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

THE PROPHET ARMED
Germany intended to occupy the territories seized from Russia
until a general peace, and indefinitely even after it. Kuhlmann
also argued that Poland and the other German-occupied countries
had achieved self-determination, because the Germans had
installed native governments everywhere. No country, Trotsky
retorted, can determine its fate while it is held by foreign
troops-'as a preliminary foreign troops must clear out of the
territories in question'. Politely, and without calling anyone
names, yet unmistakably, he made it clear that what the
Germans had installed were puppet administrations.
As the argument became involved and apparently abstract,
Trotsky switched from Russian to German. Kiihlmann was in his
element with juridical-diplomatic formulas and imprudently
provoked further debate. 'When, according to the Chairman
of the Russian delegation', he asked, 'does a nation come into
existence as a single entity?' If it cannot come into existence
under foreign occupation, then when and how docs the moment
of birth arise? Grateful for the new opportunity to restate his
case, Trotsky began to answer the puzzling question by the
method of elimination. What is certain is that no nation is
independent as long as it is occupied and possesses only an
administration whose title to govern rests on the presence of
foreign troops. The final criterion is the will of the people, freely
and democratically expressed in a referendum. Finland, evacuated
by Russian troops, was a case in point. In the L'krainc 'the
process of self-determination was still in progress'. But, Kuhlmann
pointed out, a government so created meant a break in
legal continuity; and to the Conservative way of thinking legal
continuity is alpha and omega. Trotsky reminded the German
Minister, that any occupying power breaks legal continuity and
docs so without the justification with which a revolution docs
it. Kuhlmann adroitly retorted that, if re\'olution claims for
itself no basis in law, then it is based solely on force and accomplished
fact. This seemed to knock the bottom out of Trotsky's
argument: if he admitted the point, he had no ground for
protest against the accomplished facts of German annexation.
The crux of Trotsky's answer lay in the distinction which he
drew between a force emerging from inside a nation to determine
its fate and an outside force imposing its will.
The controversy had thus developed into a clash of Weltan-