international groupings and that feeling which had not definite characterization during the war, and which was called "pacifism." The Russian revolution itself, the ending of the war by us, strengthened the general desire for peace on one hand, and on the other—the labor pacifism, that is, the tendency of the workers also to end the war.
The Struggle for Peace
The Brest Litovsk Peace was the culminating point around which the struggle of the working masses of the world for peace concentrated. If you will take the trade union literature of the period of the Brest Litovsk Peace, the German, French and English literature, we will see that the fact in itself of making the Brest Litovsk Peace, the preparation for it, was discussed by this literature in a varied manner, depending on the coalition to which each belonged.
In 1920, while in Germany, I had to make a speech before the All-German Factory Committee Congress, where a majority were Social Democrats. We Russians have a habit in our greetings to Western Europe of saying many unpleasant truths, and at that Congress I quoted a few remarks from the Korrespondentzblatt (central organ of the German Federation of Trade Unions), in which the German trade unionists expressed themselves about the Brest Litovsk Peace. For instance, the following: "It is not in the interest of Germany to safeguard the unity of Russia." This was stated by the central organ of the German trade union movement at the time when General Hoffman was knocking his fist on the table demanding the signing of the Brest Litovsk Peace without any changes as proposed by the German military staff. There is some more; there is a statement, for instance: "Surely the Peace as signed is not entirely satisfactory to us, nevertheless it is a great move ahead on the way of establishing the principles of democracy in those countries which were formerly under the oppression of Czarism."
I could quote much more from these exceptional articles, but when I quoted them in 1920, at that Congress where over a thousand people were present, three-fourths of whom were Social Democrats, I heard a remark behind me in the presidium, "Unheard of impudence!" That was a remark of Humbrecht, but the members of the Congress were sitting with lowered heads. After I quoted, I said: "You can now imagine, after your experience with the Versailles Peace which represents a worse edition of Brest Litovsk, how we Russian workers felt when reading such things at the time of Brest Litovsk." The Brest Litovsk Peace, as well as the Russian revolution was considered by the reformists exclusively from the point of view of the "dear fatherland," and the interests of the particular state.
