Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/342

 sovereign state, enjoying full autonomy under it. or do they wish to separate themselves from it and have full independence? We must put a stop to a condition in which the strong can, by force of arms, compel the weak to assume what conditions of life the strong may desire: every people, be it great or small, must be the master of its own fate. Now, this is the program not of a party, not of a Soviet, but of the whole people, excepting the predatory party which dares call itself the Party of Popular Liberty, but which in reality is an enemy of popular liberty, fighting against peace with all its might, and against which we have declared our implacable hostility—with the exception of this party, the whole Russian people has declared that it will not tolerate the use of force. And this is the spirit in which we issue our peace decree.

"On the day on which we passed this decree, Krasnov's Cossacks rebelled and danger threatened the very existence of the Soviet power. Yet, hardly had they been defeated and the Soviet authority strengthened, than our first act was to turn to the Allied and German authorities, simultaneously, with a proposition for peace parleys on all fronts. Our enemies, the Cadets and their appendages, said that Germany would ignore us—but it has turned out otherwise, and we already have the assent of Germany and Austria-Hungary to the holding of peace parleys and preliminary peace on the Soviet formula. And even before that, as soon as we obtained the keys to the case of secret diplomatic correspondence, we published the secret treaties, thus fulfilling an obligation that we had assumed toward the people when we were still an insignificant opposition party. We said then, and we say now, that a people cannot shed their blood and that of their brothers for treaties that they have not themselves concluded, have never read or even seen. To these words of mine the adherents of coalition made reply: Do not speak to us in this tongue: this is not the Modern Circus [a large hall for mass-meetings in Petrograd, where this particular address of Trotzky was delivered]. And I answered them, that I have only one tongue, the tongue of a Socialist, and I shall speak in this tongue to the country and to you, to the Allies and the Germans.

"To the adherents of coalition, having the souls of hares, it seemed that to public the secret treaties was equivalent to forcing England and France to declare war on us. But they did not understand that their ruling circles throughout the duration of the war have been talking the people into the idea that the treacherous, cruel enemy is Germany, and that Russia is a noble land; and it is impossible within twenty-four hours to teach them the opposite. By publishing the secret treaties we have incurred the enmity of the governing classes in those countries, but their peoples we have won to our support. We shall not make a diplomatic peace; it will be a people's peace, a soldiers' peace, a real peace. And the outcome of our open policy was clear: Judson appeared at the Smolny Institute, and declared, in the name of America, tint the protest to the Dukhonin staff against the new power was a misunderstanding, and that America had no desire to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia; and, consequently, the American question is disposed of.

"But there is another conflict that is not yet settled I must tell you about it. Because of their fight for peace, the English Government has arrested and is now detaining in concentration camp George Tchicherin,