Introduction¶
Core Argument¶
Trotsky’s introduction to this booklet is at once a declaration of intent and a statement of political position, written in the heat of the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations. The text was composed in fragments between diplomatic sessions, a fact Trotsky uses to underscore the peculiar historical position of the Bolshevik delegation: revolutionaries compelled to parley with the most reactionary representatives of the old order. He does not present this as a contradiction to be regretted, but as a strategic necessity from which revolutionary propaganda can be waged. The core argument is that the Russian November Revolution cannot be understood in isolation, nor can its fate be separated from the struggles of the European working class. Trotsky insists that the final resolution of the war, and of the revolution itself, rests with the workers of Europe, not with diplomats or generals.
The key claim is that the bourgeois press, both openly capitalist and ostensibly socialist, has systematically distorted the meaning of the revolution. The ‘socialist patriotic’ press is singled out for particular scorn: it lacks courage and faith, and has proven utterly incapable of explaining the revolution to the working masses. Trotsky positions his own pamphlet as an intervention against this mendacious consensus. He writes not primarily for a Russian audience, but for the workers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and all other countries, aiming to arm them with an accurate account of the revolution’s causes, progress, and significance.
The historical context is decisive: the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, where the Bolsheviks faced the imperial German and Austro-Hungarian delegations, provide the immediate backdrop. Trotsky’s reference to Karl Liebknecht and Fritz Adler is pointed. Liebknecht, the German revolutionary, and Adler, the Austrian socialist, represent the internationalist alternative to the patriotic betrayal of the Second International. Trotsky’s polemic is directed squarely against those socialists who have made their peace with the war and who slander the Bolshevik regime. He ends with a confident, almost prophetic, assertion: the revolutionary workers of Europe will soon undertake the same task as the Russian proletariat, but with greater experience and superior means, and in doing so will help the Russian revolution overcome its difficulties. The introduction thus frames the entire booklet as a weapon in the international class war, written from the negotiating table of the old world for the coming revolution of the new.