"We say to the people of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey:
"Under your pressure your Governments have been obliged to accept the motto of no annexations and no indemnities, but recently they have been trying to carry on their old policy of evasion. Remember, that the conclusion of an immediate democratic peace will depend actually and above all on you. All the people of Europe look to you, exhausted and bled by such a war as there never was before, that you will not permit the Austro-German imperialists to make war against revolutionary Russia for the subjection of Poland, Lithuania, Courland, and Armenia."
Simultaneously with the issue of this declaration a pamphlet in German was prepared and published by the hundred thousand copies, wherein the trickery of the German peace parleys was set forth and their pretensions denounced as "unconscionable lies." After a description of the wholesale recruiting of labor forces from Poland and Lithuania carried on by the Germans, amounting to over 300,000 noncombatants, the pamphlet continued:
"The German Government only found support in Courland from the hated slave owners, the German barons, who have their prototypes in the Polish landowners."
The document further declared that the Germans only desired to free the peoples of those border countries that they might be exploited as laborers by German capital, impose an Austrian monarchy in Poland and make Lithuania and Courland German provinces. "On such a basis," added the pamphlet, "we shall never continue negotiations."
The Russian people themselves did not understand the manner in which they had been tricked and betrayed by Trotzky and Lenine and hoped much from the distribution of quantities of these pamphlets among German and Austrian soldiers. Indeed, the German and Austrian commanders are said to have endeavored to have this literature confiscated and destroyed, though it seemed to have little effect on the soldiers of their armies.
On the same date that the official rejection of the German proposals was issued, January 2, 1918, the chairman of the Russian peace delegation sent an official telegram to the German, Austrian, Turkish, and Bulgarian delegations stating that the Russian Government desired to continue the negotiations on foreign soil, in a neutral country, and therefore suggested that the next conference be held in Stockholm. A revision of Articles 1 and 2 of the German-Austrian terms must be discussed, these messages added.
The next session of the peace conference was held at Brest-Litovsk, on January 10, 1918. Trotzky himself now attended, as head of the Russian delegation, to assume direct charge of the deliberations. The Ukrainians were now, for the first time, represented by an independent deputation, their independence being recognized by both the Russians and the representatives of the Central Powers. Bolubovitch, the head of the Ukrainian delegation, said that he had been instructed to hand the following note to the members of the conference:
"The Ukrainian Republic brings the following to the knowledge of all belligerents and neutral states: The Central Rada, on November 20, 1917, proclaimed a People's Republic, and by this act acquired an international status. It has as its ideal the creation of a confederation of all the republics which have arisen in the territory of the former Russian Empire. The Ukrainian People's Republic, through its General Secretariat, proceeds to enter into independent relations pending the formation of a Federal Government in Russia."
The head of the Ukrainian deputation further added that Ukrainia also desired that the peace to be established be on a general democratic basis, in which the rights of the smallest nationalities be recognized.