From October to Brest-Litovsk

by Leon Trotsky

Kuehlmann's reply made a tremendous impression upon the working masses of Russia. It was interpreted as a result of the fear felt by the dominant classes of the Central Empires because of the discontent and the growing impatience of the working masses of Germany. On the 28th of December there took place in Petrograd a joint demonstration of workmen and soldiers for a democratic peace. The next morning our delegation came back from Brest-Litovsk and brought those brigand demands which Mr. von Kuehlmann made to us in the name of the Central Empires as an interpretation of his "democratic" formulae.

At the first glance it may seem incomprehensible why the German diplomacy should have presented its democratic formulae if it intended within two or three days to disclose its wolfish appetite. What was it that the German diplomacy expected to bring about? At least, the theoretic discussions which developed around the democratic formulae, owing largely to the initiative of Kuehlmann himself, were not without their danger. That the diplomacy of the Central Empires could not reap many laurels in that way must have been clear beforehand to that diplomacy itself. But the secret of the conduct of the diplomacy of Kuehlmann consisted in that that gentleman was sincerely convinced of our readiness to play a four-handed game with him. His way of reasoning was approximately as follows: Russia needs peace. The Bolsheviki got the power because of their struggle for peace. The Bolsheviki desire to remain in power and this is possible for them only on condition that peace is concluded. It is true that they bound themselves to a definite democratic program of peace, but why do diplomats exist if not for the purpose of making black look white? We Germans will make it easier for the Bolsheviki by covering our plunders by democratic formulas. The Bolshevist diplomacy will have plenty of reason not to dig for the political essence of the matter, or, rather, not to expose to the entire world the contents of the enticing formulae…. In other words, Kuehlmann relied upon a silent agreement with us. He would return to us our fine formulas and we should give him a chance to get provinces and peoples for Germany without a protest. In the eyes of the German workers, the annexations by force would thus receive the sanction of the Russian Revolution. When during the discussions, we showed that with us, it was not a matter of empty words or of camouflaging a conspiracy concluded behind the scenes, but a matter of democratic principles for the international life of the community of nations, Kuehlmann took it as a willful and malicious breaking of the silent agreement. He would not by any means recede from the position taken in the formulas of the 25th of December. Relying upon his cunning, bureaucratic and judicial logic, he tried in the face of the entire world to show that white is in no way different from black, and it was our own perverseness which made us insist that there was such a difference. Count Czernin, the representative of Austria-Hungary, played a part in those negotiations which no one would consider inspiring or satisfactory.

He was an awkward second and upon instructions from Kuehlmann took it upon himself in all critical moments to utter the most extreme and cynical declarations. General Hoffmann brought a refreshing note into the negotiations. Showing no great sympathy for the diplomatic constructions of Kuehlmann, the General several times put his soldierly boot upon the table, around which a complicated judicial debate was developing. We, on our part, did not doubt for a single minute that just this boot of General Hoffmann was the only element of serious reality in these negotiations. The important trump in the hands of Mr. Kuehlmann was the participation in the negotiations of a delegation of the Kiev Rada. For the Ukrainian middle classes, who had seized the power, the most important factor seemed to be the "recognition" of their government by the capitalist governments of Europe. At first the Rada placed itself at the disposal of the Allied imperialists, received from them some pocket money, and immediately thereupon sent their representatives to Brest-Litovsk in order to make a bargain behind the back of the Russian people with the government of Austria-Hungary for the recognition of the legitimate birth of their government. They had hardly taken this first step on the road to "international" existence, when the Kiev diplomacy revealed the same narrow-mindedness and the same moral standards which were always so characteristic of the petty politicians of the Balkan Peninsula. Messrs. Kuehlmann and Czernin certainly had no illusions concerning the solidity of the new participant in the negotiations. But they thought, and correctly so, that the participation of the Kiev delegation complicated the game not without advantage for themselves.

At its first appearance at Brest-Litovsk, the Kiev delegation characterized Ukraine as a component part of the Russian Federated Republic that was in progress of formation. This apparently embarrassed the diplomats of the Central Empires, who considered it their main task to convert the Russian Republic into a new Balkan Peninsula. At their second appearance the delegates of the Rada declared, under dictation from the Austro-Hungarian diplomacy, that Ukraine refused to join the Russian Federation and was becoming an entirely independent republic. In order to give the reader an opportunity to get a better idea of the situation which was thus created for the Soviet power in the last moment of the peace negotiations, I think it best to reproduce here in its basic parts the address made by the author of these lines in his capacity as the People's Commissar on Foreign Affairs at the session of the Central Executive Committee on the 14th of February, 1918.

ADDRESS OF THE PEOPLES COMMISSAR ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Comrades: Upon Soviet Russia has fallen the task not only to construct the new but also to recapitulate the old to a certain degree, or, rather, to a very large degree—to pay all bills, first of all the bills of the war, which has lasted three and a half years. The war put the economic power of the belligerent countries to a severe test. The fate of Russia, a poor, backward country, in a protracted war was predetermined. In the terrible collision of the military machines the determining factor, after all is said and done, is the ability of the country to adapt its industries to the military needs, to rebuild it on the shortest notice and to produce in continuously increasing quantities the weapons of destruction which are used up at such an enormous rate during this massacre of peoples. Almost every country, including the most backward, could and did have powerful weapons of destruction at the beginning of the war; that is, it obtained them from foreign countries. That is what all the backward countries did, and so did Russia. But the war speedily wears out its dead capital, demanding that it be continuously replenished. The military power of every single country drawn into the whirlpool of the world massacre was, as a matter of fact, measured by its ability to produce independently and during the war itself, its cannons and shells and the other weapons of destruction.

If the war had decided the problem of the balance of power in a very short time, Russia might conceivably have turned out to be on that side of the trenches which victory favored. But the war dragged along for a long time, and it was not an accident that it did so. The fact alone that the international politics were for the last fifty years reduced to the construction of the so-called European "balance of power," that is, to a state in which the hostile powers approximately balance one another, this fact alone was bound—when the power and wealth of the present bourgeois nations is considered—to make it a war of an extremely protracted character. That meant first of all the exhaustion of the weaker and economically less developed countries.

The most powerful country in a military sense proved to be Germany, because of the strength of the industries and because of their modern and rational construction as against the archaic construction of the German State. France, with its undeveloped state of capitalism, proved to be far behind Germany, and even such a powerful colonial power as Great Britain, owing to the conservative and routine character of the English industries, proved to be weaker than Germany. When history put before the Russian Revolution the question of the peace negotiations, we had no doubt that in these negotiations, and so long as the decisive power of the revolutionary proletariat of the world had not interfered, we should be compelled to stand the bill of three and a half years of war. There was no doubt in our minds that in the person of the German imperialism we were dealing with an opponent who was saturated with the consciousness of his immense power, which was strikingly revealed during the present war.

All the arguments made by bourgeois cliques that we might have been incomparably stronger if we had conducted these negotiations together with our allies are absolutely without foundation. In order that we might at an indefinite future date conduct negotiations together with our Allies, we should first of all have had to continue the war together with them. And if our country was weakened and exhausted, the continuation of the war, a failure to bring it to a conclusion, would have still further weakened and exhausted it. We should have had to settle the war under conditions still more unfavorable to us. In the case even that the combination of which Russia, owing to international intrigues of Czarism and the bourgeoisie, had become a part—the combination headed by Great Britain—in the case even that this combination had come out of the war completely victorious—let us for a moment admit the possibility of such a not very probable issue—even in that case, comrades, it does not mean that our country would also have come out victorious. For during further continuation of this protracted war, Russia would have become even more exhausted and plundered than now. The masters of that combination, who would concentrate in their hands the fruits of the victory, that is, Great Britain and America, would have displayed toward our country the same methods which were displayed by Germany during the peace negotiations. It would be absurd and childish to appraise the politics of the imperialistic countries from the point of view of any considerations other than those considerations of naked interests and material power. Consequently, if we, as a nation are at present weakened before the imperialism of the world, we are weakened, not because of extricating ourselves from the fiery ring of the war, having already previously extricated ourselves from the shackles of international military obligations: no! we are weakened by that very policy of the Czarists and the bourgeois classes, which we, as a revolutionary party, have always fought against before this war and during this war.

You remember, comrades, under what conditions our delegation went to Brest-Litovsk last time, right after one of the sessions of the Third All-Russian Congress of the Soviets. At that session, we reported on the state of the negotiations, and the demands of our opponents. These demands, as you remember, were really no more than masked, or, rather, half-masked annexationist aspirations at the expense of Lithuania, Courland, a part of Livonia, the Isles of Moon Sound, as well as a half-masked demand for a punitive war indemnity which we then estimated would amount to six, eight or even ten milliards of rubles. During interruption of the sessions, which continued for about ten days, a considerable disturbance took place in Austria-Hungary; strikes of masses of workers broke out, and these strikes were the first recognition of our methods of conducting peace negotiations that we met with from the proletariat of the Central Empires, as against the annexationist demands of the German militarism. We promised here no miracles but we did say that the road we were pursuing was the only road remaining to the revolutionary democracy for securing the possibility of its further development.