany. What a howl there was about the celebrated "sealed carriage." As a matter of fact, Lenin entertained towards the German imperialism a hatred as fierce as towards the other Imperialisms. At the beginning of the war the Austrian Government had arrested Lenin, and he spent two weeks in a Galician arrest-house. When a prominent member of Scheideman's party wanted to enter our carriage (which, as a matter of fact, was not sealed) in order to welcome us, the gentleman was told purposely by Lenin that we had no inclination to talk with traitors, and would give him a thrashing if he came to us.

The Mensheviks and Socialist revolutionaries who at first proudly resisted the temptation afterwards went the same way. So far as Lenin was concerned, the matter was simple: all bourgeois Governments were bandits; we had no choice, we could not go to Russia in any other way.

I shall not dwell here in detail on the part which Lenin has played here at Petrograd from the beginning