The decree that announced our willingness to make peace was passed by the Congress of Soviets on October 26, when only Petrograd was in our hands. On November 7, I sent an appeal by radio to the Allied countries and to the Central Powers, inviting them to conclude a general peace. Through their agents, the Allied governments replied to General Dukhonin, the Russian Commander-in-chief, that any further steps in the direction of separate negotiations would entail “the gravest consequences.” I replied to this threat with an appeal to all workers, soldiers and peasants. It was a categorical appeal: When we overthrew our bourgeoisie, it was not to make our army shed its blood at the order of a foreign bourgeoisie.
On November 22, we signed an agreement for a truce along the entire front, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Once more we invited the Allies to join us in the peace negotiations. No reply was forthcoming, but neither were any more threats; the Allied governments seemed to have learned something. The peace negotiations began on December 9, six weeks after the adoption of the decree of peace, which left the countries of the Entente sufficient time to determine their attitude on this question. At the outset, our delegation made a formal declaration stating the principles of democratic peace.
The opposing side demanded an adjournment. The resumption of the conference was put off time and again. The delegations of the quadruple alliance had to cope with all kinds of internal difficulties in framing their reply to us, finally given on December 25. The governments of the quadruple alliance “subscribed” to the democratic formula of peace — no annexations, no indemnities, and self-determination for the peoples. On December 28, a huge demonstration was held in Petrograd, in honor of democratic peace. Though the masses mistrusted the German reply, they accepted it as a great moral victory for the revolution. The next morning, our delegation returned from Brest-Litovsk, bringing with it the monstrous demands that Kühlmann had submitted on behalf of the Central Powers.
“To delay negotiations, there must be someone to do the delaying,” said Lenin. At his insistence, I set off for Brest-Litovsk. I confess I felt as if I were being led to the torture chamber. Being with strange and alien people always had aroused my fears; it did especially on this occasion. I absolutely cannot understand revolutionaries who willingly accept posts as ambassadors and feel like fish in water in their new surroundings.
At Brest-Litovsk, the first Soviet delegation, headed by Joffe, was treated in a most ingratiating way by the Germans. Prince Leopold of Bavaria received them as his “guests.” All the delegations had dinner and supper together. General Hoffmann must have observed with considerable interest the woman delegate Vitzenko, who had assassinated General Sakharov. The Germans took their seats between our men, and tried to worm out of them whatever information they wanted. The first delegation included a worker, a peasant, and a soldier. They were delegates by mere accident, and they were little prepared for that sort of trickery. The peasant, an old man, was even encouraged to drink more wine than was good for him.
General Hoffmann’s staff was publishing a paper called Russky Vyestnik (The Russian Messenger) for the benefit of the Russian prisoners; in its early phases it always spoke of the Bolsheviks with the most touching sympathy. “Our readers ask us who Trotsky is,” Hoffmann informed his Russian prisoners in his paper, and with admiring affection told them of my struggle against Czarism, and of my German book Russland in der Revolution. “The whole revolutionary world was thrilled by his successful escape.” And farther on: “When Czarism was overthrown, its secret friends threw Trotsky into prison soon after he had returned from a long exile.” In a word, there were no more ardent revolutionaries than Leopold of Bavaria and Hoffmann of Prussia.
But this idyl did not last long. At the meeting of the Brest-Litovsk conference of February 7, which bore the least possible resemblance to an idyll, I remarked, referring to the past: “We are inclined to regret the premature compliments paid us by the official German and Austro-Hungarian press. This was quite unnecessary for the successful progress of peace negotiations.”
In this affair, the Social Democracy was again no more than the shadow of the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg governments. Scheidemann, Ebert and others tried at first to slap us patronizingly on the back. The Vienna Arbeiter-Zeitung wrote eloquently on December 15 that “the duel between Trotsky and Buchanan is the symbol of the great struggle of our day, the struggle of the proletariat against capital.” In the days when Kühlmann and Czernin were trying to strangle the Russian revolution at Brest-Litovsk, the Austrian Marxists were able to see nothing but a “duel” between Trotsky and — Buchanan! Even to-day one views such hypocrisy only with disgust.
“Trotsky,” wrote the Hapsburg Marxists, “is the authorized representative of the peaceful will of the Russian working class that is trying to break the iron-gold chain with which it has been bound by English capital.” The leaders of the Social Democracy voluntarily chained themselves to Austro-German capital, and were helping their governments forcibly to chain the Russian revolution. At the most difficult stages of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, when Lenin or I would come across a copy of the Berlin Vorw?rts, or the Vienna Arbeiter Zeitung, we would silently point out to each other the lines underscored with a colored pencil, lift our eyes to one another for a moment, and then turn away with an inordinate sense of shame for the men who, only the day before, had been our comrades in the International. Every one who consciously passed through this stage realized forever that, whatever the fluctuations of the political situation, the Social Democracy was historically dead.
To end this improper masquerade, I asked in our own papers if the German staff would not be so good as to tell the German soldiers something about Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. We published a special leaflet on the subject for the German soldiers, and the Vyestnik of General Hoffmann bit its tongue. Immediately after my arrival at Brest-Litovsk, Hoffmann protested against our propaganda among the troops. I refused to discuss the matter, and suggested that the General continue his own propaganda among the Russian troops — the conditions were the same, the only difference being in the kind of propaganda. I also reminded him that the dissimilarity of our views on certain rather important questions had long been known, and had even been certified to by one of the German courts — the one that during the war had sentenced me in contumacy to prison. This indecorous reminder created a great sensation. Many of the titled gentlemen almost gasped. Turning to Hoffmann, Kühlmann asked, “Would you like to reply?” To which Hoffmann retorted, “No, that’s enough.”
As chairman of the Soviet delegation, I decided to put an immediate stop to the familiarity that had quite imperceptibly been established during the early stages. Through our military representatives, I made it known that I had no desire to be presented to the Prince of Bavaria. This was noted. I next demanded separate dinners and suppers, under the pretext that we had to hold conferences during the intervals. This was also accepted in silence. In his diary for January 7, Czernin wrote: “All the Russians, under the leadership of Trotsky, arrived before dinner-time. They immediately asked to be excused if, in the future, they did not join in the meals in common. And they generally kept out of sight; this time it seems that quite a different wind is blowing than on the last occasion.” The feigned friendliness of relations gave way to an official formality. This was all the more opportune since we had to pass from academic preliminaries to the concrete questions of a peace treaty.
Kühlmann was head and shoulders above Czernin, and probably above all the rest of the diplomats whom I met in the years after the war. He impressed me as a man of character, with a practical mind far above the average, and with malice enough to cover not only us — here he met his match — but his dear allies as well. During the discussion of the question of occupied territories, Kühlmann, stretching himself to his full height and raising his voice, said: “Our German territory, thank God, is not being held by foreign troops anywhere!” whereupon Czernin’s face went green and his figure shrank. Kühlmann was deliberately aiming at him. Their relationship was far from that of a serene friendship. Later, when the discussion turned to Persia, which was occupied on both sides by foreign armies, I remarked that since Persia, unlike Austria-Hungary, was not in alliance with anyone, it did not cause any of us pious rejoicing that it was Persia’s territory, and not ours, that was occupied. At this, Czernin almost jumped as he exclaimed, “Unerht?rt!” (“unheard of”). Ostensibly, this exclamation was addressed to me, although it was really for Kühlmann. Episodes like this were frequent.
Like a good chess-player who for a long time has met weaker players, and who has lost some of his skill, Kühlmann, having met only his Austro-Hungarian, Turkish, Bulgarian and neutral diplomatic vassals during the war, was inclined to underestimate his revolutionary opponents and play his game in a slovenly manner. He often astonished me, especially at the outset, by the primitiveness of his methods and by his lack of understanding of his opponent’s psychology
I was considerably and quite unpleasantly agitated when I went to my first meeting with the diplomats. When I was hanging up my coat in the hall, I came face to face with Kühlmann. I did not know him by sight. He introduced himself and immediately added that he was “very pleased” at my coming, since it was better to deal directly with the master than with his emissary. His face bore witness to his satisfaction with this “fine” move, so calculated to impress an upstart. This made me feel exactly as if I had stepped on something unclean. I even started back, involuntarily. Kühlmann realized his blunder, put himself on his guard, and his tone became instantly more formal. But that did not prevent him from following the same method, in my presence, with the head of the Turkish delegation, an old court diplomatist. As he was introducing his colleagues to me, Kühlmann waited until the Turkish delegate walked a step away and then said to me in a confidential stage whisper, certain that the other would hear him: “He is the best diplomatist in Europe.” When I told this to Joffe, he answered laughing: “At my first meeting with Kühlmann he did exactly the same thing.” It looked very much as if Kühlmann was giving the “best diplomatist” a platonic compensation for certain unplatonic extortions. It is also possible that he was trying to kill two birds with one stone, by making it known to Czernin that he did not consider him the best diplomatist — next to himself. On December 28, Kühlmann said to Czernin, according to the latter’s account: “The emperor is the only intelligent man in all Germany.” One imagines that these words were not intended so much for Czernin’s ears as for those of the emperor himself. In transmitting flatteries to their destination, the diplomatists no doubt were helping each other. Flattez, flattez, il en restera toujours quelque chose!
This was the first time that I had come face to face with this social circle. Of course, even before, I had never had any illusions about it. I had a fairly strong suspicion that “pots were not baked by gods.” But I must admit that I had thought the general level much higher. My impressions of that first meeting were something like this: men rate others cheaply, and rate themselves not much dearer.
In this connection the following episode may be of some interest. At Victor Adler’s instigation — Adler tried in those days to show his personal sympathy for me in every possible way — Count Czernin suggested casually that my library, which had been left in Vienna at the beginning of the war, be sent to Moscow. The library was of considerable interest, for during the long years of foreign exile I had gathered together a large collection of Russian revolutionary literature. I had hardly had time to express my thanks, with a little reserve, before the diplomat was asking me to inquire into the case of two Austrian prisoners who, he alleged, were being badly treated. This direct and underscored transition from the library to the prisoners, who were of course not privates but officers from the circles closest to Count Czernin, seemed altogether too brazen. I answered succinctly that if Czernin’s information should prove correct, it would of course be my duty to do everything necessary, but that this matter had nothing to do with my library. In his memoirs Czernin gives a fairly exact account of this incident, without denying that he had tried to connect the business of the prisoners with that of the library. On the contrary, he seems to consider this quite natural. He ends his story with the ambiguous phrase: “He obviously wants to have the library.” I might add that immediately after receiving the library I handed it over to one of the learned institutions in Moscow.
The circumstances of history willed that the delegates of the most revolutionary régime ever known to humanity should sit at the same diplomatic table with the representatives of the most reactionary caste among all the ruling classes. How greatly our opponents feared the explosive power of their negotiations with the Bolsheviks was shown by their readiness to break off the negotiations rather than transfer them to a neutral country. In his memoirs Czernin says quite plainly that in a neutral country, with the help of their international friends, the Bolsheviks would have taken the reins in their own hands. Officially, he used the excuse that in a neutral country England and France would immediately have launched their intrigues, “both openly and behind the scenes.” I retorted that our political practice had no use for anything behind the scenes, because this weapon of the old diplomacy had been eradicated by the Russian people, together with many other things, in the victorious uprising of October 25. But we had to bow to an ultimatum, and so we remained at Brest-Litovsk.
Barring a few buildings that stood apart from the old town and were occupied by the German staff, Brest-Litovsk strictly speaking no longer existed. The town had been burned to the ground in impotent rage by the Czar’s troops during their retreat. Hoffmann must have chosen this place for his staff because he knew that he could keep its members within his grasp. The furnishings, like the food, were of the simplest, and German soldiers acted as attendants. For them we were messengers of peace, and they looked to us with hope. A high, barbed-wire fence surrounded the staff buildings. On my morning walks I kept running into notices: “Any Russian found in this place will be shot.” This referred to prisoners, of course, but I would ask myself if it did not apply also to us, who were semi-prisoners here, and would turn back again. There was a fine, strategic road running through the town of Brest-Litovsk. During the first days of our stay there, we went out for drives in the staff automobiles, and, as a result, a conflict developed one day between one of the members of our delegation and a German sergeant. Hoffmann sent a formal complaint to me; I answered that we declined, with thanks, to make any further use of the automobiles placed at our disposal. The negotiations dragged on. All of us had to communicate with our respective governments by direct wires, and frequently these wires did not work. Whether this was actually due to physical causes or whether the breakdown was feigned to enable our opponents to gain time, we were unable to say. At any rate, the intervals between meetings were frequent, and sometimes lasted as long as several days. During one of these, I made a trip to Warsaw. The city was living under the rule of the German bayonet. The inhabitants evinced a great interest in the Soviet diplomatists, but expressed it very cautiously, because no one knew how it was all going to end.
The delay in negotiations was to our interest. That was my real object in going to Brest-Litovsk. But I can claim no credit for myself on this score; my partners helped me as best they could. “Time is plentiful here,” Czernin writes melancholically in his diary. “Now it is the Turks who are not ready, now it is the Bulgarians, and now the Russians — and the meetings are adjourned again, or else broken off when they have only begun.” The Austrians, in turn, began to delay the negotiations when they struck their difficulties with the Ukrainian delegation. Of course this did not restrain Kühlmann and Czernin in their public statements from accusing the Russian delegation alone of trying to protract the negotiations. I protested against this insistently, but quite in vain.
Not a trace of the clumsy compliments which the officially inspired German press had indulged in toward the Bolsheviks — and except for the underground sheets it was all officially inspired — was left as the negotiations drew to their close. The T?gliche Rundschau, for instance, not only complained that “in Brest-Litovsk, Trotsky has created for himself a platform from which his voice is carried throughout the world,” and accordingly demanded an end to it as soon as possible — it also stated that “neither Lenin nor Trotsky wants peace, which would in all probability mean either the gallows or prison for them.” The tone of the Social Democratic press was substantially the same. The Scheidemanns, Eberts and Stampfers saw our hope for a revolution in Germany as our greatest crime. These gentlemen were far from thinking that in a few months the revolution would seize them by the scruff of their necks, and put them in power.
After the long vacation from reading German papers, I took them up again at Brest-Litovsk with great interest. The peace negotiations figured in them in a way that showed a very thorough propagandist treatment. But the papers alone were not enough to take all of my time. I decided to make the fullest possible use of my enforced leisure, which I could foresee would not happen again in the near future. We had with us a good many stenographers who had once been on the staff of the State Duma, and so I began dictating to them, from memory, a historical sketch of the October revolution. From a few sessions there grew a book intended primarily for foreign workers. The necessity of explaining to them what had happened was most imperative; Lenin and I had discussed this necessity more than once but no one had any time to spare. And I had been farthest from supposing that Brest-Litovsk would become a seat for my literary work. Lenin was very happy when I brought back with me a finished manuscript on the Russian revolution. In it, we both saw one of the modest pledges of a future revolutionary recompense for the harsh peace. The book was soon translated into a dozen European and Asiatic languages.
Although all the parties included in the Communist International had followed the lead of the Russians and had printed innumerable editions of the book, th............