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

388 THE PROPHET ARMED
Bolshevism. This view does not do full justice to the leaders of
the war faction. It is true that Lenin's political originality and
courage rose in those days to the height of genius and that
events-the crumbling of the Hohenzollern and Habsburg
dynasties and the annulment of the treaty of Brest before the
end of the year-vindicated him. It is also true that the war
faction often acted under confused emotional impulses and presented
no consistent policy. But at their best its leaders argued
their case very strongly and realistically; and much of their
argument, too, was confirmed by events. The 'respite' which
Lenin obtained was, in truth, half-illusory. After the signing of
the peace, the Kaiser's government did all it could to strangle
the Soviets. It could not, however, do more than its involvement
in the gigantic struggle on the western front allowed it to do.
Without a separate peace in the West it could not have done
much more even if the Soviets had not accepted the Diktat of
Brest. Bukharin and Radek, when they argued against Russia's
surrender, pointed to this circumstance as to one which
severely restricted Germany's freedom of action. In this respect
the inner story of the war, when it was revealed, proved their
judgement to have been more correct than Lenin's. The occupation
of the Ukraine and of parts of southern Russia alone
tied down a million German and Austrian troops. If Russia had
refused to sign the peace, the Germans might, at the most, have
tried to seize Pctrograd. They could hardly have risked a
march on Moscow. 1
If they had seized both Petrograd and
Moscow, the Soviets, whose chief strength lay in the two capitals,
would have found themselves in an extremely dangernus,
perhaps fatal, crisis. But this was not the point at issue between
Lenin and the war faction, for Lenin, too, repeatedly stated,
with curious confidence, that the loss of the one or the two
capitals would not be a mortal blow to the revolution.'
The other argument advauced by the leaders of the war
faction that the Soviets would have to build up a new army on
the battlefields, in the process of the fighting, and not in the
1
Ludcndorff states that a dt"ep German offensive was 'out of the qu~tion·­
only 'a short energetic thrust' had been planned. A/tine Kriegserinnuungen,
p. 447.
• Stalin alone hrld that the surrender of any capital would mean the decay, the
'rotting' of the revolution; and in this, as an advocate of peace, he was in a way
more consistent than Lenin. Protokoly Tsen. Korn., p. 248.