Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/377

 enemies. We observed the movement in Austria-Hungary, and there was much to indicate—for that is what the Social Democratic deputies in the Reichstag had reference to—that Germany too was on the eve of such events. Filled with this hope, we departed. And even during the first days of our next stay at Brest, a radiogram via Vilna brought us the first news that in Berlin a tremendous strike movement had broken out, which, just as that of Austria-Hungary, was directly connected with the conduct of the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. But, as is often the case in accordance with the dialectics of the class struggle, the very dimensions of this proletarian movement—never seen in Germany before—compelled a closing of the ranks of the propertied classes and forced them to even greater implacability. The German ruling class is saturated with a sufficiently strong instinct of self-preservation to realize clearly that any concessions made under the conditions it found itself in and pressed by the masses of its own people—that any, even partial, concessions would spell capitulation to the spirit of the revolution. And it was for this reason that Kuhlmann, during the first period of uncertainty, purposely delayed negotiations, either by not holding any sessions at all or by wasting time, when they were held, with purely secondary and formal questions. But as soon as the strike was liquidated, when he knew that his masters were no longer in danger of their lives, he again assumed the tone of complete self-possession and redoubled aggressiveness.

Our negotiations were complicated by the participation of the Kieff [bourgeois Ukrainian] Rada. We did report this the last time. The delegation of the Kieff Rada appeared at the moment when the Rada did have in the Ukraine a fairly strong organization and when the outcome of the struggle could not yet be foretold. At this very moment we made to the Rada an official proposition to enter with us into an agreement and, as the foremost condition of such agreement, we stipulated: that the Rada declare Kaledin and Kornilov counter-revolutionists and that it should not hinder us in fighting both. The delegation of the Kieff Rada arrived at Brest at a time when we hoped to attain our agreement with them and with the enemy. We declared to them that, so long as they were recognized by the people of the Ukraine, we regarded it as possible to admit them as independent participants in the negotiations. But the more events developed in Russia and the Ukraine, the more the antagonism between the people of the Ukraine and the Rada became manifest, all the greater became the willingness of the Rada to close with the governments of the Central Powers the first Brest treaty of