Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/346

 thereby permitting Germany to wreak her brutal purposes upon Russia. Nor did the Socialist movement respond to the opportunity of the armistice: on the whole, international Socialism, corrupt, hesitant, bourgeois, committed to a government policy, did nothing while revolutionary Russia in isolation struggled against desperate odds for a workers' peace. Not even the Socialist Party of the United States, which declared against the war, acted upon the armistice proposal. The Socialist Propaganda League alone in this country approved the armistice: at a mass meeting held in New York City December 20. it adopted the following resolution, which had been preceded for a month by a leaflet agitation:

"The workers of the world demand an immediate general peace, a peace that shall alter the imperialistic status quo ante in accord with the international aspirations of the revolutionary proletariat of Russia.

"The governments of the imperialistic belligerents are determined upon a continuation of the war in the interest of their particular Imperialism; the proletariat alone as a class is interested in and can hasten an immediate peace that shall promote civilization and progress.

"The class interests of the American proletariat make necessary the adoption of an immediate program of action:

"1.—We demand that the government accept the proposal of the de facto government of Russia for the immediate conclusion of an armistice on all belligerent fronts.

"2.—We demand that the government insist that Great Britain, France and Italy shall equally accept this armistice.

"3.—We demand that the negotiations for an armistice shall not include the discussion of peace terms, the discussion and formulation of those terms being left to the peoples of each belligerent nation.

"4.—We call upon the class conscious workers to prepare the organization of a proletarian peace congress, which shall discuss our action in co-operation with the international proletariat and in accord with the peace principles of revolutionary Socialism.

"The proletariat must organize as an independent factor in the process of securing peace, separate and distinct from all other groups. The proletariat alone is international in its interests, and it alone can determine the conclusion of an international peace upon the formula of revolutionary Russia.

"We affirm our solidarity with the proletariat of Russia, and express our fraternal appreciation of its intrepid class conscious activity."

The Soviet proposal was that general peace negotiations would be opened on the basis of an acceptance of the formula "no annexations and no indemnities." Austria and Germany accepted, but it was soon made clear by their plenipotentiaries that they were determined to interpret the formula to promote their imperialistic interests. The German proposal intensely brutal and hypocritical, was that self-determination had been already accomplished in the Russian territory occupied by Germany and Austria, by means of governments—set up by Germany and completely under German domination! Trotzky exposed the hypocricy of this contention, and insisted that all German troops should evacuate the occupied provinces while a plebiscite was taken. The Austro-German diplomats refused. The Bolshevik representatives carried on a brilliant struggle, but the Austro-Germans were obdurate. The negotiations were temporarily broken off, while the armistice was extended for another period.

During this time, when the Bolsheviki at Brest-Litovsk were making it amply clear that they were straggling for a rust international peace, the Allied governments did nothing to support their efforts. The imperialistic policy of the bourgeois governments clashed with the revolutionary policy of the proletarian government.

In the meanwhile, the Bolsheviki were carrying on an intensive revolutionary propaganda in the armies of Germany and Austria, and in Germany and Austria itself. Through their bureau of International Propaganda, they