History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk¶
Core Argument¶
Here, in a speech delivered to the Central Executive Committee in February 1918, Trotsky provides a compressed, dialectical account of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, framing them not as a simple military defeat but as a high-stakes political confrontation between two antagonistic class forces: the Russian revolutionary proletariat and German imperialism. The core narrative thrust is an explanation of why the Bolsheviks, having refused to sign an annexationist peace, were ultimately compelled to accept one. Trotsky argues that the revolutionary government’s legitimacy rested on its honesty: it could not pledge to defeat German imperialism militarily, as that power was not in its hands, but it could refuse to disguise a predatory peace from the masses. To do so would be the beginning of the end for the revolution.
The key claim is that the Brest-Litovsk negotiations themselves acted as a catalyst for revolutionary upheaval in the Central Empires. Trotsky points to the strike movement in Austria-Hungary and the tremendous strike wave in Berlin, both direct results of the negotiations, as evidence that the German and Austrian proletariat were stirring. However, he introduces a crucial dialectical twist: this very upsurge of the proletarian movement, the most powerful Germany had ever seen, had the opposite effect on the ruling classes. The German bourgeoisie, imbued with the instinct of self-preservation, understood that any concession under mass pressure would be a capitulation to the idea of revolution. Consequently, they closed ranks. Once the strike was suppressed, the German negotiator Kühlmann abandoned his earlier delaying tactics and reverted to aggressive self-confidence.
The historical context is the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution, with the old Tsarist army disintegrated and the Bolsheviks facing the inexorable advance of the German Imperial Army. The theoretical context is the Marxist understanding of the class struggle as a double-edged, contradictory process—a “dialectical” character, as Trotsky puts it. The polemic is directed against those, likely the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and some Bolsheviks, who demanded a pledge never to sign a separate peace. Trotsky argues that such a pledge would be a reckless gamble, pretending to hold a secret of victory that did not exist. The real crime, he insists, would be to hide the predatory nature of the peace from the people, not to accept it under duress.