Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/154

 142 achievement. The Russian democracy has shattered in the dust the age-long despotism of the Tsar, and enters in your circle as an equal member, as a mighty power in the struggle for our common liberation. Our victory is a great victory for the freedom and democracy of the world. The chief pillars of reaction in the world, the 'gendarmes of Europe,' are no more. May the earth turn to heavy granite on their graves. Long live freedom! Long live the international solidarity of the proletariat and its struggle for final victory!

"Our deed is not yet completed: the shades of the old order have not yet dispersed, and not a few enemies are gathering their forces against the Russian Revolution. Yet our conquests are mighty. The peoples of Russia will express their will in the Constitutent Assembly, which is to be called together as soon as possible, on the basis of universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage. And already now we can predict with certainty that the democratic republic will triumph in Russia. The Russian people enjoys full political freedom. To-day it can say its sovereign word in the internal self-determination of the country and in its foreign policy. And, turning to all the peoples, desolated and massacred as they are in this inhuman war, we announce that the time has come to begin the decisive struggle with the grasping ambitions of the governments of all countries; the time has come for the peoples to take into their own hands the decision of the question of war and peace.

"Conscious of its revolutionary power, the Russian democracy announces that it will use all means to oppose the annexationist policy of its ruling classes, and invites the peoples of Europe to united and vigorous action on behalf of peace.

"And we turn to our brother-proletarians of the Austro-German alliance, and, above all, to the German proletariat. From the first days of the war you have been assured that in taking up arms against autocratic Russia you were defending European civilisation