Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/341



In the problem of peace the Soviet Government met a crucial test. As this problem had been a vital issue in the struggle against the Provisional Government, it was now a vital issue in the activity of the Workers' and Peasants' Government. The great masses of the people yearned for peace; and yet the problem was not as simple as all that. Peace had to be considered in relation to the Revolution, and the struggle for peace must be in accord with the policy of the Revolution.

The first move toward the conclusion of peace was the offer of the Soviet Government to all belligerents to declare an armistice on all fronts and open general peace negotiations. A day or two after this offer was made, Leon Trotzky, Commissaire of Foreign Affairs, delivered an address in Petrograd, to an audience of 12,000 people, in which he said:

"In this building on November 5 I spoke to a popular meeting at which the question of an All-Russian Congress was being discussed, and all voices were raised in favor of Soviet power. The question which has been most emphatically before the people in all the eight months of the Revolution is the question of war and peace, and we maintained that only a power basing its authority directly on the people could put an end to die slaughter. We maintained that the secret treaties must be published, and declared that the Russian people, not having made these treaties, could not be bound to carry out the conquests agreed upon therein. Our enemies answered that this was demagogy. You would never dare, if you were in power, they said, to do this, for then the Allies would oppose us. But we maintained that the salvation of Russia was in peace. We pointed out that the prolonged character of the war was destroying the Revolution, was exhausting and destroying the country, and that the longer we should fight the more complete the slavish position we should then occupy, so that at last we should merely be left the choice of picking a master.

"We desire to live and develop as a free nation; but, for the conclusion of peace, we had to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and of Kerensky. They told us we would be left without any supporters. But on November 7 the local Soviet of Petrograd took the initiative upon itself, as well as the responsibility; and, with the aid of the garrison and the workers, accomplished the coup d'etat, appeared before the Congress of Soviets then in session, and said: 'The old power in the country is broken, there is no authority anywhere, and we are obliged to take it into our own hands.' We have said that the first obligation devolving upon the new power is the offering of peace parleys on all fronts, for the conclusion of a peace without annexations or indemnities on the basis of self-determination of peoples, that is, each people, through popular elections, must speak for itself the decisive word: Do they wish to enter into a confederation with their present