Written: Written on February 27, 1918
Published:
First published in 1942 in Lenin Miscellany XXXIV.
Printed from the text in Gorbunov’s hand with an addition by Lenin.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1975,
Moscow,
Volume 44,
page 68b.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
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Peace has not yet been signed, but a delegation has gone to Brest-Litovsk to sign the peace terms accepted by the C.E.C. and the C.P.C. Your resolution received. The German whiteguards and composite units of their regular army have joined with our whiteguards and are advancing on Petrograd with brazen audacity. A movement of large German forces in the wake of the advance detachments has been reported. Most of our troops are in flight.[1] The socialist fatherland is in danger. Dvinsk, Reval, Venden, Volmar, Minsk, Pskov have been taken. Our morale is good. Masses of workers have sprung to the defence of the Soviet Republic. The C.C. of the Bolsheviks is in favour of signing peace. The C.C. of the Left Socialist– Revolutionaries[2] is in favour of a holy war.
As for gold, we recommend that the workers at the mines be paid at cost prices. There has been no special decree by the C.P.C. on gold.
[1] The two preceding sentences are in Lenin’s hand.—Ed.
[2] The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries—the Left wing of the petty-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which was organised as an independent party in November 1917.
In an effort to maintain their influence among the peasants, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries entered into an agreement with the Bolsheviks. They pledged themselves to carry out the general policy of the Soviet Government and were given posts in the Council of People’s Commissars and on the boards of several People’s Commissariats.
But differences with the Bolsheviks on basic issues of the theory and practice of socialist construction soon made themselves felt. In January and February 1918, the Central Committee of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party began a campaign against the conclusion of the Brest Peace Treaty with Germany. When the treaty had been signed and ratified by the Fourth Congress of Soviets in March 1918, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries withdrew from the Council of People’s Commissars. In July 1918 the Central Committee of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries organised the provocative assassination of Mirbach, the German Ambassador in Moscow, and launched an armed revolt against Soviet power. Having lost all support among the masses, the Left Socialist– Revolutionary Party finally took the path of armed struggle against Soviet rule.
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