Leon Trotsky et al: Session of 9 January

[From the (British) Daily Review of the Foreign Press, 19 January, 1918, p. 629. Proceedings of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference. Washington 1918, p. 54-56]

The stenographic report of the meeting of the Peace Delegations at Brest-Litovsk on the 10th inst.,¹ which has just been issued at Petrograd, is largely taken up with a report of a long discussion between Baron von Kühlmann and M. Trotsky on questions of procedure. The German Minister wished for arrangements to be made by which certain economic and legal questions touched upon before the Christmas recess might be taken up and discussed by some members of the delegations independently of and concurrently with the main negotiations which were likely to occupy some time. He thought a lot of preliminary work could thus be got over, and a good deal of time saved. Having set forth his views on this point, Baron von Kühlmann proceeded to propound the procedure he considered should be adopted as regards the political and national questions touched upon at the sitting of Dec. 27. A discussion arose as to whether the national questions to be dealt with in the first place were to include that of Armenia or not, Baron von Kühlmann maintaining that the Armenian question had had little place in the previous discussions, while M. Trotsky maintained that it was not a new question, inasmuch as before the recess there had been pourparlers on the subject with the Turkish delegation. In the course of the discussions which ensued M. Trotsky spoke as follows:

“The pourparlers at Brest-Litovsk are being conducted by Two parties who have become enemies not through any chance political combination; the negotiations are being carried on by those who are enemies not only on the war basis but also on the basis of the difference between social classes, and this fact has made its imprint on the negotiations. The German Command understood that from the outset, and clung on to Brest-Litovsk as the scene of the pourparlers. It unmasked the big gun of an ultimatum firing even before the Russian Delegation had been able to express its point of view. The idea of the German Command was to isolate the Russian Delegation from the popular masses. The ideals of the Russian Revolution and of its pacific programme were forced to find expression in a space hermetically sealed. Generals and diplomats impervious to those ideas are to form a safety curtain shutting off the fire of the Russian Revolution from the German workers and all Europe. The Russian Delegation knows perfectly well what it is losing by conducting peace pourparlers at Brest-Litovsk, a capital of the German conqueror, but it also knows what greater loss it would suffer in breaking oft the pourparlers over the question of locality. The peoples are thirsting for peace, and for this the Russian Delegation can frankly admit that it has submitted to the ultimatum. You are the stronger from the military point of view, but you are forced to hide the motives of your policy from the masses. We are the weaker, but our strength increases in proportion as we unmask your policy, and that is why we are staying.”

In another speech, says the report, M. Trotsky put the blunt question :

“Do you agree to evacuate Poland, Lithuania, and Courland and to leave the people freedom of decision? Do you renounce the idea of tearing away these territories, of imposing military and customs conventions upon them, and of establishing a Monarchical Government on the strength of the decision of little groups of exploiters?”

The Russian report proceeds:

And in spite of the artistic fencing of the representative of German Imperialism, Monsieur von Kühlmann could not conceal the fact that German Imperialism intended to proclaim a resolution of the Barons of Courland and an infinitesimal portion of the Polish bourgeoisie as a resolution of the people which will mean the torturing of the peoples to the quick, and will overwhelm them with future obligations.

★ ★ ★

The report goes on to declare that if the workers of Europe only get to know how the pourparlers at Brest-Litovsk have proceeded, they will realize that the Russian Delegation at Brest-Litovsk is fighting the battle of the international proletariat against German Imperialism, and concludes:

“We hope soon to receive the good news that the German and the International proletariat will proclaim itself the judge of German Imperialism in this case that we are conducting against it.”