350 TTE CLASS STRUGGLE EDITORIALS 351 the Germans will retain all the districts occupied by them, while we must give up the districts occupied by Russian troops, and an indemnity will be imposed upon us (under the guise of a compensation for the maintenance of prisoners) of nearly three milliards, to be paid in a few years. The Russian Government, therefore, has this pressing problem to solve: Must this annexation peace be accepted at once, or must the revolutionary war be waged at once? There is no middle path in this question. The solution cannot be postponed, as we have already done all in our power to gain time and draw the thing out. Among the arguments made use of to show that revolutionary warfare must be waged at once, there is, in the first place, the following: an immediate, separate peace, regardless of the intentions of those who conclude it would amount to an agreement with the German imperialists, and therefore, such a peace would be a breach of the principles of international socialism.
10. In the second place, we are reproached with becoming, through the conclusion of a socialistic peace, agents of the German Government against our will, since we are giving to it the possibility of withdrawing troops from our front and are liberating millions of their prisoners of war. But this argument also proves nothing, since a revolutionary war against Germany would make us agents of the Anglo French Imperialism. The English promised outright to Krylenko, the commander of our army, one hundred roubles a month for each soldier if we should continue to wage war. And even if we should not accept a penny from the Entente, we should yet, as far as the outcome is concerned, have become their agents in holding a portion of the German troops at the front.
11. It is maintained that the German socialist minority has asked us not to yield to German Imperialism. But we do not consider this a good interpretation. We have always fought our own imperialism, but the overthrow of the imperialism of one country by means of an alliance with the imperialism of another is a line of action that we reject both on reasons of principle and because we consider it inadmissible. This argument, therefore, is really only a repetition of the former one. If the international socialists of Germany should ask us to postpone the conclusion of peace for a time, and should guarantee us the outbreak of the revolution in Germany by a fixed time, we might eventually take the matter under consideration. But the German international socialists not only do not say this to us, but they actually are saying, formally, Offer as much resistance as you can, but decide on this point in agreement with the interests of the Russian Revolution, for it is impossible at present to make any definite promises with regard to the German Revolution.
12. It is maintained that we had promised to wage revolutionary warfare and that the conclusion of a separate peace was a betrayal of our own promise. This is not true. We spoke of the necessity of preparing and waging revolutionary warfare in the epoch of imperialism. We said this in contradiction of the theory of abstract pacifism, the total negation of national defense, in the epoch of imperialism; and we said this in order to resist the merely physical instincts of some of the soldiers; but we have never assumed the obligation of waging a revolutionary war without for a moment asking ourselves whether it was possible to wage it at a given moment.
13. Considering the arguments in favor of an immediate revolutionary war, as a whole, it is evident that they constitute a policy that may perhaps be in line with a fine gesture, but they have absolutely no relation with the material and class conditions of the present moment.
14. It is beyond doubt that our army can neither now, nor at any time within the next few weeks or even months, resist or push back the German offensive, in the first place because of the fatigue and exhaustion of most of our soldiers and the total disorganization of the provision supply, in the second place because of the absolute insufficiency of horses (which makes defeat for our artillery a certainty. in the third place because it is impossible to defend the Riga coast, thus assuring the enemy of the conquest of the rest of Livland, and facilitating the occupation of Petrograd.
15. Furthermore, there is no doubt that the majority of the peasants in our army would now be in favor of a peace by aneexations (by the Germans) and not of revolutionary war, while the