Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/345

 ent nations, or through the acquisition of revolutionary reserves for action in the days to come. A peace of this character means the revolutionary waging of the international proletarian class struggle, the incessant fight for the proletarian revolution, which was given impetus by the proletarian revolution in Russia. The Bolsheviki, accordingly, determined to use their struggle for peace to develop the action of the proletariat in all belligerent nations, to appeal to the proletariat, particularly the proletariat of Germany, to act against their imperialistic governments for the Social Revolution. The struggle for peace was a means to an end: the proletarian revolution in Europe. The proposal for an armistice on all fronts was a means of developing proletarian action, by placing the question of peace before the people, getting the soldiers out of the trendies, encouraging fraternizing, and giving the soldiers opportunity to discuss and act on the problem of peace.

A revolutionary peace was an indispensable condition for the proletarian revolution in Russia. The moderates in the Soviets sensed this fact, hence the appeals to the German proletariat to revolt; but their policy, in accord with the Socialist moderates in the other belligerent nations, directly hampered the revolutionary action of the proletariat by arousing faith in diplomacy and in pro-government, imperialistic conferences at Stockholm and Paris. How could the proletariat of Germany be expected to revolt against its government, when rveolotionaryrevolutionary [sic] Russia was directed by a bourgeois government that could not conceal its imperialistic bias? That secretly plotted war and conspired against the Revolution? It was a psychological and political contradiction. In Germany, where bourgeoisie and autocracy are one, a revolution would from the start have to be a proletarian revolution. The first requisite for a real appeal to the proletariat to revolt was the complete succss of the proletarian revolution in Russia. This was a crucial problem of revolutionary Russia: either the proletarian revolution in Europe, or the acute danger of a collapecollapse [sic] of revolutionary hopes in Russia,—at the least, immensely complicating its problems of reconstruction and existence. The war was precipitated by Imperialism—it must be converted into a struggle against Imperialism; the war was directed against the proletariat, the proletariat must transform it into the Social Revolution.

Throughout the course of the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, Trotzky and the Bolsheviki acted in accord with their revolutionary policy; they used Brest-Litovsk as a forum from which to address the proletariat and the Socialism of the world, particularly the Socialism and the proletariat of Germany. It was clear, from the start, that revolutionary Russia could not secure a just peace without the action of the belligerent proletariat.

But the proletariat did not immediately respond. And the proletariat did not respond largely because moderate Socialism, which dominated the stage, refused to accept the policy of revolutionary Russia, was part and parcel of the nationalistic and imperialistic forces of its own national bourgeoisie. Instead of developing proletarian action, moderate Socialism held the proletariat in leash—acted with imperialistic governments against the proletariat.

Austria and Germany accepted the proposal for an armistice, but the Allies refused, not even answering. This was a fatal error, which was intensified by the subsequent refusal to enter the general peace ngotiationsnegotiations [sic],