This tactic of treating the party as a private organization, for whose actions the “Soviet” Government was not responsible, the Bolsheviks pursued with rather comical determination. For example, when in September 1918 Berlin protested against the anti-German propaganda in the Russian press (which by then was entirely under Bolshevik control), the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs archly replied:
The Russian Government has no complaints that the German censorship and German police do not prosecute [their] press organs for … malicious agitation against the political institutions of Russia—that is, against the Soviet system.… Considering fully admissible the absence of any repressive measures on the part of the German Government against German press organs which freely express their political and social opposition to the Soviet system, it deems equally admissible similar behavior in regard to the German system on the part of private persons and unofficial newspapers in Russia.… It is necessary to protest in the most decisive manner the frequent representations made by the German Consulate General that the Russian Government, by means of police measures, can direct the Russian revolutionary press in this or that direction and by bureaucratic influence instill in it such and such views.5
The Bolshevik Government reacted very differently when foreign powers interfered in internal Russian affairs. As early as November 1917, Trotsky, the Commissar of Foreign Affairs, protested Allied “interference” in Russian matters after Allied ambassadors, uncertain who the legitimate government of Russia was, had sent a diplomatic note to the Commander in Chief, General N. N. Dukhonin.6 The Sovnarkom never let an occasion pass without voicing objections to foreign powers violating the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of its country, even as it repeatedly violated this very same principle with its own conduct.
As stated, Lenin was prepared to accept any terms demanded by the Central Powers, but because of widespread suspicions that he was a German agent, he had to proceed with caution. Instead of entering immediately into negotiations with Germany and Austria, therefore, as he would have preferred, he issued appeals to all the belligerent powers to meet and make peace. Actually, general peace in Europe was the last thing he wanted: as we have seen, one reason for his urgency in seizing power in October was fear of just such an eventuality, which would foreclose the chances of unleashing a civil war in Europe. Apparently, he did not feel afraid to call for peace since previous appeals had fallen on deaf ears, including the proposals of President Wilson of December 1916, the peace resolution of the German Reichstag in July 1917, and the papal proposals of August 1917. Once the Allies rejected his offer, as he had every reason to expect they would, he would be free to make his own arrangements.
The curiously named “Decree on Peace,” which Lenin had drafted and the Second Congress of Soviets adopted, proposed to the belligerent powers a three-month armistice. This proposal it coupled with an appeal to the workers of England, France, and Germany with their
many-sided decisive and selflessly energetic activity [to] help us successfully complete the task of peace and, at the same time, the task of liberating the toiling and exploited masses of the population from all slavery and all exploitation.7
George Kennan has labeled this “decree” an act of “demonstrative diplomacy,” intended “not to promote freely accepted and mutually profitable agreements between governments but rather to embarrass other governments and stir up opposition among their own people.”* The Bolsheviks issued other proclamations in the same spirit, urging the citizens of the belligerent powers to rise in rebellion.8 As head of state, Lenin could now advance the program of the Zimmerwald left.
The Bolsheviks transmitted their Peace Decree to the Allied envoys on November 9/22. The Allied governments rejected it out of hand, following which Trotsky informed the Central Powers of Russia’s readiness to open negotiations for an armistice.
