Lenin CW-Vol. 23.pdf - From Marx to Mao

125A SEPARATE PEACERussia and Germany are already negotiating a separatepeace. The negotiations are official, and the two powershave already reached agreement on the main points.A statement to that effect appeared recently in theBerne socialist paper and is based on information in itspossession. 63 The Russian Embassy in Berne hastened toissue an official denial, and the French chauvinists ascribedthese rumours to “German dirty work”, but the socialistpaper refused to attach any importance whatsoever to thesedenials. In support of its statement it pointed to thepresence in Switzerland of German (Bülow) and Russian“statesmen” (Stürmer, Giers and a diplomat who arrivedfrom Spain), and to the fact that Swiss commercial circleswere in possession of similar reliable information obtainedfrom Russian commercial circles.Of course, deception on both sides is quite possible.Russia cannot very well admit that she is negotiating aseparate peace, and Germany cannot miss an opportunity tocreate discord between Russia and England, irrespective ofwhether or not there are negotiations, and if so, how successfullythey are proceeding.To understand the question of a separate peace we mustproceed not from rumours and reports about what is takingplace in Switzerland, which cannot be effectively verified,but from indisputably established political facts of thelast few decades. Let Messrs. Plekhanov, Chkhenkeli,Potresov and Co., now cast in the role of Marxist-liveriedlackeys or jesters of Purishkevich and Milyukov, try asthey will to prove “Germany’s war guilt” and that Russiais fighting a “war of defence”—the class-conscious workers