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business
"Let them do so openly," continued Trotsky, "We cannot approve violence. We are going out of the war but we feel ourselves compelled to refuse to sign the peace treaty."36
Trotsky's opponents were stunned by the unexpected turn of events. Only Hoffmann's barely audible "unerhort!" broke the silence. Then admits a mixture of desperate appeals and threats from Kuhlmann the Soviet delegation walked out of the negotiations.
Unfortunately this state of shock did not last for within days German troops were advancing with the Russian army in total collapse and there was not a hint of opposition from within Germany - not even from the German Social Democrats. By one vote (Trotsky's) the Central committee voted to capitulate. This time there were no negotiations. The Soviet delegation accepted without argument everything the opposing negotiators proposed, rather than hide the fact that it was a purely dictated peace. But even that was not the end for the treaty did not apply to the Ukraine and German troops soon ousted the Soviet government there and reinstalled the Rada. But the Rada success was short lived for it was soon to be replaced by the extreme right government of Skoropadskii. The only satisfaction to be gained for the Bolsheviks was that partisan warfare soon made the Ukraine ungovernable.
Spiridonova described Brest-Litovsk as the end for the revolution37. Voline said the same with a little more depth. Any state is bound eventually to do something unpopular and so come into conflict with it's people - for the Bolsheviks this was Breast-Litovsk.38 Rosenberg also sees it as a turning point in the growth of workers opposition.39
Much as it hurts I think Lenin was quite correct. If peace had been signed on January the 28th (when Trotsky walked out of the negotiations with his no war no peace declaration) the Ukraine could have been saved.40 If peace had been signed earlier as Lenin wished then conceivably even better terms could have been obtained.41
The alternative of revolutionary war could only have been a partisan war and the example of the Ukraine shows it might well have proved effective. However the toilers were in the main in favour of peace at any price42. Rosenberg suggests that workers opposed Brest Litovsk from the first but the example he gives is from Tula, a provincial capital south of Moscow and one of the few places where the PSR retained a proletarian following past October and hence hardly typical43.
It is easy to dismiss Trotsky's 'No War No Peace' as the worst possible. Trotsky believed that the revolution would fail if confined to backward Russia so the spread of world revolution was imperative. Hence if a Soviet defiance helped encourage revolutionary unrest in western Europe than it was worth risking a German invasion by not signing.
Further Trotsky's policy was arguably based as solidly in realpolitic as Lenin's. If it was in the Germans interests to invade why should a piece of paper dissuade them? If the Germans decided to [next page]