Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/206

 resentatives of the bourgeoisie that bad hitherto concealed, for a time, their imperialistic claws. Perhaps nowhere did this combination display its counter-revolutionary character better than in the domain of international politics, that is, above all, in the war. The capitalistic bourgeoisie sent its representatives to the Cabinet in the name of "an offensive on the front and unalterable fidelity to our allies" (resolution of the Cadet Conference). The petit bourgeois democrats, who call themselves Socialists, entered the Cabinet in order, "without tearing themselves away" from the capitalistic bourgeoisie and their world allies, to conclude the war in the quickest possible manner and with the least possible offense to all the participants: without annexations, without indemnities and contributions, and even with a guarantee of national self-determination.

The capitalist ministers renounced annexations, until a more favorable time; in return for this purely verbal concession they received from their petit bourgeois democratic colleagues a binding promise not to desert the ranks of the Allies, to re-invigorate the army and make it capable of resuming the offensive. In renouncing Constantinople (for the moment) the imperialists were making a rather worthless sacrifice, for, in the course of three years of war, the road to Constantinople had become not shorter, but longer. But the democrats, to compensate the purely platonic renunciation of a very doubtful Constantinople by the liberals, took over the whole heritage of the Czarist government, recognized all the treaties which that government had concluded, and put all the authority and prestige of the Revolution in the service of discipline and the offensive. This bargain involved, first of all, a renunciation, on the part of the "leaders" of the Revolution, of any such thing as an independent international policy: this conclusion was only natural to the petty bourgeois party, which when it was in the majority, willingly surrendered all its power. Having handed over to Prince Lvov the duty of creating a revolutionary administration; to M. Shingariev the task of re-making the finances of the Revolution; to M. Konovalov, that of organizing industry; the petit bourgeois democracy could not help handing over to Messrs. Ribot, Lloyd George and Wilson the charge of the international interests of revolutionary Russia.

Even though the Revolution, in its present phase, has not therefore altered the character of the war, it has nevertheless exerted a profound influence on the living agent of the war, namely, the army. The soldier began asking himself what it was for which he was shedding his blood, upon which he now set a higher price that un-