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to respect the treaty for other reasons (eg fear of encouraging anti-war unrest in Germany and the need to transfer troops to the Western Front) why soil the revolution's name by signing a shameful peace? What this ignored was the divisions within Germany. A treaty could have frozen the debate in the moderates favour but by refusing to sign the militarists were given another opportunity to try their expansionist policy. The German attack resulted in more than just the loss of large tracts of territory - it exposed the total incapacity of Russia to resist so encouraging further depredations after the treaty was signed.
No War No Peace bears a superficial resembelence to pacifism. Like Satygraha it depended on success in winning the sympathy of the 'enemy' rather than fighting them (ie the german workers and soldiers). But Satygraha does this by winning the moralle high ground; something the Bolsheviks who had taken power by violence could not do. Hoffmann was at the negotiations able to, quite justifiably attack the Bolsheviks for flouting the principles of self determination in their own territory while advocating it for German occupied territory. And when Hoffmann declaired that the Bolshevik regime was based 'purely on force' Trotsky could only reply "Throughout all history no other kind of government has been known". All this being faithfully recorded by the stenographers and broadcast to the world.
But more that that Trotsky's policy was essentially a bluff. He had agreed with Lenin that should the Germans invade, despite his expectations, then Russia should sign whatever terms were offered. Satygraha does not rest on the belief that violence will not be used against those resisting nonviolently but a determination to continue resistance no matter what violence is used. In that sense Satygraha was closest to the advocates of revolutionary war. Of course the toilers had even less inclination towards Satygraha than fighting a partisan war.
However if Lenin was right to press for signing the left SRs were right to oppose. The toilers of the Ukraine had a very real reason for opposing the peace and the Left SRs demand for solidarity had a much more concrete meaning than the abstractions of Trotsky's permanent revolution. But if Lenin had had his way from the beginning this would never have arisen.
Ukraine was one of Russia's granaries. If bread had been short before the the Germans had invaded and conquered the Ukraine then it must surely become desperate after. Food shortages in the towns alienated the workers and in their desperate attempts to requisition grain from the villages the Bolsheviks moved into a state of semi war with the peasants44. So perhaps we must blame Breast-Litovsk after all for Bolshevik descent into tyranny.
The basis of the government food policy was the government monopoly in grain. This had been set up under the Provisional Government but under the Bolsheviks it took on a much more ruthless form.
In theory the peasants would receive industrial goods to the value of the [next page]