The Breathing-Space

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Speech at the session of the Fifth All-Russia Central Executive Committee, October 30, 1918

We have again been given a breathing-space. There can be no question of our being attacked by any military force in the next few weeks. In the White-Guard papers they now write about the Anglo-French expedition as a false hope that has vanished away, and so their eyes are now all turned towards Japan and America. From that quarter a real danger does undoubtedy threaten us, or may do so. But this danger, too, is far away, very many versts or kilometres distant. We have been given the chance to utilise the whole winter for strengthening our forces, and we shall now not merely capture towns but also quickly fortify them according to all the rules of the art. And even if we presume that the Japanese or the Americans, with the support of the White Guards or of the Czechoslovaks, who are lining the Trans-Siberian Railway, will get as far as the Urals, they will encounter before spring comes a stout and mighty barrier in their path. As yet they have not traversed that path. Our floes are only at its very beginning. They will have to move across a huge country, with only enemies to left and right of them. While the Czechoslovak Corps may have cavalry as rearguatrd, and, thanks to its high quality (which, however, is declinling day by day), may help with the central sector of the theatre of operations, the Japanese and American forces will have no rearguard: they will find that to the right and to the left of the narrow railway zone there are hostile partisans who are Prepared to do everything to defend their land and their grain, and they will be obliged to drag behind them a long, an enormous supply column. However rich in technique the Americans may be, and however powerful Japanese militarism although, it must be said, during the war they supplied Russia with extremely poor materiel, useless shells and guns – they will need to spend many weeks and months overcoming the resistance and obstacles they will meet in colossal Siberia before they can reach the European borders of the Soviet Republic. And, meanwhile, the Red Army will, unperceived by them, grow stronger and develop further.

There is at present some sort of agreement in being between Japan and the United States. Whether this agreement will hold till the spring cannot be forecast by any astrologer, and how deep the opposition to this agreement will be, inside Japan and America, is also impossible to foretell with astronomical accuracy. But only a month ago we observed a tremendous move ment taking place in Japan, involving millions of workers. If the Japanese bourgeoisie has shown ability to adapt and imitate, we cannot doubt that the Japanese proletariat, tempered in the crucible of the world-wide slaughter, will also show immense capacity for revolutionary imitation, and The Japanese bourgeoisie will come up against greater resistance to its chimerical hopes regarding Siberia with every month that passes. The same applies to America. There has been talk here of the growth of the movement on the other side of the ocean. The American worker has undoubtedly lost in the last two or three years his previous privileged position as the aristocrat of the world’s labor. Tremendous tribute is demanded from him: upon him weighs the old federal democracy, a concentrated and centralized imperialist power which in no way falls short of any monarchical-autocratic power. Faced with this colossal upheaval, imperialism is experiencing a catastrophic turn: the revolution must develop with incredible speed, and the resistance of the American proletariat will develop all the faster the more vigorously we resist American intervention, the greater the obstacle that is encountered in their advance by American and Japanese militarism, which are our principal enemies at the present time.

As a force dangerous to us, Germany is certainly leaving the stage now. Bulgaria is pulling out, and is being followed by Turkey, Romania and Austria-Hungary. It is difficult to sup pose that the rulers of present-day Germany, quite apart from the formal treaties which should bind them, will have the material possibility or the motives to change their Eastern policy. If they do make changes in this policy, it is most likely to be in the direction of extricating some corps which is now bogged down in the Ukraine, so as to use it for other duties. We are now convinced of that by the course of events. It may be said that Bulgaria’s departure will strengthen our direct opponents of the present period, the Allies, and that is true, but only momentarily. Actually, the whole of the world’s diplomacy is now determining its tasks only from moment to moment, and it cannot do otherwise. It is unable to make judgements in the light of precise historical prospects, because no prospect but doom appears before it. Russia’s departure from the war undoubtedly strengthened Germany. I recall – his intonation still rings in my ears – how Von Kuhlmann said: ‘Of course Germany wants to live at peace with her mighty Eastern neighbour.’ That word ‘mighty’ was spoken with an intonation that had to mean: ‘Yes, Russia was a mighty country, but now you are grovelling in the dust at our feet.’ The sound of Von Kuhlmann’s voice has remained with me, but Hertling is now no more, neither is Hintze,[Count von Hertling was Germany’s Chancellor when the Brest-Litovsk negotiations began, and Rear-Admiral von Hintze negotiated the ‘supplentary treaty’ of August 27, 1918 between Soviet Russia and Germany.]and indeed much else has changed in Germany.

I think that, while Russia’s departure from the war did temporarily strengthen Germany, in the process of history, the departure today of Bulgaria, where a Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies has been organized, and tomorrow’s departure of Austria-Hungary (the revolution is passing through a fateful period in that country), are all results of those events which took Russia out of the war and temporarily strengthened Ger many, and which are nothing other than most profound signs of the downfall of world capitalism.