Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/354



Our adversaries accuse us, who stand on revolutionary internationalist ground, of having considered it possible to enter into peace negotiations with the monarchistic and capitalistic representatives of Germany, Austria and their allies. If this be a contradiction, it is brought about, not by the inconsistency of our tactics, but by the objective state of affairs in Europe. In Russia, the proletariat placed itself at the head of the state, whereas in the other warring countries the power of the state still remains in the hands of the capitalist classes, their bureaucracies and their monarchies. The negotiations of workmen with capitalists during a strike do not at all contradict the principle of the class struggle. The same may be said of the negotiations of a proletarian government with that of the bourgeoisie, as long as the peoples of Europe put up with such governments.

It is usually the same people who reproach us with "betraying" our allies and of "concluding peace" with the Central Powers. This reproach is founded on a quite different estimate both of the allied and of the enemy governments. The fact, however, is that we recognise, in principle, no difference in this respect. An understanding with the government of the German Kaiser weighs as much in the scales of the policy of the internatonal proletariat as the understanding with the governments of the King of Great Britain or of the Mikado. The national differences of state form and of diplomatc usage are completely moved to the background by the uniformity of the imperialistic aims and the methods of the present world policies of the great powers. As to the small states, they play a purely passive role, compelled as they are to dangle in the trail of the great imperialistic States and their groupings.

We must open negotiations with those governments which at present exist. However, we are conducting these negotiations in a way affording the peoples the fullest possibility of controlling the crimes of their governments, and so as to accelerate the rising of