Leon Trotsky

“ At the same time, the petty bourgeois democracy, with the arrogance of revolutionary upstarts, harbored the deepest mistrust of itself and of the very masses who had raised it to such unexpected heights. Calling themselves Socialists, and considering themselves such, the intellectuals were filled with an ill-disguised respect for the political power of the liberal bourgeoisie, towards their knowledge and methods. To this was due the effort of the petty bourgeois leaders to secure, at any cost, a cooperation, union, or coalition with the liberal bourgeoisie. ”

“ There were two possible ways out: to drive the bourgeoisie out of power and promote the aims of the revolution, or to adopt the policy of "bridling" the people by resorting to repressive measures. Kerensky and Tseretelli clung to a middle course and only muddled matters the more. When the Cadets, the wiser and more far-sighted leaders of the coalition government, understood that the unsuccessful military advance of June 18th might deal a blow not only to the revolution, but also to the government temporarily, they threw the whole weight of responsibility upon their allies to the left. ”

“ Almost every article, without exception, in all the governmental and official newspapers, was directed against the Bolsheviki. There was not an accusation, not a libel, that was not brought up against us in those days. The leading role in the campaign was played, of course, by the Cadet bourgeoisie, who were prompted by their class instincts to the knowledge that it was not only a question of a drive, but also of all the further developments of the revolution, and primarily of the fate of government control. The bourgeoisie's machinery of "public opinion" revealed itself here in all its power. ”

“ I had the fullest right to recall to Tseretelli these words which I had addressed to him in May, when he was occupied in persecuting the Kronstadt sailors: "When a counter-revolutionary general attempts to throw the noose around the neck; of the revolution, the Cadets will grease the rope with soap, while the Kronstadt sailors will come to fight and die together with us."
The Soviet organizations had revealed everywhere, in the rear and at the front, their vitality and their power in the struggle with the Korniloff uprising. In almost no instance did things ever come to a military conflict. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The significance of the Revolution lies in the rapid changing of the judgment of the masses, in the fact that new and ever new strata of population acquire experience, verify their views of the day before, sweep them aside, work out new ones, desert old leaders and follow new ones in the forward march. During revolutionary times, formally democratic organizations, based upon the ponderous apparatus of universal suffrage, inevitably fall behind the development of the political consciousness of the masses. ”

“ In Moscow, especially, this struggle took on an extremely protracted and bloody character. Perhaps not the least important cause of this was the fact that the leaders of the revolt did not at once show the necessary determination in attacking. In civil war, more than in any other, victory can be insured only by a determined and persistent course. There must be no vacillation. To engage in parleys is dangerous; merely to mark time is suicidal. We are dealing here with the masses, who have never held any power in their hands, who are therefore most wanting in political self-confidence. ”

“ This was the only way to save the country, which was now atoning for the sins of Czarism and the bourgeoisie. We had to get out of the war and withdraw the army from the slaughter house. Nevertheless, we threw this in the face of the German militarism: The peace you are forcing down our throats is a peace of aggression and robbery. We cannot permit you, Messrs. Diplomats, to say to the German workingmen: "You have characterized our demands as avaricious, as annexationist. But look, under these very demands we have brought you the signature of the Russian revolution." ”

“ We believed that the greatest danger threatened the revolution in either case—whether the drive proved successful, which we did not expect, or met with failure, which seemed to us almost inevitable. A successful military advance would have united the middle class and the bourgeoisie in their common chauvinistic tendencies, thus isolating the revolutionary proletariat. An unsuccessful drive was likely to demoralize the army completely, to involve a general retreat and the loss of much additional territory, and to bring disgust and disappointment to the people. ”

“ We made it the task of our diplomacy to enlighten the masses of the peoples, to open their eyes to the real meaning of the policy of their governments, in order to weld them together in a common struggle and a common hatred against the bourgeois capitalist order. The German bourgeois press accused us of "dragging on" the peace negotiations; but all nations anxiously followed the discussions at Brest-Litovsk, and in this way we rendered, during the two months and a half of peace negotiations, a service to the cause of peace which was recognized even by the more honest of our enemies. ”

“ In this way, the petty bourgeois intellectuals were at once and of necessity raised to great prominence in the awakening army. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, journalists and volunteers, who under pre-bellum conditions led a rather retired life and made no claim to any importance, suddenly found themselves representative of whole corps and armies and felt that they were "leaders" of the revolution. The nebulousness of their political ideology fully corresponded with the formlessness of the revolutionary consciousness of the masses. ”

“ CONCLUSION When our party took over the government, we knew in advance what difficulties we had to contend with. Economically the country had been exhausted by the war to the very utmost. The revolution had destroyed the old administrative machinery and could not yet create anything to take its place. Millions of workers had been wrested from their normal nooks in the national economy of things, declassified, and physically shattered by the three years' war. The colossal war industries, carried on on an inadequately prepared national foundation, had drained all the lifeblood of the people ”

“ The Constituent Assembly, owing to the character of its majority, was bound to turn over the government to the Chernov, Kerensky and Tseretelli group. Could this group have guided the destinies of the Revolution? Could it have found support in that class which constitutes the backbone of the Revolution? No. The real kernel of the class revolution has come into irreconcilable conflict with its democratic shell. ”

“ It is true, the war has deceived many on this point, and, first of all, the leading groups of bourgeois democracy themselves. The war has assigned a decisive role in the events of the revolution to the army. The old army meant the peasantry. Had the revolution developed more normally—that is, under peaceful circumstances, as it had in 1912—the proletariat would always have held a dominant position, while the peasant masses would gradually have been taken in tow by the proletariat and drawn into the whirlpool of the revolution. ”

“ It was perfectly clear to us that the logic of the class struggle would, sooner or later, destroy this temporary combination and cast aside the leaders of the transition period. The hegemony of the petty bourgeois intellectuals meant, in reality, that the peasantry, which had suddenly been called, through the agency of the military machine, to an organized participation in political life, had, by mere weight of numbers, overshadowed the working class and temporarily dislodged it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We could not declare war, for we were too weak. The army had lost all of its internal ties. In order to save our country, to overcome this disorganization, it was imperative to establish the internal coherence of the toilers. This psychological tie can only be created by constructive work in factory, field and workshop. We had to return the masses of laborers, who had been subjected to great and intense suffering—who had experienced catastrophes in the war—to the fields and factories, where they must find themselves again and get a footing in the labor world, and rebuild internal discipline. ”

“ In the memories of the older generation of workingmen, the lesson of 1905 was firmly fixed; then, the proletariat was defeated just because the heavy peasant reserves did not arrive in time for the decisive battle. This is why in this first period of the revolution even the masses of workingmen proved so much more receptive to the political ideology of the Social-Revolutionists and the Mensheviki. All the more so, since the revolution had awakened the hitherto dormant and backward proletarian masses, thus making uninformed intellectual radicalism into a preparatory school for them. ”

“ The point is not to die with honor but to achieve ultimate victory. The Russian Revolution wants to survive, must survive, and must by every means at its disposal avoid fighting an uneven battle and gain time, in the hope that the Western revolutionary movement will come to its aid.
German imperialism is still engaged in a fierce annexationist struggle with English and American militarism. Only because of this is the conclusion of peace between Russia and Germany at all possible. We must fully avail ourselves of this situation. The welfare of the Revolution is the highest law. ”

“ No longer could there be any doubt that quite independently of the make-up of the future Constituent Assembly, the governmental power would, in fact, be held by the bourgeoisie, as despite all the preponderance given them by the masses of the people the fusionist parties invariably arrived at a coalition with the Cadets, deeming it impossible, as they did, to create a state power without the bourgeoisie. ”

“ However, it would not be superfluous to remark that precisely the members of our party's military organization assumed in October an attitude of extraordinary caution and even some skepticism toward the idea of an immediate insurrection. The closed character of the organization and its officially military character involuntarily inclined its leaders to underestimate the purely technical and organizational resources of the uprising, and from this point of view we were undoubtedly weak. Our strength lay in the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses and their readiness to fight under our banner. ”

“ THE PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY AND PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP As Marxists, we have never been idol-worshippers of formal democracy. In a society of classes, democratic institutions not only do not eliminate class struggle, but also give to class interests an utterly imperfect expression. The propertied classes always have at their disposal tens and hundreds of means for falsifying, subverting and violating the will of the toilers. ”

“ Scared by their own helplessness and by the growing impatience of the masses, the leaders of the middle class complied with this demand. They actually began to think that, in order to obtain peace, it was only necessary for the Russian army to make a drive. Such a drive seemed to offer a way out of the difficult situation, a real solution of the problem—salvation. It is hard to imagine a more amazing and more criminal delusion. ”

“ At all elections during the revolutionary period, the Cadets suffered merciless defeat, and yet, the very parties—i.e., the Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviks—which victoriously defeated the Cadet party at the elections, after election gave it the place of honor in the coalition government. It is natural that the masses realized more and more that in reality the fusionist parties were playing the role of stewards to the liberal bourgeoisie. ”

“ Even previous to the Democratic Conference, in our party faction, I had raised the question of demonstratively withdrawing from the Conference and boycotting the Democratic Soviet. It was necessary to show the masses by action that the fusionists had led the Revolution into a blind alley. The fight for building up the Soviet power could be carried on only in a revolutionary way. The power must be snatched from the hands of those who had proven incapable of doing any good and were furthermore even losing their capacity for active evil. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Revolutionary Petrograd felt that the provinces and the army were still far from being with it. In workingmen's sections of the city a short period of tyrannical infringements set in, while in the garrison repressive measures were introduced against the disorganized regiments, and certain of its units were disarmed. At the same time, the political leaders manufactured a new ministry, with the inclusion of representatives of third-rate bourgeois groups, which, although adding nothing to the government, robbed it of its last vestige of revolutionary initiative. ”

“ There is room for complaint that the proletariat of the other countries, and particularly of the Central Empires, is too slow to enter the road of open revolutionary struggle, yes, it must be admitted that the pace of its development is all too slow—but, nevertheless, there could be observed a movement in Austria-Hungary which swept the entire state and which was a direct echo of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations.
Leaving for Brest-Litovsk, it was our common opinion that there was no ground to believe that just this wave would sweep away the Austro-German militarism. ”