Directly he assumed power, Lenine put into effect the Land Decree, which abolished the title of landlords to real estate and confiscated all landed estates, except the small holdings of the peasants. All employers of labor were suppressed, the six-hour day was established in industrial enterprises, and all employees were to have a voice in the management.
There is naught in this program which can be reconciled with German Imperialism, yet many statesmen and soldiers in Allied councils were convinced that an alliance existed between the Bolsheviks and Germany. But it is impossible to conceive of two more extreme opponents in political philosophy, for the Prussian Junkers believed devoutly in the divine commission of kings, as enunciated by the Kaiser himself; and the Bolsheviks, hating every suggestion of imperialism with an intense, raging hatred, threatened death to every king, and recognized, as qualified to rule or govern, none save the proletariat.
Only one tenet did Bolshevism and Prussian militarism have in common, i.e., they were both invincibly opposed to democracy. Both archenemies of political justice, as we Americans understand political justice.
The military leaders and statesmen at Berlin beheld with serious alarm the Revolution of November, 1917. They loathed the Bolsheviks and feared the effect of their insidious propaganda on the German masses. The German Chancellor, Von Bethmann, was obsessed with the fear of Bolshevism, and Ludendorff writes bitterly of the grave error in failing to crush the Soviet Party and to openly take sides with its opponents in Russia. He speaks of the lowered morale of the Eastern German Divisions; how several of them proved utterly worthless in the battles of France, as a consequence of coming in contact with the Bolsheviks; how the Bolshevik revolutionary ideas corroded the spirit of the people at home, and had more to do, than the military defeat, with the downfall of the German Government.
And the Soviet leaders returned the venom of Berlin with even greater virulency. They denounced the Brest-Litovsk agreement, stigmatizing it as: "The rape of Russia," and in their propaganda repeatedly expressed imperishable hatred of the German Imperialists. Lenine withdrew from the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk on 11th February, 1918, and refused to accede to the harsh demands of Germany. Thereupon, the Ukraine was immediately invaded, and on 1st March, the Germans occupied Kiev, the capital, holding a line to Reval on the Gulf of Finland, through Estonia, Pskov, Vilebsk and Mogilev. The helpless Russians could do nothing but submit, and under duress signed the treaty on 3rd March, 1918.
Still has it been affirmed by Allied statesmen time and repeatedly that the Bolsheviks were a willing party to the Brest-Litovsk pact, and that Moscow and Berlin were conspiring for the destruction of all Western civilization.
In his Fourteen Point address to Congress on 8th January, 1918, President Wilson expressed deep sympathy with Russia and enunciated Point VI as one of the cardinal principles for which the Allies fought:
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy, and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests.
