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Rh and cruel monarchies. In a few months we passed through a number of stages of compromise with the bourgeoisie and got over the petty bourgeois illusions, in the grip of which other countries have spent decades. In a few weeks we have overthrown the bourgeoisie and crushed her open resistance in civil war. We passed in a victorious and triumphant procession of Bolshevism from one end of an enormous country to the other. We aroused to freedom and independence the most humble sections of the toiling masses oppressed by czarism and the bourgeoisie. We introduced and :firmly established the Soviet republic—a new type of state—infinitely higher and more democratic than the best of the bourgeois-parliamentary republics. We established the dictatorship of the proletariat, supported by the poorest peasantry, and have inaugurated a comprehensively planned system of Socialist reform. We awakened self-confidence and kindled the fire of enthusiasm in the hearts of millions upon millions of workers of all countries. We sent broadcast the clarion call of the international working class revolution. We challenged the imperialistic plunderers of all countries.

And in a few days an imperialistic brigand knocked us down, attacking those who had no arms. He forced us to sign an incredibly oppressive and humiliating peace—a penalty for our daring to break away, even for as short a time as possible, from the iron grip of the imperialistic war. And the more threateningly the spectre of a working class revolution in his own country rises before the brigand, the more furiously he oppresses and strangles and tears Russia to pieces.

We were compelled to sign a "Tilsit" peace. We must not deceive ourselves. We must have courage to face the unadorned, bitter truth. We must size up in full, to the very bottom, the abyss of defeat, partition, enslavement