Date: 1918
Source: ru:PSS/v36

The political report could consist of a listing of the Central Committee's activities, but what is urgently needed at the present moment is not such a report, but an outline of our revolution as a whole; only it can provide the sole Marxist justification for all our decisions. We must consider the entire previous course of the revolution's development and clarify why its further development has changed. In our revolution, we have such turning points that will have enormous significance for the international revolution, namely, the October Revolution.

The initial successes of the February Revolution were conditioned by the fact that the proletariat was followed not only by the rural masses, but also by the bourgeoisie. Hence the ease of victory over Tsarism, which we failed to achieve in 1905. The spontaneous, elemental creation of Soviets of Workers' Deputies in the February Revolution repeated the experience of 1905 – we had to proclaim the principle of Soviet power. The masses learned the tasks of the revolution from their own experience of struggle. The events of April 20-21 were a peculiar combination of demonstration with something like an armed uprising. This was enough for the fall of the bourgeois government. A lengthy policy of compromise begins, stemming from the very essence of the petty-bourgeois government that came to power. The July Days could not yet realize the dictatorship of the proletariat – the masses were not yet prepared. Therefore, none of the responsible organizations called them to this. But in terms of reconnaissance in the enemy camp, the July Days were of enormous significance. The Kornilov affair and subsequent events, as practical lessons, made the October victory possible. The mistake of those who wanted to divide power even in October was that they did not connect the October victory with the July Days, the offensive, the Kornilov affair, etc., etc., which led the multi-million masses to the realization that Soviet power had become inevitable. Next follows our triumphal march throughout Russia, accompanied by everyone's desire for peace. We know that we will not achieve peace by unilaterally renouncing the war; we pointed this out at the April Conference. Soldiers so clearly realized in the era from April to October that the policy of compromise only prolongs the war, leads to wild, senseless attempts by the imperialists to advance, to become even more entangled in a war that will drag on for years. It was on this basis that it was necessary at all costs to move as quickly as possible to an active policy of peace, it was necessary to take power into the hands of the Soviets, to sweep away landlord landownership to the end. You know that it was supported not only by Kerensky, but also by Avksentiev, even going so far as to arrest members of land committees. And this policy, this slogan "All Power to the Soviets," instilled by us in the consciousness of the broadest masses of the people, gave us the opportunity in October to win so easily in Petrograd, turning the last months of the Russian revolution into one continuous triumphal march.

Civil war became a fact. What we predicted at the beginning of the revolution and even at the beginning of the war, and which was then treated with distrust or even ridicule in a significant part of socialist circles, namely, the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war, on October 25, 1917, became a fact for one of the largest and most backward countries participating in the war. In this civil war, the overwhelming majority of the population turned out to be on our side, and as a result, victory was given to us unusually easily.

The troops leaving the front brought from there, wherever they appeared, the maximum revolutionary determination to put an end to compromise, and the compromising elements, the White Guard, the sons of landowners, turned out to be deprived of any support in the population. The war with them gradually, with the transition to the side of the Bolsheviks of broad masses and military units moving against us, turned into a victorious triumphal march of the revolution. We saw this in Petrograd, on the Gatchina front, where the Cossacks, whom Kerensky and Krasnov tried to lead against the red capital, wavered, we saw this later in Moscow, in Orenburg, in Ukraine. Throughout Russia, a wave of civil war rose, and everywhere we won with extraordinary ease precisely because the fruit had ripened, because the masses had already gone through the entire experience of compromise with the bourgeoisie. Our slogan "All Power to the Soviets," practically tested by the masses through long historical experience, became their flesh and blood.

That is why the first months of the Russian revolution after October 25, 1917, were a continuous triumphal march. Behind this continuous triumphal march, the difficulties that the socialist revolution encountered immediately and could not but encounter were forgotten, pushed into the background. One of the main differences between a bourgeois and a socialist revolution is that for a bourgeois revolution, growing out of feudalism, new economic organizations are gradually created in the depths of the old system, which gradually change all aspects of feudal society. Before the bourgeois revolution, there was only one task – to sweep away, discard, destroy all the fetters of the former society. By fulfilling this task, every bourgeois revolution fulfills everything that is required of it: it strengthens the growth of capitalism.

The socialist revolution is in a completely different position. The more backward the country that, due to the zigzags of history, had to begin the socialist revolution, the more difficult it is for it to transition from the old capitalist relations to socialist ones. Here, new tasks of unprecedented difficulty – organizational tasks – are added to the tasks of destruction. If the popular creativity of the Russian revolution, which went through the great experience of 1905, had not created the Soviets back in February 1917, then in no case could they have taken power in October, since success depended only on the availability of already prepared organizational forms of the movement that encompassed millions. The Soviets were this ready-made form, and therefore in the political sphere we were awaited by those brilliant successes, that continuous triumphal march that we experienced, because a new form of political power was ready and we only had to transform the power of the Soviets from the embryonic state in which it was in the first months of the revolution into a legally recognized form, established in the Russian state, – into the Russian Soviet Republic, with a few decrees. It was born immediately, born so easily because in February 1917 the masses created the Soviets, even before any party managed to proclaim this slogan. The very deep popular creativity, which went through the bitter experience of 1905, and was made wiser by it, – that is who created this form of proletarian power. The task of defeating the internal enemy was an extremely easy task. The task of creating political power was extremely easy, because the masses gave us the skeleton, the basis of this power. The Soviet Republic was born immediately. But there remained two gigantic difficult tasks, the solution of which could in no way be the triumphal march that our revolution took in the first months, – we had no doubt and could not have any doubt that in the future the socialist revolution would face gigantic difficult tasks.

Firstly, these were the tasks of internal organization facing every socialist revolution. The difference between a socialist revolution and a bourgeois revolution lies precisely in the fact that in the second case there are ready-made forms of capitalist relations, while Soviet power – proletarian – does not receive these ready-made relations, if we do not take the most developed forms of capitalism, which, in essence, covered small tops of industry and have touched agriculture very little. The organization of accounting, control over the largest enterprises, the transformation of the entire state economic mechanism into a single large machine, into an economic organism, working so that hundreds of millions of people are guided by one plan, – this is the gigantic organizational task that fell on our shoulders. Under the current conditions of labor, it in no way allowed for a solution "at a rush," in the same way that we managed to solve the tasks of the civil war. The very essence of the matter did not allow for this solution. If we so easily defeated our Kaledinites and created a Soviet republic with resistance that did not even deserve serious attention, then such a course of events was predetermined by all objective previous development, so that it only remained to say the last word, to change the sign, instead of "The Soviet exists as a professional organization" to write: "The Soviet is the only form of state power," – then the situation was not at all the same with regard to organizational tasks. Here we encountered gigantic difficulties. Here it was immediately clear to everyone who wanted to thoughtfully approach the tasks of our revolution that only through a difficult, long path of self-discipline can we overcome the decay that the war brought into capitalist society, only through an extremely difficult, long, persistent path can we overcome this decay and defeat those elements that increase it, who looked at the revolution as a way to get rid of the old fetters, tearing off what they could from it. The appearance of a large number of these elements was inevitable in a small-peasant country at a moment of incredible devastation, and we face a struggle with them a hundred times more difficult, promising no spectacular position, – a struggle that we have only just begun. We are on the first step of this struggle. Here we face difficult trials. Here, due to the objective state of affairs, we will in no case be able to limit ourselves to the triumphal march with unfurled banners, with which we marched against the Kaledinites. Anyone who tried to transfer this method of struggle to the organizational tasks facing the revolution would be completely bankrupt as a politician, as a socialist, as an activist of the socialist revolution.

And the same awaited some of our young comrades who were carried away by the initial triumphal march of the revolution, when the second of the gigantic difficulties that fell on its shoulders, – the international question, – concretely arose before the latter. If we so easily dealt with Kerensky's gangs, if we so easily created power for ourselves, if we received a decree on the socialization of land and workers' control without the slightest difficulty, – if we received all this so easily, it was only because the happily formed conditions for a short moment shielded us from international imperialism. International imperialism with all the power of its capital, with its highly organized military technology, representing a real force, a real fortress of international capital, could in no case, under no conditions, coexist with the Soviet Republic, both due to its objective position and due to the economic interests of the capitalist class that was embodied in it, – could not due to trade relations, international financial relations. Here the conflict is inevitable. Here is the greatest difficulty of the Russian revolution, its greatest historical problem: the need to solve international tasks, the need to cause an international revolution, to make this transition from our revolution, as a narrowly national one, to a world one. This task stood before us in all its incredible difficulty. I repeat that very many of our young friends who consider themselves leftists have begun to forget the most important thing, namely: why during the weeks and months of the greatest triumph after October we were able to make such an easy transition from triumph to triumph. Meanwhile, this was only because the specially formed international conjuncture temporarily shielded us from imperialism. It was not up to us. It seemed to us that we were not up to imperialism either. And individual imperialists were not up to us only because the greatest socio-political and military force of modern world imperialism turned out to be divided by internecine war into two groups by this time. The imperialist predators, drawn into this struggle, reached incredible limits, to a death grip, to the point that none of these groups could concentrate any serious force against the Russian revolution. We fell into just such a moment in October: our revolution fell – this is paradoxical, but it is true – into a happy moment when unprecedented disasters befell the vast majority of imperialist countries in the form of the destruction of millions of people, when the war exhausted the peoples with unprecedented disasters, when in the fourth year of the war the warring countries approached a dead end, to a crossroads, when the question objectively arose: can the peoples brought to such a state continue to fight? Only thanks to the fact that our revolution fell into this happy moment, when none of the two gigantic groups of predators could immediately either pounce on each other or unite against us, – only this moment of international political and economic relations could be used and was used by our revolution to make this brilliant triumphal march in European Russia, to spread to Finland, to begin conquering the Caucasus, Romania. Only this explains the fact that we have party workers, intellectual supermen in the advanced circles of our party who allowed themselves to be carried away by this triumphal march, who said: we will cope with international imperialism; there will also be a triumphal march there, there is no real difficulty there. This is where the divergence lies between the objective position of the Russian revolution, which only took advantage of the temporary lull of international imperialism, since the machine that was supposed to move against us temporarily stalled, just as a railway train moves against a wheelbarrow and crushes it, – and the machine stalled because two groups of predators collided. There and here the revolutionary movement was growing, but in all without exception imperialist countries it was in most cases still in its initial stage. Its pace of development was not at all the same as ours. For anyone who thought about the economic prerequisites of the socialist revolution in Europe, it could not but be clear that it is immeasurably more difficult to start in Europe, and it is immeasurably easier for us to start, but it will be more difficult to continue the revolution there than here. This objective situation created what we had to experience an unusually difficult, sharp turning point in history. From a continuous triumphal march in October, November, December on our internal front, against our counter-revolution, against the enemies of Soviet power, we had to move to a clash with real international imperialism in its real hostile attitude towards us. From the period of the triumphal march, we had to move to a period of unusually difficult and grave situation, from which it is of course impossible to get rid of with words, brilliant slogans – no matter how pleasant it would be – because we had incredibly tired masses in our disrupted country, who reached such a state when it is impossible to fight further in any way, who are so broken by the agonizing three-year war that they are brought to a state of complete military unfitness. Even before the October Revolution, we saw representatives of the soldier masses who did not belong to the Bolshevik party, who did not hesitate to tell the truth before the entire bourgeoisie, which consisted in the fact that the Russian army would not fight. This state of the army created a gigantic crisis. The country, small-peasant in its composition, disorganized by the war, brought by it to an unprecedented state, is placed in an unusually difficult position: we have no army, and we have to continue to live next to a predator who is armed to the teeth, who still remained and remains a predator and whom, of course, agitation about peace without annexations and indemnities could not move. A meek domestic beast lay next to a tiger and persuaded him that peace should be without annexations and indemnities, whereas the latter could only be achieved by attacking the tiger. The tops of our party – the intelligentsia and part of the workers' organizations – tried to get rid of this prospect first of all with phrases, excuses: this should not be. This peace was too incredible a prospect for us, who had so far gone into open battle with unfurled banners, who had taken all enemies with a shout, that we could concede, accept humiliating conditions. Never. We are too proud revolutionaries, we first of all declare: "The German will not be able to advance." Such was the first excuse with which these people comforted themselves. History has now put us in an unusually difficult position; we have to go through a series of agonizing defeats with incredibly difficult organizational work. If we look at it on a world-historical scale, then there is no doubt that the final victory of our revolution, if it remained alone, if there was no revolutionary movement in other countries, would be hopeless. If we took the whole matter into the hands of one Bolshevik party, then we took it upon ourselves, being convinced that the revolution is ripening in all countries, and, in the end, – and not at the beginning of beginnings, – no matter what difficulties we experience, no matter what defeats we are destined for, the international socialist revolution will come, – because it is coming; will ripen, – because it is ripening, and will ripen. Our salvation from all these difficulties – I repeat – is in the all-European revolution. Proceeding from this truth, a completely abstract truth, and guided by it, we must ensure that it does not turn into a phrase over time, because every abstract truth, if you apply it without any analysis, turns into a phrase. If you say that behind every strike there is the hydra of revolution, whoever does not understand this is not a socialist, – then this is true. Yes, behind every strike there is a socialist revolution. But if you say that every given strike is a direct step towards a socialist revolution, then you will say the emptiest phrase. We have heard this "every blessed time in this place" and we are so fed up that the workers have rejected all these anarchist phrases because, as it is certain that behind every strike there is the hydra of the socialist revolution, it is also clear that it is nonsense to assert that it is possible to move from every strike to a revolution. As it is completely indisputable that all the difficulties of our revolution will be overcome only when the world socialist revolution ripens, which is now ripening everywhere, – so completely absurd is the assertion that we must hide every given concrete difficulty of our revolution today, saying: "I am betting on the international socialist movement, – I can do any stupidity." "Liebknecht will help out because he will win anyway." He will give such a magnificent organization, will outline everything in advance so that we will take ready-made forms, as we took the ready-made Marxist teaching in Western Europe, – and thanks to which it won in our country, perhaps, in a few months, while it took decades for its victory in Western Europe. Thus, it is a completely worthless adventure to transfer the old method of solving the question of struggle with a triumphal march to the new historical period that has come, which has put before us not the rotten Kerenskys and Kornilovs, but the international predator – German imperialism, where the revolution was only ripening, but was certainly not ripe. Such an adventure was the assertion that the enemy against the revolution would not dare to advance. The Brest negotiations did not yet represent the moment when we had to accept any conditions of peace. The objective balance of power corresponded to the fact that there would be little respite. The Brest negotiations should have shown that the German would advance, that German society is not so pregnant with revolution that it can break out now, and the German imperialists cannot be blamed for the fact that they have not yet prepared this explosion with their behavior, or, as our young friends who consider themselves leftists say, such a situation when the German cannot advance. When they are told that we have no army, that we were forced to demobilize, – we were forced to, although we did not forget at all that a tiger lies around our meek domestic beast, – they do not want to understand. If we were forced to demobilize the army, then we did not forget at all that the war cannot be ended by a unilateral order to stick a bayonet into the ground.

How did it happen in general that not a single current, not a single direction, not a single organization of our party was against this demobilization? Have we all gone completely crazy? Not at all. Officers, not Bolsheviks, said even before October that the army could not fight, that it could not be held at the front for several weeks. After October, this became obvious to everyone who wanted to see the fact, the unsightly bitter reality, and not hide or pull a hat over their eyes and get away with proud phrases. There is no army, it is impossible to hold it. The best thing to do is to demobilize it as soon as possible. This is a sick part of the organism that has experienced unprecedented suffering, tormented by the deprivations of the war, into which it entered technically unprepared and came out in such a state that it succumbs to panic at every offensive. People who have endured such unprecedented suffering cannot be blamed for this. In hundreds of resolutions with complete frankness, even during the first period of the Russian revolution, the soldiers said: "We have drowned in blood, we cannot fight." It was possible to artificially delay the end of the war, it was possible to carry out Kerensky's fraud, it was possible to postpone the end for several weeks, but objective reality was making its way. This is a sick part of the Russian state organism, which can no longer bear the burdens of this war. The sooner we demobilize it, the sooner it will dissolve among the parts that are not yet so sick, the sooner the country will be ready for new difficult trials. This is what we felt when we unanimously, without the slightest protest, adopted this decision, which was absurd from the point of view of external events, – to demobilize the army. This was the right step. We said that holding the army is a frivolous illusion. The sooner the army is demobilized, the sooner the recovery of the entire social organism as a whole will begin. That is why such a deep mistake, such a bitter overestimation of events was the revolutionary phrase: "The German cannot advance," from which another followed: "We can declare the state of war terminated. Neither war nor signing of peace." But what if the German advances? "No, he will not be able to advance." And do you have the right to put at stake not the fate of the international revolution, but the specific question of whether you will not be accomplices of German imperialism when this moment comes? But we, who have all become defenders since October 1917, recognizing the defense of the fatherland, – we all know that we broke with the imperialists not in words, but in deed: we destroyed the secret treaties, defeated the bourgeoisie at home and offered an open honest peace, so that all nations could see all our intentions in deed. How could people who seriously stand on the point of view of defending the Soviet Republic go for this adventure, which bore its fruits? And this is a fact, because the severe crisis that our party is experiencing in connection with the formation of the "left" opposition in it is one of the greatest crises experienced by the Russian revolution.

This crisis will be overcome. In no way will our party or our revolution break their necks on it, although at the moment it was very close, quite possible. The guarantee that we will not break our necks on this issue is that instead of the old way of resolving factional disagreements, the old way, which consisted of an extraordinary amount of literature, discussions, and a sufficient number of splits, – instead of this old way, events have brought people a new way to learn. This method is to test everything with facts, events, lessons of world history. You say that the German cannot advance. Your tactics implied that it was possible to declare the state of war terminated. History has taught you a lesson, it has refuted this illusion. Yes, the German revolution is growing, but not as we would like, not as quickly as it is pleasant for Russian intellectuals, not at the pace that our history developed in October, – when we come to any city, proclaim Soviet power, and nine-tenths of the workers come to us in a few days. The German revolution has the misfortune of not going so fast. And who should reckon with whom: we with it or it with us? You wanted it to reckon with you, and history has taught you a lesson. This is a lesson, because it is absolutely true that without the German revolution we are doomed, – perhaps not in Petrograd, not in Moscow, but in Vladivostok, in even more distant places, to which we may have to move and to which the distance may be even greater than the distance from Petrograd to Moscow, but in any case, with all possible vicissitudes, if the German revolution does not come, – we are doomed. Nevertheless, this does not shake our confidence in the fact that we must be able to endure the most difficult situation without bravado.

The revolution will not come as soon as we expected. History has proven this, this must be taken as a fact, we must be able to reckon with the fact that the world socialist revolution in advanced countries cannot begin as easily as the revolution began in Russia – the country of Nicholas and Rasputin, when a large part of the population did not care at all what peoples lived on the outskirts, what was happening there. In such a country, it was easy to start a revolution, it meant lifting a feather.

And to start a revolution without preparation in a country where capitalism has developed, given democratic culture and organization to the last man, – is wrong, absurd. Here we are only approaching the agonizing period of the beginning of socialist revolutions. This is a fact. We do not know, no one knows, maybe, – this is quite possible, – it will win in a few weeks, even in a few days, but this cannot be put at stake. We must be prepared for extraordinary difficulties, for extraordinarily heavy defeats, which are inevitable, because the revolution in Europe has not yet begun, although it may begin tomorrow, and when it begins, of course, our doubts will not torment us, there will be no questions about revolutionary war, but there will be one continuous triumphal march. This will be, this will inevitably be, but it is not yet. This is the simple fact that history has taught us, that it has beaten us very painfully, – and for one beaten man, two unbeaten men are given. Therefore, I believe that after history has beaten us very painfully on this hope, – that the German will not be able to advance, and it is possible to knock down "at a rush," – this lesson will enter the consciousness of the masses of all Soviet Russia very quickly thanks to our Soviet organizations. They are all stirring, gathering, preparing for the congress, passing resolutions, thinking about what happened. We do not have the old pre-revolutionary disputes that remained within narrow party circles, but all decisions are submitted for discussion by the masses, who demand that they be verified by their experience, by deed, never allowing themselves to be carried away by easy speeches, never allowing themselves to be knocked off the path prescribed by the objective course of events. Of course, it is possible to excuse oneself from the difficulties facing us if you have an intellectual or a left Bolshevik in front of you: he, of course, can excuse himself from the questions about the fact that there is no army, from the fact that the revolution in Germany is not coming. The masses are millions, – and politics begins where there are millions; not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, only there does serious politics begin, – millions know what an army is, they have seen soldiers returning from the front. They know, – if we take not individuals, but the real mass, – that we cannot fight, that every person at the front has endured everything that was conceivable. The mass understood the truth that if there is no army, and a predator lies next to you, then you will have to sign the most burdensome, humiliating peace treaty. This is inevitable until the revolution is born, until you heal your army, until you return it home. Until then, the patient will not recover. And we will not take the German predator "at a rush," we will not overthrow him, as we overthrew Kerensky, Kornilov. This is the lesson that the masses have learned without reservations, which some who wanted to get rid of the bitter reality tried to present to them. First a continuous triumphal march in October, November, – then suddenly the Russian revolution is defeated in a few weeks by the German predator, the Russian revolution is ready to accept the conditions of a predatory treaty. Yes, the turns of history are very difficult, – all such turns are difficult for us. When in 1907 we signed an unprecedentedly shameful internal treaty with Stolypin, when we were forced to go through the pigsty of the Stolypin Duma, assumed obligations, signing monarchist papers, we experienced the same thing on a small scale, compared to the present. Then people belonging to the best vanguard of the revolution said (they also had no shadow of doubt in their rightness): "We are proud revolutionaries, we believe in the Russian revolution, we will never go to the legal Stolypin institutions." You will go. The life of the masses, history – is stronger than your assurances. If you do not go, then history will force you. These were very leftists, from whom nothing, except smoke, remained as a faction at the first turn of history. If we managed to remain revolutionaries, to work in agonizing conditions and to get out of this situation again, we will be able to get out now, because this is not our whim, because this is an objective inevitability that has been created in a country ravaged to the last degree because the European revolution, against our will, dared to be late, and German imperialism, against our will, dared to advance.

Here we must be able to retreat. It is impossible to close oneself off from the incredibly bitter, sad reality with a phrase; we must say: God grant us to retreat in semi-order. We cannot retreat in order, – God grant us to retreat in semi-order, to win the slightest interval of time so that the sick part of our organism dissolves at least a little. The organism as a whole is healthy: it will overcome the disease. But it is impossible to demand that it overcome it immediately, instantly, it is impossible to stop a running army. When I said to one of our young friends who wanted to be a leftist: comrade, go to the front, see what is happening in the army, – this was taken as an offensive proposal: "they want to send us into exile so that we do not agitate here for the great principles of revolutionary war." When I proposed this, I certainly did not count on sending factional enemies into exile: it was a proposal to look at the fact that the army had begun to run unprecedentedly. We knew this before, and it was impossible to close our eyes to the fact that the decay there had reached unprecedented facts, to the sale of our weapons to the Germans for pennies. We knew this, just as we know that the army cannot be held, and the excuse that the German will not advance was the greatest adventure. If the European revolution is late to be born, we are waiting for the most severe defeats, because we have no army, because we have no organization, because these two tasks cannot be solved now. If you cannot adapt, are not inclined to go crawling on your belly in the mud, then you are not a revolutionary, but a chatterbox, and I do not propose to go this way because I like it, but because there is no other way, because history has not developed so pleasantly that the revolution is ripening everywhere at the same time.

The fact is that the civil war began as an attempt to clash with imperialism, which proved that imperialism was completely rotten and that proletarian elements were rising inside each army. Yes, we will see the international world revolution, but for now it is a very good fairy tale, a very beautiful fairy tale, – I fully understand that children tend to love beautiful fairy tales. But I ask: is it proper for a serious revolutionary to believe in fairy tales? There are elements of reality in every fairy tale: if you presented children with a fairy tale where a rooster and a cat do not speak in human language, they would not be interested in it. So exactly, if you tell the people that the civil war in Germany will come, and at the same time guarantee that instead of a clash with imperialism there will be a field international revolution, then the people will say that you are deceiving. In this way, you only go through the difficulties that history has presented in your understanding, in your desires. It is good if the German proletariat is able to speak out. Have you measured this, have you found such an instrument to determine that the German revolution will be born on such and such a day? No, you do not know this, we do not know either. You are putting everything at stake. If the revolution is born, – then everything is saved. Of course! But if it does not speak out as we wish, it will not win tomorrow, – then what? Then the mass will say to you: you acted like adventurers, – you put the card on this happy course of events, which did not come, you turned out to be unsuitable to remain in the position that turned out instead of the international revolution, which will come inevitably, but which has not yet ripened.

A period of the most severe defeats has come, inflicted by imperialism armed to the teeth on a country that has demobilized its army, had to demobilize. What I predicted has come entirely: instead of the Brest peace, we received a much more humiliating peace, through the fault of those who did not take it. We knew that we were concluding peace with imperialism through the fault of the army. We sat at the table next to Hoffmann, and not next to Liebknecht, – and with this we helped the German revolution. And now you are helping German imperialism, because you have given away your millions of wealth, – guns, shells, – and this should have been predicted by everyone who saw the state of the army, incredibly painful. We would have perished inevitably and inevitably with the slightest German offensive, – this was said by every conscientious person from the front. We turned out to be the prey of the enemy in a few days.

Having received this lesson, we will overcome our split, our crisis, no matter how severe this disease is, because an immeasurably more faithful ally will come to our aid: the world revolution. When we are told about the ratification of this Tilsit peace, an unprecedented peace, more humiliating, predatory than the Brest peace, I answer: absolutely, – yes. We must do this, because we look from the point of view of the masses. The attempt to transfer the tactics of October-November within one country, this triumphal period of the revolution, to transfer with the help of our imagination to the course of events of the world revolution – this attempt is doomed to failure. When they say that a respite is a fantasy, when a newspaper called "Communist" – must be from the commune – when this newspaper fills column after column, trying to refute the theory of respite, then I say: I have had to experience many factional clashes, splits, so that I have a lot of practice, but I must say that I see clearly that this disease will not be cured in the old way – factional party splits – because life will cure it earlier. Life is moving very fast. It acts magnificently on this account. History is driving its locomotive so fast that before the editorial board of "Communist" manages to publish the next issue, the majority of workers in Petrograd will begin to be disappointed in its ideas, because life shows that a respite is a fact. Right now we are signing a peace, we have a respite, we are using it to defend the fatherland better, – because if we had a war, we would have that panicking army that would have to be stopped and which our comrades cannot and could not stop, because war is stronger than sermons, than ten thousand arguments. If they did not understand the objective situation, they cannot stop the army, they would not have stopped it. This sick army infected the entire organism, and we received a new unprecedented defeat, a new blow from German imperialism to the revolution, – a heavy blow, because they frivolously left themselves without machine guns under the blows of imperialism. Meanwhile, we will use this respite to convince the people to unite, to fight, to tell the Russian workers, peasants: "Create self-discipline, strict discipline, otherwise you will lie under the heel of the German boot, as you lie now, as you will inevitably lie until the people learn to fight, to create an army capable of not running, but going to unprecedented torments." This is inevitable because the German revolution has not yet been born and it is impossible to guarantee that it will come tomorrow.

That is why the theory of respite, which is completely rejected by the streams of articles in "Communist," is put forward by life itself. Everyone sees that a respite is present, that everyone is using it. We assumed that Petrograd would be lost by us in a few days, when the German troops approaching us were at a distance of several transitions from it, and the best sailors and Putilov workers, with all their great enthusiasm, turned out to be alone, when there was an unprecedented chaos, panic, which forced the troops to run to Gatchina, when we experienced the fact that we were taking back what had not been surrendered, and this consisted in the fact that the telegraph operator came to the station, sat down at the apparatus and telegraphed: "There is no German. The station is occupied by us." A few hours later, a telephone call informed me from the Commissariat of Railways: "The next station is occupied, we are approaching Yamburg. There is no German. The telegraph operator takes his place." This is what we experienced. This is the real history of the eleven-day war. It was described to us by sailors, Putilov workers, who must be taken to the Congress of Soviets. Let them tell the truth. This is a terribly bitter, offensive, agonizing, humiliating truth, but it is a hundred times more useful, it is understood by the Russian people.

I allow myself to be carried away by the international field revolution because it will come. Everything will come in its time, and now take up self-discipline, obey at all costs, so that there is exemplary order, so that the workers, even for one hour during the day, learn to fight. This is a little more difficult than drawing a beautiful fairy tale. This is now, with this you are helping the German revolution, the international revolution. How many days of respite we have been given, – we do not know, but it has been given. It is necessary to demobilize the army as soon as possible, because it is a sick organ, and in the meantime we will help the Finnish revolution.

Yes, of course, we are violating the treaty, we have already violated it thirty or forty times. Only children can fail to understand that in such an era, when a painful, long period of liberation is coming, which has just created, raised Soviet power to three stages of its development, – only children can fail to understand that there must be a long, cautious struggle here. The shameful peace treaty raises an uprising, but when comrades from "Communist" talk about war, they