Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/376

 estimated at from 6 to 8 and even 10 billion roubles. During a pause in the negotiations, which lasted about ten days, there developed in Austria a tremendous ferment and labor strikes broke forth. These strikes signified the first recognition of our method of conducting the peace negotiations, the first recognition we received from the proletariat of the central powers anent the annexationist demands of German militarism. As against that, how silly appear the claims of the bourgeois press that we had required two months to negotiate with Kuhlman in order to find out that German Imperialism was imposing robber conditions. No, we knew that from the very start. But by means of the "pourparlers" with the representatives of German Imperialism, we endeavored to find a means to strengthen those forces that oppose German Imperialism. We did not promise to perform miracles but we claimed that the road we were following was the only road left to a revolutionary democracy to secure for itself the possibility of future development.

Complaint might be made that the proletariat of other countries, more especially that of the Central Powers, moved too slowly along the road of the revolutionary struggle—true enough. The tempo of its development must be considered altogether too slow—but, nevertheless, in Austria-Hungary a movement began that spread over the entire country and which was a direct echo of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations.

When I left here, we were saying that we had no reason to suppose that this strike wave would wash away the militarism of Austria and Germany. Had we been so convinced we would, of course, gladly have made the promise that certain persons expected we should make, namely, that under no circumstances would we make a separate peace with Germany. I said then that we could not make such a promise. That would have meant to assume the task of overcoming German militarism. We do not possess the secret of accomplishing such a victory. And since we could not obligate ourselves to change in a short time the relative position of international forces, we declared, openly and honestly, that a revolutionary government may under certain conditions be compelled to accept an annexationist peace. The decline of such a government would have to begin at the moment it would try to hide before its own people the predatory character of such a peace—not because it might be compelled, in the course of such a struggle, to accept such a peace.

At the same time we pointed out that we were going to Brest-Litovsk for the continuance of the peace negotiations under conditions which were becoming better for ourselves but worse for our