isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

134 THE PROPHET ARMED
roared with laughter; and Witte himself was said to have suffered
a fit when he read the Soviet's riposte.'
On 5 November Trotsky, speaking at the Soviet for the whole
Executive, proposed to call an end to the second general strike.
The government had just announced that the sailors of Kronstadt
would be tried by ordinary military courts, not courts
martial. The Soviet could withdraw not with victory indeed,
but with honour. Yet withdraw it had to, especially as strikers in
the provinces were growing weary. 'Events work for us and we
have no need to force their pace', Trotsky said. 'We must drag
out the period of preparation for decisive action as much as we
can, perhaps for a month or two, until we can come out as an
army as cohesive and organized as possible.' A general strike
could not be waged indefinitely. Its sequel ought to be insurrection,
but for this the Soviet was not ready. One day, when the
railwaymen and the post and telegraph workers had joined in,
they would 'with the steel of rails and with telegraph wire bind
together all revolutionary bulwarks of the country into a single
whole. This would enable us to arouse when necessary the whole
of Russia within twenty four hours.'
Even while he tried to dam up the raging element of revolt,
he stood before the Soviet like defiance itself, passionate and
sombre. He related a conversation he had with an eminent
Liberal who had urged moderation:
I recalled to him an incident from the French revolution, when
the Convention voted that 'the French people will not parley with
the enemy on their own territory'. One of the members of the Convention
interrupted: 'Have you signed a pact with victory?' They
answered him: 'Ko, we have signed a pact with death.' Comrades,
when the liberal bourgeoisie, as if boasting of its treachery, tells us:
'You are alone. Do you think you can go on fighting without us?
Have you signed a pact with victory?', we throw our answer in their
face: 'No, we have signed a pact with death.' 2
1
That Trotsky did not treat Count Witte unfairly Miliukov tt"Stifies. About this
tjm~ !vliliukov visited \\'ittc and expressed the\ frv.; that the T~ar ought to promul~
gate a constitution at once, without waiting for the Duma. \Vitte answered that the
Tsar wanted no constitution, and that the October Manifesto had been issued in a
'fever'. Witte himself did not want a constitution either-he was interested only
in sham constitutionalism. Miliukov, lstorya Vtoroi Russlroi &vo/uJsii, vol. i, book I,
pp. 18-19.
2
The speech appeared in fzuestya no. 7, 7 :'\ovcmber 1905; Sochinenya, vol. ii,
book I, pp. 290-3.