Lenin formulated his views on January 7/20 in “Theses on the question of the immediate conclusion of a separate and annexationist peace.”38 Here he made the following points:
1. Before its ultimate triumph, the Soviet regime faced a period of anarchy and civil war: it needed time for “socialist reorganization.”
2. Russia required at least several months, “in the course of which the regime must have a completely free hand to triumph over the bourgeoisie, to begin with, in its own country” and to organize its forces.
3. Soviet policy must be determined by domestic considerations because of the uncertainty whether a revolution would break out abroad.
4. In Germany, the “military party” had gained the upper hand: Russia will be presented with an ultimatum demanding territorial concessions and financial contributions. The government has done everything in its power to prolong the negotiations but this tactic has run its course.
5. The opponents of an immediate peace on German terms wrongly argue that such a peace would violate the spirit of “proletarian internationalism.” If the government decided to continue fighting the Germans, as they wished, it would have no alternative but to seek help from the other “imperialist bloc,” the Entente, which would turn it into an agent of France and England. Continuing the war thus was not an “anti-imperialist” move, because it called for a choice between two “imperialist” camps. The task of the regime, however, was not to choose between “imperialisms,” but to consolidate power.
6. Russia indeed must promote revolutions abroad, but this cannot be done without account of the “correlation of forces”: at present Russian armies are powerless to stop a German advance. Furthermore, the majority of Russia’s “peasant” army favored the “annexationist” peace demanded by Germany.
7. If Russia persisted in its refusal to accept current German peace terms, it would eventually have to accept even more onerous ones: but this would be done not by the Bolsheviks but by their successors, because in the meantime the Bolsheviks would have been toppled from power.
8. A respite will give the government the opportunity to organize the economy (nationalize the banks and heavy industry), which “will make socialism invincible in Russia and the entire world, creating, at the same time, a solid economic basis for a powerful worker-peasant Red Army.”
Lenin had another reason in mind which he could not spell out because it would have revealed that, notwithstanding his protestations, he really desired the World War to continue. He felt certain that as soon as the “bourgeoisie” of the Central Powers and the Entente made peace, they would join forces and attack Soviet Russia. He hinted at this danger during the debates on the Brest Treaty: “Our revolution was born of the war: if there were no war, we would have witnessed the unification of the capitalists of the whole world, a unification on the basis of a struggle against us.”39 Projecting his own political militancy, he gave his “enemies” much too much credit for astuteness and decisiveness: in fact, no such “unification” would occur after the November 1918 Armistice. But believing in the danger, he had to prolong the war in order to gain time for building an armed force able to withstand the expected “capitalist” assault.
On January 8/21, 1918, the Bolsheviks convened a conference of party leaders from three strongholds: Petrograd, Moscow, and the Ural region. Lenin presented a resolution calling for the acceptance of the German ultimatum: it received a bare fifteen votes out of sixty-three. Trotsky’s compromise resolution in favor of “neither peace nor war” won sixteen votes. The majority (thirty-two delegates) voted for the resolution of the Left Communists, demanding an uncompromising “revolutionary war.”*
The discussion next shifted to the Central Committee. Here, Trotsky moved for an immediate, unilateral suspension of hostilities and the concurrent demobilization of the Russian army. The motion carried with the barest majority, 9–7. Lenin responded with an impassioned speech in favor of an immediate peace on German terms,40 but he remained in the minority, which dwindled still further the next day when the Bolshevik Central Committee met in joint session with the Central Committee of the Left SRs, who strenuously opposed Lenin’s peace proposals. Here again Trotsky’s resolution carried the day.
With this mandate in hand, Trotsky returned to Brest. The talks resumed on January 15/28. Trotsky continued playing for time with irrelevant remarks and propagandistic speeches, which now began to irritate even the self-possessed Kühlmann.
