The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification - Chapter 5
my alleged "underestimation of the peasantry"is utterly ridiculous, and at best is an attempt to hang
Bukharin's position onto me-a position with which I had nothing in common. Not for a moment did I
suppose that in 1917-1918 it was possible to rouse the peasant masses for a revolutionary war. In
estimating the moods of the peasant and labor masses after the imperialist war, I was wholly in
agreement with Lenin. If I stood, at the time, for postponing as long as possible the moment of
capitulation to Hohenzollern, it was not for the purpose of calling forth a revolutionary war but in order
to arouse the workers of Germany and Austria-Hungary to as great a revolutionary activity as possible.
The decision to announce a state of war as terminated, without signing a forced peace, was dictated by
the intention of testing in action whether or not Hohenzollern was still able to wage war against the
revolution. This decision was adopted by the majority of our Central Committee and approved by the
majority of the fraction of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets. Lenin regarded
that decision as the lesser evil since a very considerable section of the party leadership was for the
Bukharinist "revolutionary war,"ignoring not only the condition of the peasants but also of the labor
masses. The signing of the peace treaty with Hohenzollern exhausted entirely my episodic differences
with Lenin on that question, and our work proceeded in complete harmony. Bukharin, on the other hand,
developed his Brest-Litovsk differences with Lenin into an entire system of "Left Communism,"with
which I had nothing in common.
Many wiseacres seize every propitious occasion to scintillate on the subject of my slogan: No peace-no
war. It obviously appears to them in contradiction with the very nature of things. Yet, between classes, as
well as between states, relationships of "no peace-no war"are not at all rare. One need only recall that
several months after Brest-Litovsk, when the revolutionary situation in Germany had completely defined
itself, we announced that we were breaking the Brest-Litovsk peace without in any way resuming
hostilities against Germany. With the countries of the Entente, in the course of the first few years of the
revolution, our relationships were those of "no peace-no war."As a matter of fact, the same type of
relationship exists between us and England now (with the Tories in power). Throughout the
Brest-Litovsk negotiations, the whole question was whether or not, at the beginning of 1918, a
revolutionary situation had sufficiently matured in Germany to enable us, without continuing the war (we
had no army!), to refrain from signing a peace. Experience showed that such a situation did not exist as
yet.
The meaningless "reviews"beginning with 1923 have completely distorted the sense of the Brest-Litovsk
controversy. All the fictions concerning my line during the epoch of Brest-Litovsk are discussed in detail
and refuted on the basis of the incontrovertible documents in the notes to Volume XVII of my Collected
Work:
The Brest-Litovsk disagreements, as I have already stated, did not leave the shadow of any bitterness in
my personal relations with Lenin. Just a few days after the signing of the peace, I was placed-on the
motion of Vladimir Ilyich-at the head of the military work.
29. The conflict on the trade union question was sharper and more protracted. The new theoretician of
Stalinism, the Menshevik, Martinov, who came to us on the wave of the N.E.P.,[19] has described the
disagreement on the trade union question as a disagreement on the question of the N.E.P. On this subject,
Martinov wrote in 1923:
"L. Trotsky in 1905 argued more logically and consistently than either the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks.
But the flaw in his argument lay in that he was 'too consistent.' The picture which he drew very
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