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

THE DRAMA OF BREST LITOVSK
for his own proposal, but for Lenin's. With the majority of one
vote the peace faction won. The new majority asked Trotsky
and Lenin to frame the message to the enemy governments.
Later that night the· Central Committees of the two ruling
parties, the Bolshevik and the Left Social Revolutionary, met;
and at this meeting the war faction once again had the upper
hand. But in the government the Bolsheviks outvoted their
partners; and on the next day, 19 February, the government
formally sued for peace.
Four days of suspense and panic passed before the German
answer reached Petrograd. In the meantime nobody could say
whether or on what terms the central powers would agree to
reopen negotiations. Their armies were on the move. Petrograd
was exposed. A committee of revolutionary defence was formed
in the city, and Trotsky headed it. Even while they were suing
for peace, the Soviets had to prepare for war. Trotsky turned to
the allied embassies and military missions to inquire whether,
if the Soviets re-entered the war, the western governments would
help them. He had made such soundings before, but without
effect.' But this time the British and the French seemed more
responsive. Three days after he had sent off the request for peace,
Trotsky reported to the Central Committee (in Lenin's absence)
an Anglo-French suggestion for military co-operation. To his
mortification, the Central Committee rejected this out of hand
and so repudiated his action. Both factions turned against him:
the adherents of peace-because they feared lest the acceptance
of allied help compromise the chances of separate peace; and
the adherents of war-because the same motives of revolutionary
morality, by which they were actuated in opposing a compact
with Germany, militated also against co-operation with 'the
Anglo-French imperialists'. Trotsky then declared that he was
resigning from the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. He could not
stay in office if the party did not see that a Socialist government
1
Colonel Robins relat"" that in January Trotsky proposed that American
officers should go to the front and help to stop the leakage of Russian goods to
Germany and to remove stocks of raw materials to the interior of the country.
Trotsky thc·n said that even if they signed a separate peace, the Soviets had no
inter