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

BOURGEOIS PACIFISM AND SOCIALIST PACIFISM179this alliance, apparently, is to be the partition of Galicia(it is very important for tsarism to strangle the centre ofUkrainian agitation and Ukrainian liberty), Armenia andperhaps Rumania! In fact there was a “hint” in a Germannewspaper that Rumania might be divided among Austria,Bulgaria and Russia! Germany could agree to other minorconcessions to tsarism if only she could achieve an alliancewith Russia, and perhaps also with Japan, against England.A separate peace between Nicholas II and Wilhelm IIcould have been concluded secretly. There have been instancesin diplomatic history of treaties known only to twoor three persons and kept secret from everyone else, evenCabinet Ministers. Diplomatic history knows instances ofthe “Great Powers” gathering at “European” congressesafter the principal rivals had secretly decided the mainquestions among themselves (for example, the secret agreementbetween Russia and England to plunder Turkey, priorto the Berlin Congress of 1878). It would not be at all surprisingif tsarism rejected a formal separate peace betweenthe governments for the reason, among others, that the presentsituation in Russia might result in Milyukov and Guchkov,or Milyukov and Kerensky, taking over the government,while at the same time, it may have concluded a secret,informal, but none the less “durable” treaty withGermany to the effect that the two “high contracting parties”undertake jointly to pursue such-and-such a policy at theforthcoming peace congress!It is impossible to say whether or not this assumptionis correct. At any rate, it is a thousand times nearer thetruth, is a far better description of things as they actually arethan are the pious phrases about peace between the presentgovernments, or between any bourgeois governments forthat matter, on the basis of no annexations, etc. These phraseseither express innocent desires or are hypocrisy and liesmeant to conceal the truth. And the truth of the present time,of the present war, of the present attempts to conclude peace,is the division of the imperialist spoils. That is at the bottomof it all; and to understand this truth, to express it, “toshow things as they actually are”, is the fundamental taskof socialist policy as distinct from bourgeois policy, theprincipal aim of which is to conceal, to gloss over this truth.