Speech On The International Situation (6th All Russia Congres of Soviets)

November 8

(Prolonged applause.) Comrades, from the very beginning of the October Revolution, foreign policy and international relations have been the main questions facing us. Not merely because from now on all the states in the world are being firmly linked by imperialism into a single system, or rather, into one dirty, bloody mass, but because the complete victory of the socialist revolution in one country alone is inconceivable and demands the most active co-operation of at least several advanced countries, which do not include Russia. Hence one of the main problems of the revolution is now the extent to which we succeed in broadening the revolution in other countries too, and the extent to which we succeed meanwhile in warding off imperialism.

I should like to remind you briefly of the main stages of our international policy over the past year. As I have already had occasion to point out in my speech on the anniversary of the revolution, the main feature characterising our position a year ago was that we were on our own. No matter how sound our conviction that a revolutionary force was being and had been created throughout Europe and that the war would not end without revolution, there were no signs at the time that a revolution had begun or was beginning. In these circumstances we could do nothing but direct our foreign policy efforts to enlightening the working people of Western Europe. This was not because we claimed to be more enlightened than they, but because so long as the bourgeoisie of a country have not been overthrown, military censorship and that fantastically bloodthirsty atmosphere which accompanies every war, particularly a reactionary one, predominate in that country. You well appreciate that in the most democratic, republican countries, war means military censorship and unprecedented methods employed by the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois military staffs to deceive the people. We set out to share our achievements in this respect with other nations. We did everything possible for this when we annulled and published the disgraceful secret treaties which the ex-tsar had concluded with the British and French capitalists to the benefit of the Russian capitalists. You know that these were downright predatory treaties. You know that the government of Kerensky and the Mensheviks kept these treaties secret and upheld them. By way of exception, we come across statements in that section of the British and French press which is to any degree honest that, thanks only to the Russian revolution, the French and the British learned much that was material to them as regards their diplomatic history.

We have certainly done very little from the point of view of the social revolution as a whole, but what we have done has been one of the greatest steps in its preparation.

If we now make a general survey of the results gained by the exposure of German imperialism, we shall see that it is now obvious to the working people of all countries that they were made to wage a bloody and predatory war. And at the end of this year of war the behaviour of Britain and America is beginning to be exposed in the same way, since the people are opening their eyes and begin to see through the evil designs. That is all we have done, but we have done our bit. The exposure of these treaties was a blow to imperialism. The terms of the peace treaty which we were compelled to conclude proved to be a powerful weapon of propaganda and agitation; we did more with them than any other government or nation has done. But while it is true that the attempt we made to awaken the people did not produce immediate results, we never even assumed that the revolution would begin immediately, or that all would be lost. During the past fifteen years we have brought about two revolutions, and we have clearly seen how much time must elapse before they grip the people. Recent events in Austria and Germany confirm this. We said that we had no intention of allying ourselves with robbers and becoming robbers ourselves; no, we expected to arouse the proletariat of the enemy countries. We were jeered at and told we were preparing to arouse the German proletariat which would strangle us while we were preparing to launch a propaganda attack. But facts have shown we were right to assume that the working people in all countries are equally hostile to imperialism. They only need to be given a certain period for preparation; the Russian people, too, despite memories of the 1905 Revolution, took some time before they again came up for revolution.

Before the Brest-Litovsk Peace we did everything in our power to hit at imperialism. If the history of the growth of the proletarian revolution did not completely wipe this out, and if the Brest-Litovsk Peace forced us to retreat before imperialism, this was because we were insufficiently prepared in January 1918. Fate condemned us to isolation, and we went through an agonising period after the Brest-Litovsk Peace.

Comrades, the four years which we spent in world war ended in peace, but on onerous terms. In the final analysis, however, even these onerous peace terms proved that we were right and that our hopes were not built on sand. With every passing month we grew strong while West-European imperialism grew weak. Now, as a result, we see that Germany, who six months ago completely ignored our Embassy and thought there could be no Red institution there, recently, at any rate, has been weakening. The latest telegram informs us of the German imperialists’ appeal to the people to keep calm, saying that peace is near at hand. We know what is meant when monarchs appeal for calm and promise to do the impossible in the near future. If Germany gets peace soon, it will be a Brest-Litovsk Peace, which instead of peace will bring the working people more misery than ever.

The results of our international policy shaped in such a way that six months after the Brest-Litovsk Peace we were a devastated country to the bourgeoisie, but, to the proletariat, we were rapidly developing and now head the proletarian army which has begun to shake Austria and Germany. This success vindicated and fully justified all our sacrifices in any worker’s eyes. If we were to be suddenly wiped out, if our activities were to be cut short—this is impossible since miracles do not happen—yet if this were to happen we would be justified in saying, without concealing our mistakes, that we had made full use of the period, offered us by fate, for the world socialist revolution! We have done everything possible for the working people of Russia, and we have done more than anyone else for the world proletarian revolution. (Applause.)

In recent months, and in-recent weeks, the international situation has begun to change sharply; now German imperialism is almost completely defeatEditor All designs on the Ukraine which the German imperialists fostered among their working people proved to be empty promises. It turned out that American imperialism was ready, and a blow was struck at Germany. A totally different situation has arisen. We have been under no illusions. After the October Revolution we were considerably weaker than imperialism and even now we are weaker than international imperialism. We must repeat this now so as not to deceive ourselves: following the October Revolution we were weaker and could not fight. Now we are weaker too and must do everything we can to avoid a clash with imperialism.

That we were able to survive a year after the October Revolution was due to the split of international imperialism into two predatory groups: Anglo-French-American on the one hand, and German on the other, which were locked in mortal combat, and which had no time for us. Neither group could muster large forces against us, which they would have done had they been in a position to do so. They were blinded by the bloodthirsty atmosphere of war. The material sacrifices required to carry on the war demanded the utmost concentration of their efforts. They had no time for us, not because by some miracle we were stronger than the imperialists—no, that would be nonsense—but only because international imperialism had split into two predatory groups which were at each other’s throats. Only thanks to this the Soviet Republic was able to openly declare war on the imperialists of all countries, depriving them of their capital in the shape of foreign loans, slapping them in the face and openly emptying their plunder-laden pockets.

An end has come to the period of declarations which we then made over the correspondence started by the German imperialists, even though world imperialism could not tear into us as it should have done in line with its hostility and thirst for capitalist profits, which had been fantastically expanded by the war. Until the moment of the Anglo-American imperialists’ victory over the other group they were fully occupied fighting among themselves, and so had no chance to launch a decisive campaign against the Soviet Republic. There is no longer a second group. Only one group of victors remains. This has completely altered our international position, and we must take this change into account. The facts show how this change bears on the development of the international situation. The workers’ revolution is now winning in the defeated countries; everyone can clearly see what tremendous advances it has made. When we took power in October we were nothing more in Europe than a single spark. True, the sparks began to fly, and they flew from us. This is our greatest achievement, but even so, these were isolated sparks. Now most countries within the sphere of German-Austrian imperialism are aflame (Bulgaria, Austria and Hungary). We know that from Bulgaria the revolution has spread to Serbia. We know how these worker-peasant revolutions passed through Austria and reached Germany. Several countries are enveloped in the flames of workers’ revolution. In this respect our efforts and sacrifices have been justifiEditor They were not reckless adventures, as our enemies slanderously claimed, but an essential step towards world revolution, which had to be taken by the country that had been placed in the lead, despite its underdevelopment and backwardness.

This is one result, and the most important from the point of view of the final outcome of the imperialist war. The other result is the one to which I referred earlier, that Anglo-American imperialism is now exposing itself in the same way as Austro-German did in its time. We can see that if, at the time of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, Germany had been somewhat level-headed, able to keep herself in check and to refrain from making gambles, she would have been able to maintain her domination and undoubtedly could have secured an advantageous position in the West. She did not do this because when a machine like a war involving millions and tens of millions, a war which inflamed chauvinist passions to the utmost, a war bound up with capitalist interests totalling hundreds of billions of rubles—when such a machine has gathered full speed there are no brakes that can stop it. This machine went farther than the German imperialists themselves desired, and they were crushed by it. They were stuck; they ended up like a man who had gorged himself to death. And now, before our very eyes, British and American imperialism is in this extremely ugly, but, from the viewpoint of the revolutionary proletariat, extremely useful position. You might have thought they would have had much greater political experience than Germany. Here are people used to democratic rule, not to the rule of some Junker or other, people who went through the hardest period of their history hundreds of years ago. You might have thought these people would-have retained their presence of mind. If we were to speak as individuals, from the point of view of democracy in general, as bourgeois philistines, professors, who have understood nothing from the struggle between imperialism and the working class, whether or not they were capable of level-headedness, if we reasoned from the point of view of democracy in general, then we would have to say that Britain and America are countries with a centuries-old tradition of democracy, that the bourgeoisie there would be able to hold their ground. If by some means they were to succeed now in holding on, this would at any rate be for a fairly long period. But it seems that the same thing is happening to them as happened to the militarist-despotic Germany. In this imperialist war there is a tremendous difference between Russia and the republican countries. The imperialist war is so steeped in blood, so predatory and bestial, that it has effaced even these important differences, and in this respect it has brought the freest democracy of America to the level of semi-militarist, despotic Germany.

We see that Britain and America, countries which had greater opportunities than others for remaining democratic republics, have overdone things as savagely and insanely as Germany did in her time, and so they are heading, just as quickly, and perhaps even faster, towards the end so successfully arrived at by German imperialism. It swelled out fantastically over three-quarters of Europe, became distended and then burst, leaving behind it an awful stench. Now British and American imperialism is racing to the same end. You only have to take a cursory glance at the armistice and peace terms which the British and Americans, the “liberators” of the people from German imperialism, are presenting to the defeated nations. Take Bulgaria. You would have thought that a country like Bulgaria could hold no terror for the Anglo-American imperialist colossus. Nevertheless, the revolution in this small, weak, absolutely helpless country caused the Anglo-Americans to lose their heads and present armistice terms that are tantamount to occupation. In this country where a peasants’ republic has been proclaimed, in Sofia, an important railway junction, the whole railway is now in the hands of Anglo-American troops. They are forced to fight this little peasants’ republic. From the military point of view this is a walkover. People who take the view of the bourgeoisie, of the old ruling class, of old military relations, merely smile contemptuously. What does this pigmy Bulgaria signify in comparison with the Anglo-American forces? Nothing from the military standpoint, but a great deal from the revolutionary standpoint. This is not a colony where they are used to exterminating the defeated people in their millions. The British and Americans consider this is only establishing law and order, bringing civilisation and Christianity to African savages. But this is not Central Africa. Here the soldiers, no matter how strong their army, become demoralised when they come up against a revolution. Germany is proof enough of this. In Germany, at any rate as regards discipline, the soldiers were model army men. Yet when the Germans marched into the Ukraine, factors other than discipline came into play. The starving German soldier marched for bread, and it would have been unrealistic to demand that he should not steal too much bread. Moreover, we know that in this country he was most of all infected by the spirit of the Russian revolution. The German bourgeoisie were well aware of this and it caused Wilhelm to panic. The Hohenzollerns are mistaken if they imagine that Germany will shed a single drop of blood for them. This is the result of the policy of bellicose German imperialism. The same thing is repeating itself in regard to Britain. The Anglo-American army is already becoming demoralised; this began as soon as it launched the ferocious campaign against Bulgaria. And this is only the beginning. Austria followed Bulgaria. Permit me to read you some of the clauses of the terms dictated by the Anglo-American imperialist victors. These are the people who most of all shouted to the working people that they were conducting a war of liberation, that their chief aim was to crush Prussian militarism which threatened to spread the despotic regime over all countries. They shouted loudest that they were conducting a war of liberation. This was a deception. You know that bourgeois lawyers, these parliamentarians who have spent their whole lives learning the art of deception without blushing, find it easy to deceive each other—but they don’t get away with it when they have to deceive the workers in the same way. British and American politicians and parliamentarians are past masters at this art. But they will not get away with deception. The working people, whom they incited in the name of freedom, will come to their senses straight away, and even more so when, on a mass scale, not from proclamations (which help, but do not really move the revolution), but from their own experience, they see they are being deceived, when they become aware of the peace terms with Austria.

These are peace terms now being forced on a comparatively weak, disintegrating state by people who shouted that the Bolsheviks were traitors because they signed the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty. When the Germans wanted to send their soldiers to Moscow, we said we would rather all die in battle than agree to this. (Applause.) We told ourselves great sacrifices would have to be made in the occupied areas, but everybody knows how Soviet Russia helped and kept them supplied with necessities. Now the democratic troops of Britain and France will have to serve to “maintain law and order”, and this when there are Soviets of Workers’ Deputies in Bulgaria and Serbia, when there are Soviets of Workers’ Deputies in Vienna and Budapest. We know what kind of order this means. It means that the Anglo-American troops are to be the throttlers and executioners of the world revolution.

Comrades, when the Russian serf troops were sent to suppress the Hungarian Revolution in 1848,[4] they were able to get away with it because they were serfs; they were able to get away with it in relation to Poland.[5] But people who have known freedom for a century and who were incited to hate German imperialism because it was a beast which had to be destroyed, must understand that Anglo-American imperialism is the same sort of beast whom it would be only right to destroy as well!

And now history, with its usual malicious irony, has arrived at the point where, after the exposure of German imperialism, it is the turn of Anglo-French imperialism to utterly expose itself. We declare to the Russian, German and Austrian working people that these are not the Russian serf troops of 1848! They will not get away with it! They are out to stop people getting from capitalism to freedom and to suppress the revolution. We are absolutely convinced that this bloated monster will fall into the same abyss as did the German imperialist monster.

I now turn to matters which affect us most of all. I shall begin with the peace terms which Germany will have to agree to. The comrades from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs told me that The Times, the chief mouthpiece of the fabulously rich British bourgeoisie who actually shape the entire policy, has already published the terms to be imposed on Germany. She is expected to hand over Heligoland and the Wilhelmshaven Canal, Essen, where practically all military equipment is manufactured, disband her merchant fleet, immediately hand over Alsace-Lorraine and pay indemnities totalling 60 thousand-million, a great part of which must be paid in kind because money has depreciated everywhere and British merchants too have begun to calculate in another currency. We can see that the peace terms they are preparing for Germany will be completely devastating, far harsher than the Brest-Litovsk terms. They are strong enough materially and physically to do so if it were not for the existence of that awful Bolshevism. By imposing these peace terms they are preparing their own doom. For this is happening in civilised countries in the twentieth century, not in Central Africa. The once disciplined German soldier who put down the illiterate Ukrainian people has now buried his discipline. So it is all the more certain that the British and American imperialists will bury themselves when they make the gamble, which will bring about their political downfall, of making their troops throttlers and gendarmes of all Europe. They have been trying to destroy Russia for some time, and have been thinking of attacking her for some time. You only have to recall the Murmansk occupation, the millions they squandered on the Czechs, the treaty they concluded with Japan. And now Britain has a treaty with the Turks which gives her Baku so that she may strangle us by depriving us of raw materials.

British troops are ready to attack Russia from the South, through the Dardanelles or through Bulgaria and Rumania. They are closing in around the Soviet Republic, they are trying to cut off our economic contacts with the whole world. For this reason they compelled Holland to break off diplomatic relations with us.[6] When Germany expelled our Ambassador she acted, if not in direct agreement with Anglo-French policy, then hoping to do them a service so that they should be magnanimous to her. The implication was that we are also fulfilling the duties of executioner against the Bolsheviks, your enemies.

The main point about the international situation is (as I mentioned the other day) that we have never been so near to world proletarian revolution as we are now. We have proved we were not mistaken in banking on world proletarian revolution. Our great national and economic sacrifices were not made in vain. We achieved successes. Yet if we have never previously been so close to world revolution, then it is also true to say that we have never been in such a dangerous situation as we are now. The imperialists were busy among themselves, but now one group has been wiped out by the Anglo-French-American group, which considers its main task to be the extermination of world Bolshevism and the strangulation of its main centre, the Russian Soviet Republic. To do this, they intend to surround themselves with a Great Wall of China so as to keep out the plague, the plague of Bolshevism. These people are trying to rid themselves of Bolshevism by going into quarantine, but this cannot be done. Even if these Anglo-French imperialist gentlemen, who possess the best techniques in the world, succeed in building this Great Wall around the Republic, the germ of Bolshevism will still penetrate the wall and infect the workers of the world. (Applause.)

The West-European press, the press of Anglo-French imperialism, tries its hardest to keep silent about the state of imperialism. No lie or slander is vile enough to use against the Soviet government. It is true to say now that all the Anglo-French and American papers, with financial backing running into billions, are in capitalist hands and that they act in one syndicate to suppress the truth about Soviet Russia, to spread lies and slander about us. Yet despite the fact that for years there has been a military censor ship which has prevented a word of truth about the Soviet Republic from appearing in the newspapers of the democratic countries, not a single large workers’ meeting held anywhere goes by without the workers siding with the Bolsheviks, because it is impossible to hide the truth. The enemy accuses us of implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat. They are right and we do not hide it. The fact that the Soviet Government is not afraid and openly admits this attracts more millions of workers to its side, because the dictatorship is directed against the exploiters, and the working people see and are convinced that the struggle we are waging against the exploiters is a serious one and will be brought to a serious conclusion. Although the European papers surround us with a conspiracy of silence, they have so far announced that they regard it their duty to attack Russia because Russia surrendered to Germany, because Russia is in fact a German agent, because government leaders in Russia, they claim, are German agents. New forged documents, for which a good price is paid, appear every month proving that Lenin and Trotsky are downright traitors and German agents. Despite all this they cannot hide the truth, and from time to time there are open signs that the imperialist gentlemen feel uneasy. L’Echo de Paris [7] admits: “We are going into Russia to break the power of the Bolsheviks.” Their official line is that they are only fighting German domination, not conducting a war with Russia and not interfering in military matters. Our French internationalists who publish the III-me Internationale [8] in Moscow cited this quotation, and although we have been cut off from Paris and France by an extremely elaborate Great Wall of China, we tell the French imperialist gentlemen that they cannot defend themselves from their own bourgeoisie. Indeed, hundreds of thousands of French workers know this small quotation, and others too, and see that all the declarations of their rulers, of their bourgeoisie, are nothing but lies. Their own bourgeoisie let the cat out of the bag; they acknowledge that they want to break the power of the Bolsheviks. After four years of bloody war they have to tell their people: go and fight again against Russia to break the power of the Bolsheviks whom we hate because they owe us 17 thousand million and won’t pay up,[9] because they are rude to capitalists, landowners and tsars. Civilised nations who come down to admitting such things, patently betray the failure of their policy. No matter how strong they may be militarily we calmly review their strength and say: but you have in your rear an even more terrible enemy—the common people, whom you have deceived up to now; so much so that your tongue has dried up from the lies and slander you have spread about Soviet Russia. Similar information may be gleaned from The Manchester Guardian [10] of October 23. This British bourgeois newspaper writes: “If the Allied armies still remain in Russia and still operate in Russia, their purpose can only be to effect a revolution in . . . Russia. The Allied governments must, therefore, either . . . put an end to their operations in Russia or announce that they are at war with Bolshevism.”

I repeat that the significance of this small quotation, which sounds to us like a revolutionary call, like a powerful revolutionary appeal, is that it is written by a bourgeois newspaper, which is itself an enemy of the socialists, but feels that the truth can no longer be hidden. If bourgeois papers write in this vein you can imagine what the British workers must be thinking and saying. You know the sort of language used by the liberals in tsarist times, prior to the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. You know this language heralded an impending explosion amidst the revolutionary proletariat. From the language of these British bourgeois liberals, therefore, you can draw conclusions about what is going on in the moods, minds and hearts of the British, French and American workers. We must, therefore, face the bitter truth about our international position. The world revolution is not far off, but it cannot develop according to a special time-table. Having survived two revolutions we well appreciate this. We know, however, that although the imperialists cannot contain the world revolution, certain countries are likely to be defeated, and even heavier losses are possible. They know that Russia is in the birth-pangs of a proletarian revolution, but they are mistaken if they think that by crushing one centre of the revolution they will crush the revolution in other countries.

We, for our part, must admit that the situation is more dangerous than ever before, that once again we shall have to summon up every effort. Over the past year we have laid a firm foundation, created a socialist Red Army with a new discipline, and we are absolutely certain that we can and must continue the work we are doing. At all meetings, in every Soviet institution, at trade union meetings and at meetings of Poor Peasants’ Committees we must say: Comrades, we have survived a year and have achieved some success, but all this is still insufficient when we consider the powerful enemy bearing down on us. This enemy, Anglo-French imperialism, is world-wide, powerful and has defeated the whole world. We are going to fight it not because we think ourselves economically and technically on a par with the advanced countries of Europe. No, but we do know this enemy is going to topple into the abyss into which Austro-German imperialism once toppled; we know that the enemy, which has now ensnared Turkey, seized Bulgaria and is bent on occupying the whole of Austria-Hungary with the object of establishing a tsarist, gendarme regime, is heading for its doom. We know this as a historical fact, and that is why, while in no way attempting the impossible, we say we can beat off Anglo-French imperialism!

Every step in strengthening our Red Army will be echoed by a dozen steps in the disintegration of and revolutions in this apparently all-powerful enemy. There is therefore no cause whatsoever for despair or pessimism. We know the danger is great. It may be that fate has even heavier sacrifices in store for us. Even if they can crush one country, they can never crush the world proletarian revolution, they will only add more fuel to the flames that will consume them all. (Prolonged applause passing into ovation.)