(Prolonged applause.) Comrades, from the very beginning of the October Revolution, the question of foreign policy and international relations has stood before us as the most crucial question—not only because imperialism now means a strong and stable linkage of all the states of the world into one system, or to put it plainly, into one filthy, bloody lump, but also because the complete victory of the socialist revolution is unthinkable in a single country and requires the most active cooperation of at least several advanced countries, which we cannot number Russia among. This is why the question of how far we succeed in spreading the revolution to other countries and how far we manage to hold back imperialism until then has become one of the chief questions of the revolution.

Allow me to remind you in the briefest manner of the main stages of our international policy over the past year. As I have already had occasion to point out in my speech on the occasion of the anniversary of the revolution, the chief characteristic of our position a year ago was our isolation[8]. However firmly we were convinced that throughout Europe a revolutionary force was being created and had been created, that war would not end without revolution, there were no signs of revolution having begun or about to begin. In this situation, nothing remained for us but to direct the efforts of our foreign policy toward enlightening the working masses of Western Europe—enlightenment not in the sense that we claimed to have greater preparation than they, but in the sense that, so long as the bourgeoisie had not been overthrown in a country, military censorship ruled there, along with that unprecedented, bloody fog that accompanies every war, especially a reactionary one. You know perfectly well that even in the most democratic, republican countries, war means military censorship and the unprecedented methods employed by the bourgeoisie together with bourgeois general staffs in order to deceive the people. Our task was to share what had been conquered in this respect with other peoples. We did everything we could in this respect when we tore open and published those filthy secret treaties that the former tsar had concluded for the benefit of his capitalists with the capitalists of England and France. You know that the treaties were utterly predatory. You know that Kerensky's rule and the Mensheviks kept these treaties secret and reinforced them. It happens that we occasionally encounter, in any somewhat honest press of England and France, an indication that only thanks to the Russian revolution did the French and English learn much that was essential concerning their diplomatic history.

Of course, from the standpoint of the social revolution as a whole, we did very little, but what we did was one of the major steps in its preparation.

If we now try to cast a general glance at the results that the exposure of German imperialism has given us, we shall see that now it has become a vivid and clear fact to the working people of all countries that they were forced to conduct a bloody and predatory war. And at the end of this year of war, a similar exposure of the conduct of England and America is beginning, because the masses are opening their eyes and beginning to understand the essence of their designs. That is all we have done, but we have made our contribution. The exposure of such treaties was a blow to imperialism. The conditions of the peace that we were forced to sign were, in terms of propaganda and agitation, such a powerful weapon, and we have done so much with them as no government, no people has done. If the attempt we undertook—to awaken the masses—did not produce results immediately, we never supposed that revolution would begin at once or that all would be lost. Over the past fifteen years we have lived through two revolutions, and we have seen clearly what period they must go through before they master the masses. Confirmation of this we find in recent events in Austria and Germany. We said that we did not count on becoming predators together with other predators in alliance—no, we counted on awakening the proletariat of hostile countries. We were answered with mockery, being told that we intended to awaken the proletariat of Germany, which would strangle us while we were trying to come out against it with propaganda. But the facts showed that we were right when we counted on the fact that the working masses in all countries are equally hostile to imperialism. One need only give them a certain period for preparation, for the Russian people, despite the memory of the 1905 revolution, also required a prolonged period before we rose up for revolution again.

Before the Brest Peace, we did everything we could to strike a blow at imperialism. If history in its development of the proletarian revolution has not crossed this out, and if the Brest Peace forced us to retreat before imperialism, this happened because in January 1918 we were not yet sufficiently prepared. Fate condemned us to isolation, and we lived through a tormented epoch after the Brest Peace.

Comrades, the four years that we have lived through in international war have given us peace, but a peace enforced by violence. But this very enforced peace has ultimately shown that we were right and that our hopes are built not on sand. With each month we have grown stronger while Western European imperialism has weakened. Now we see as a result that Germany, which half a year ago did not reckon at all with our embassy, which thought there could not be a single red house there, at least recently, is weakening. The latest telegram reports an appeal from German imperialism to the masses to maintain calm and that peace is near{65}. We know what it means when emperors appeal for the maintenance of calm and promise in the near future what they cannot fulfill. If Germany soon gets peace, this peace will be for them a Brest Peace, which instead of peace will bring the working masses more suffering than they have endured so far.

Thus our international policy has developed such results that half a year after the Brest Peace, from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie we represented a defeated country, but from the standpoint of the proletariat we have advanced along the path of rapid growth and stand at the head of the proletarian army, which has begun to shake Austria and Germany. This success has confirmed and fully justified in the eyes of every representative of the proletarian masses all the sacrifices that have been made. If it should happen that we were suddenly swept away—suppose our activity came to an end, but this cannot be: miracles do not happen—but if it should happen, we would have the right to say, without concealing errors, that we have fully utilized the period of time that fate gave us for the socialist world revolution. We have done everything for the working masses of Russia, and we have done more than anyone for the world proletarian revolution. (Applause.)

Comrades, in the course of recent months, recent weeks, the international situation has begun to change sharply, until German imperialism has turned out to be almost destroyed. All hopes for Ukraine, with which German imperialism nourished its working people, turned out to be only promises. It turned out that American imperialism was prepared, and Germany was struck a blow. A completely different situation has arrived. We have harbored no illusions about anything. After the October Revolution we were much weaker than imperialism, and now we are weaker than international imperialism—we must repeat this even now in order not to fall into self-deception; after the October Revolution we were weaker and could not accept battle. And now we are weaker and must do everything necessary to avoid battle with it.

But if we managed to exist for a year after the October Revolution, we owe this to the fact that international imperialism was split into two groups of predators: the Anglo-French-Americans and the Germans, who were in mortal combat with each other and had no time for us. Neither of these groups could direct their full serious forces against us, though of course they both would have directed all these forces against us if they could. War, its bloody fog obscured their vision. The material sacrifices needed for war required an exertion of forces to the utmost degree. They had no time for us—not because we were somehow miraculously stronger than the imperialists—no, that is trifling!—but only because of the fact that international imperialism was split into two groups of predators who were strangling each other. We owe only to this fact the circumstance that the Soviet Republic openly proclaimed its struggle against imperialists of all countries, depriving them of capital in the form of foreign loans, striking them in the face, openly touching their robber pockets.

The period of declarations we made at that time regarding the correspondence that German imperialists conducted, and despite the fact that worldwide imperialism could not throw itself at us as it ought to have according to its enmity and desire for capitalist profit, enormously inflamed by war—this period has ended. Until the moment when the Anglo-American imperialists proved victorious over the second group, they were wholly occupied with struggle among themselves and therefore had to distract themselves from a decisive campaign against the Soviet Republic. The second group no longer exists; only one group of victors remains. This has completely changed our international position, and we must reckon with this change. To what extent this change relates to the development of the international situation is answered by the facts. Countries that have suffered defeat are now experiencing the victory of workers' revolution, for its enormous development is clear to all. When we took power in October, we in Europe were nothing more than a single spark. True, sparks multiplied, and these sparks came from us. This is the greatest deed we have managed to accomplish, but all the same these were isolated sparks. Now, however, the majority of countries within the sphere of Germano-Austrian imperialism are engulfed in flames (Bulgaria, Austria, Hungary). We know that after Bulgaria the revolution spread to Serbia. We know how these workers-and-peasants revolutions passed through Austria and reached Germany. A whole series of countries is engulfed in the flames of workers' revolution. In this respect our efforts and the sacrifices we have made have been justified. They have turned out to be not an adventurism, as enemies slandered, but a necessary transition to international revolution, which a country placed at the forefront, despite its backwardness and underdevelopment, had to experience.

This is one result, the most important from the standpoint of the ultimate outcome of the imperialist war. The other result—the one I pointed to at the beginning—is that Anglo-American imperialism has now begun to expose itself just as Austrian-German imperialism did in its time. We see that if Germany had shown any self-control at the time of the Brest negotiations, any cool-headedness, any capacity to refrain from adventurism, it could have retained its domination, it could have gained for itself, undoubtedly, a favorable position in the West. It did not do this because such a machine as war—of millions and tens of millions, a war in which chauvinistic passions have been inflamed to the uttermost degree, a war connected with capitalist interests measured in hundreds of billions of rubles—such a machine, once it has been wound up, cannot be stopped by any brake. This machine has gone further than the German imperialists themselves desired, and it has crushed them. They have gotten bogged down; they have found themselves in the position of a man who has overeaten, thereby going to his own destruction. And now before our eyes Anglo-American imperialism has found itself in this unseemly but, from the standpoint of revolutionary proletariat, very useful condition. One might have thought that they have far more political experience than Germany. These are people accustomed to democratic governance, not the governance of some junkers, people who over centuries have lived through the heaviest period of their history. One might have thought that these people would preserve their cool-headedness. If we reasoned from the standpoint of individual capacity—whether they are capable of being cool-headed—from the standpoint of democracy in general, as the philistines of the bourgeoisie, professors who understood nothing of the struggle between imperialism and the working class, if we reasoned from the standpoint of democracy in general, we should have to say that England and America are countries where democracy is rooted in centuries, that the bourgeoisie there will manage to hold on. If it now held on through certain measures, it would be in any case for a rather prolonged period. But it turns out that the same thing is happening to them as happened to the militarily despotic Germany. In this imperialist war there is an enormous difference between Russia and the republican countries. The imperialist war is so bloody, predatory, bestial that it has even erased these most important differences; in this respect it has equated the freest democracy of America with the semi-military despotic Germany.

We see how England and America—countries that had more possibility than others to remain democratic republics—have gotten as wildly, madly carried away as Germany in its time, and therefore they are approaching so quickly, perhaps even quicker, that end which German imperialism has so successfully met. At first it swelled up incredulously to three-quarters of Europe, grew bloated, and then suddenly burst, leaving a terrible stench. And toward this end Anglo-American imperialism is now rushing. To be convinced of this, it is enough to cast even a cursory glance at those conditions of armistice and peace which the "liberators" of peoples from German imperialism, the English and Americans, are now sending to the defeated peoples. Take Bulgaria. It would seem that a country like Bulgaria could hardly be frightening to the colossus of Anglo-American imperialism. Yet the revolution in this small, weak, completely helpless country has caused the Anglo-Americans to lose their heads and to impose armistice conditions equal to occupation. There now, where a peasant republic has been proclaimed, in Sofia, this important railway hub, all the railways are occupied by Anglo-American troops. They find themselves forced to struggle with the peasant republic of a small country. From a military standpoint, this is trifling. People who stand on the standpoint of the bourgeoisie—the old ruling class, the old military relations—they only smile contemptuously. Well, what does this pygmy—Bulgaria—matter against Anglo-American forces? From a military standpoint—nothing, but from a revolutionary standpoint—very much. This is not a colony where they are accustomed to exterminating the conquered by millions and millions. Indeed, the English and Americans think of this only as the restoration of order, the implanting of civilization and Christianity among wild Africans. This is not Central Africa for them; here are soldiers, and no matter how strong their army might be—here soldiers disintegrate when they encounter revolution. That this is not a phrase is proved by Germany. In Germany, at least in terms of discipline, soldiers were exemplary. When the Germans went to Ukraine, here, besides discipline, other factors were at work. The starving German soldier went for bread, and to require of him that he not rob bread too freely is implausible. All the more do we know that in this country they became most infected with the spirit of the Russian revolution. The bourgeoisie of Germany understood this very well, and it forced Wilhelm to thrash about from side to side. The Hohenzollerns are mistaken if they imagine that Germany will shed a single drop of blood for their interests. Such was the result of the policy of the German imperialism armed to the teeth. And now this is repeating itself with England as well. Disintegration has already begun in the Anglo-American army; it began when it started to rage against Bulgaria. But this is only the beginning. Austria followed Bulgaria. Allow me to read you several points from those conditions that the victors of Anglo-American imperialism are dictating[9]. These are people who have cried out most loudly to the working masses that they are waging a war of liberation, that their main goal is to crush Prussian militarism, which threatens to spread barracks discipline throughout all countries. They have cried out that they are waging a war of liberation. This was a deception. You know, when bourgeois lawyers, these parliamentarians, who have spent their whole lives learning how to hoodwink without blushing, have to hoodwink each other, it is easy; but when it comes to hoodwinking workers in this way, this deception does not pass unpunished. Politicians, parliamentarians, these figures of England and America, they are skilled in this. Their deception will not touch the workers in the slightest. The working masses, whom they inflamed in the name of freedom, will come to their senses at once, and this will yet make itself felt when they see, not from proclamations, which assist but do not actually move real revolution, but from their own experience, that they are being deceived, when they see the conditions of peace with Austria.

Here is the peace that those who now insist on it—those very ones who cried that the Bolsheviks are traitors because they sign the Brest Peace!—are imposing on a comparatively weak state, already disintegrating. When the Germans wanted to send their soldiers here, to Moscow, we said that it would be better for us all to die in battle, but we would never agree to this. (Applause.) We told ourselves that the sacrifices that the occupied regions would have to make would be great, but everyone knows how Soviet Russia helped and supplied them with necessities. And now the democratic troops of England and France are supposed to serve "to maintain order,"—and this is said when in Bulgaria and Serbia there are Soviets of workers' deputies, when in Vienna and Budapest there are Soviets of workers' deputies. We know what kind of order this is. This means that Anglo-American troops are being called upon to play the role of stranglers and executioners of world revolution.

Comrades, when Russian serf troops in 1848 went to strangle the Hungarian revolution{66}, this might have worked for them because these troops were serfs; it might have worked with respect to Poland{67}, but that people who has owned freedom already for a century, people whom they inflamed with hatred against German imperialism, saying that it is a beast that must be strangled—that such people would not understand that Anglo-American imperialism is the same kind of beast, against which justice can only consist in strangling it equally, this cannot be!

And now history, with the bitter irony that is proper to history, has come to the point that after the exposure of German imperialism has come the turn of Anglo-French imperialism, which is exposing itself completely, and we declare before the Russian, German, and Austrian working masses: these are not the Russian serf troops of 1848! This will not pass unpunished for them! They are going to suppress a people transitioning to freedom from capitalism, to strangle the revolution. And we speak with absolute certainty that now this overstuffed beast will collapse into the abyss just as the beast of German imperialism collapsed.

Comrades, I shall now touch on that side of the matter which concerns us most closely. I shall turn to those conditions of peace that Germany now faces having to sign. Comrades from the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs told me that in the Times{68}, the chief organ of the unheard-of-rich bourgeoisie of England, which in fact conducts all policy, the conditions have already been published to which Germany must agree. It is required to give up the island of Helgoland, the Wilhelmshaven Canal, to surrender the city of Essen, where almost all military equipment is produced, to destroy the merchant fleet, to immediately give up Alsace-Lorraine, and to pay 60 billion in reparations, including a significant part in kind, since money has depreciated everywhere and English merchants too have begun to calculate in a different currency. We see that for Germany they are preparing a peace full of actual strangulation, a peace more violent than the Brest Peace. From the standpoint of material means and their forces, they would be capable of doing this if there were not such an unpleasant thing in the world as Bolshevism. They are preparing their own destruction with this peace. After all, this is happening not in Central Africa, but in the twentieth century in civilized countries. If the Ukrainian population is illiterate, if the disciplined German soldier oppressed the Ukrainians, then now the German soldier has buried his discipline; but all the more will the English and American imperialism bury themselves when they undertake such an adventurism as will lead them to political collapse, when they condemn their troops to the position of stranglers and gendarmes of all Europe. They have long been trying to eliminate Russia, and a campaign against her was conceived long ago. One need only recall the occupation of Murmansk and how they threw millions at the Czechoslovaks and concluded a treaty with Japan, and now England has taken Baku from the Turks by treaty in order to strangle us by depriving us of raw materials.

English troops are ready to begin a campaign against Russia, either from the south or the Dardanelles, or through Bulgaria and Romania. They are tightening the ring around the Soviet Republic, they are trying to sever the economic connection between the republic and the whole world. To do this they have forced Holland to break diplomatic relations{69}. If Germany expelled our ambassador from Germany, she acted, if not by direct agreement with Anglo-French policy, then desiring to do them a service so that they would be generous toward her. We, they say, are also fulfilling our duties as executioners with respect to the Bolsheviks, your enemies.

Comrades, we must tell ourselves that the chief result of the international situation can be characterized thus, as I managed to do the other day, that never have we been so close to international proletarian revolution as we are now[10]. We have proven that in betting on international proletarian revolution we were not mistaken. We have made tremendous sacrifices, national and economic, not in vain. In this respect we have achieved success. But if we have never been so close to international revolution, then our position has never been so dangerous as it is now. The imperialists were occupied with each other. And now one of the groupings has been swept away by the grouping of the Anglo-Franco-Americans. They consider their chief task to be strangling world Bolshevism, strangling its chief cell, the Russian Soviet Republic. To do this they intend to build a Chinese wall in order to isolate themselves, as with a quarantine against plague, from Bolshevism. These people are trying to rid themselves of Bolshevism by quarantine, but this cannot be. If the gentlemen of Anglo-French imperialism, these possessors of the most perfect technique in the world, if they manage to build such a Chinese wall around the republic, the bacillus of Bolshevism will pass through the walls and infect the workers of all countries. (Applause.)

Comrades, the press of Western European, Anglo-French imperialism is trying with all its might to hush up its position. There is no lie and slander that they would not send against Soviet power. One can now say that all Anglo-French and American press is in the hands of capitalists—and it controls billions—that it acts all as one syndicate in order to hush up the truth about Soviet Russia, in order to spread lies and slander against us. And despite the fact that military censorship has raged for years and they have managed to ensure that in the press of democratic countries not a word of truth about the Soviet Republic is allowed through, nevertheless there is not a single large workers' meeting in any country where it has not been revealed that the working masses are on the side of the Bolsheviks, because one cannot hide the truth. The enemy accuses us of implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat—yes, we do not hide this! And by the fact that the Soviet government is not afraid and speaks openly, it draws new millions of working people to its side, because it implements the dictatorship against exploiters, and the working masses see and derive the conviction that the struggle against exploiters was serious and that it will be brought to a serious conclusion. Despite this conspiracy of silence that the European press surrounds us with, they have up to now indicated their obligation, indicated that they are coming to Russia because Russia allowed herself to be captured by Germany, that Russia is actually a German agent, that there, in Russia, the people at the head of the government are, in their view, German agents. Every month new document forgers appear there, who receive good payment for proving that Lenin and Trotsky are nothing but traitors and German agents. Despite all this, they cannot hide the truth, and there break through, now and then, and do break through frank admissions that these imperialist gentlemen cannot feel themselves on solid ground. The Écho de Paris{70} makes this admission: "We are going to Russia to break the power of the Bolsheviks." Because their official perspective is such that they are not waging war with Russia, they are not interfering in military affairs, but only fighting against German domination. Our French internationalists, who publish the newspaper "Third International"{71} in Moscow, brought this quotation, and though we have been cut off from Paris and France, though here a Chinese wall has been erected with extraordinary skill, we say: from your own bourgeoisie, gentlemen French imperialists, you cannot protect yourselves. And of course, hundreds of thousands of French workers know this little quotation, and not just this one, and see that all the declarations of their rulers, their bourgeoisie are sheer lies. Their own bourgeoisie lets it slip; they admit: we want to break the power of the Bolsheviks. After four years of bloody war they must tell their people: go and fight again against Russia in order to break the power of the Bolsheviks, whom we hate because they owe us 17 billion and do not want to pay it{72}, because they treat capitalists, landowners and tsars rudely. Civilized peoples who have reduced themselves to such a position that they must say this reveal first of all that their policy is heading for collapse, and however strong they may be militarily, we look upon this strength with complete calm and say: but in your rear you have an even more formidable enemy—these are the masses of people whom you have hoodwinked up to now, and your tongue has run dry from lies and slander against Soviet Russia. Another similar report from the English bourgeois newspaper Manchester Guardian{73} of October 23. This is what a bourgeois English newspaper writes: "if the Allied armies also remain in Russia and continue military operations, the only purpose is to provoke an internal coup in Russia… The Allied governments must therefore either put an end to their military operations or declare that they are at war with the Bolsheviks."

I repeat: the importance of this little quotation, which sounds for us as a revolutionary appeal, as the strongest revolutionary address, lies in the fact that a bourgeois newspaper writes it, a newspaper which is itself an enemy of socialists, but it feels that one cannot hide the truth any longer. If bourgeois newspapers speak thus, you can imagine what English working masses say and think. You know how with us during the existence of tsarism, before the revolution of 1905 or 1917, the liberals spoke. You know that this language of liberals meant the approach of an explosion in the proletarian revolutionary masses. Therefore, from the language of these bourgeois English liberals you will draw the conclusion about what is happening in the mood, minds, and hearts of English, French, and American workers. This is why we must without any concealment tell ourselves the heavy truth that characterizes our international position. International revolution is near, but there are no such schedules according to which revolution develops; we, who have lived through two revolutions, know this well. But we know that if the imperialists cannot hold back international revolution, then defeats of individual countries and even heavier sacrifices are possible. They know that Russia is in the throes of proletarian revolution, but they are mistaken if they think that by crushing one center of revolution they will crush revolution in other countries.

As for us, we must say that the situation is more dangerous than ever before, that we need again and again to strain our forces to the utmost. After we have laid a firm foundation over a year, created a socialist Red Army on the basis of new discipline, after this we tell ourselves with confidence that we can and must continue this work and must speak at all meetings, in any Soviet institution, in trade unions, at meetings of committees of the poor: comrades, we have lived through a year and achieved success, but this is still little compared with that mighty enemy that is advancing upon us. This enemy is worldwide, strong, victorious over the whole world, Anglo-French imperialism. We are going to struggle with it not because we think we can equal the advanced countries of Europe in economic and technical respects. No, but we know that this enemy is heading toward the same abyss toward which Austro-German imperialism has come; this enemy, which has now ensnared Turkey, seized Bulgaria, and is occupied with occupying all of Austro-Hungary and establishing a tsarist, gendarme order—we know that it is heading toward destruction. We know that this is a historical fact, and this is why we, not at all harboring aims that are obviously incongruous, tell ourselves: we can offer resistance to Anglo-French imperialism!

Every step in the strengthening of our Red Army will have as its echo ten steps of disintegration and revolution in this opponent that seems so mighty. Therefore, there is not the slightest ground for surrendering to despair or pessimism. We know that the danger is great. Perhaps fate has in store for us even heavier sacrifices. Let us suppose they can crush one country, but they will never crush international proletarian revolution—they will only inflame it further and they will all perish in it! (Prolonged applause, transitioning into an ovation.)