All this was familiar. Novel were some of Lenin’s candid reflections on the subject of war and peace. To an audience that feared that he had made perpetual peace with a leading “imperialist” power he gave reassurances. First, the Soviet Government had every intention of violating the provisions of the Brest Treaty: in fact, it had already done so “thirty or forty times” (in a mere three days!). Nor did peace with the Central Powers signify abandonment of the class struggle. Peace was by its nature transitory, an “opportunity to gather strength”: “History teaches that peace is a breathing space for war.” In other words, war is the normal condition, peace a respite: there could be no lasting peace with non-Communist countries but only a temporary suspension of hostilities, a truce. Even while the peace treaty was in force, Lenin went on, the Soviet Government—in disregard of its provisions—would organize a new and effective military force. Thus, Lenin comforted his followers, the peace treaty they were asked to approve was merely a detour on the road to global revolution.
The Left Communists restated their objections,91 but failed to muster enough votes. The motion, approving the treaty, passed 28–9 with one abstention. Lenin then asked the Party Congress to pass a secret resolution, not subject to publication for an indefinite period, giving the Central Committee “the authority at any time to annul all peace treaties with imperialist and bourgeois governments and, in like manner, to declare war on them.”92 Readily approved and never formally rescinded, this resolution empowered the handful of men in the Bolshevik Central Committee, at their own discretion, to break all international agreements entered into by their government and to declare war on any and all foreign countries.
There still remained the formality of ratification. Notwithstanding the sham apprehensions Trotsky had confided to the Allied representatives, the issue was never in doubt. The congress was not a democratically elected body but an assembly of initiates: of the 1,100 to 1,200 delegates who gathered on March 14, two-thirds were Bolsheviks. Lenin delivered his standard defense of the treaty in two long-winded and rambling speeches—they were those of a thoroughly exhausted man—in which he pleaded for realism.
He was impatiently awaiting a response to his requests to the United States and British governments for economic and military assistance: he knew full well that as soon as the treaty had been ratified the chances of procuring it were nil.
In the early years of Bolshevik power, knowledge of Russia and interest in Russia’s affairs were in direct proportion to a country’s geographic proximity to her. The Germans, who lived closest, despised and feared the Bolsheviks even as they were dealing with them. France and England were not terribly concerned about the actions and intentions of the Bolsheviks, as long as they stayed in the war. The United States, an ocean away, seemed positively to welcome the Bolshevik regime, and in the months that followed the October coup, lured by fantastic visions of large-scale business opportunities, sought to ingratiate herself with its leaders.
Woodrow Wilson seems to have believed that the Bolsheviks truly spoke for the Russian people,93 and formed a detachment of that grand international army that he imagined advancing toward universal democracy and eternal peace. Their appeals to the “peoples” of the world, he felt, required an answer. This he provided in the speech of January 8, 1918, in which he presented the celebrated Fourteen Points. He went out of his way to praise Bolshevik behavior at Brest:
There is … a voice calling for these definitions of principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and more compelling than any of the many moving voices with which the troubled air of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian people. They are prostrate and all but helpless, it would seem, before the grim power of Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Their power, apparently, is shattered. And yet their soul is not subservient. They will not yield either in principle or in action. Their conception of what is right, of what it is humane and honorable for them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity of spirit, and a universal human sympathy which must challenge the admiration of every friend of mankind; and they have refused to compound their ideas or desert others that they themselves may be safe. They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in what, if in anything, our purposes and our spirit differ from theirs; and I believe that the people of the United States would wish me to respond, with utter simplicity and frankness. Whether their present leaders believe it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace.94
There existed one potentially serious obstacle to Bolshevik-Allied cooperation, and that was the issue of Russian debts. As noted, in January the Bolshevik Government defaulted on all Russian state obligations to both domestic and foreign lenders.95 The Bolsheviks took this step with considerable trepidation: they feared that such a violation of international law, involving billions of dollars, could spark a “capitalist crusade.” But the widespread expectation of an imminent revolution in the West overcame caution and the deed was done.
There was no revolution in the West and no anti-Bolshevik crusade. The Western powers took this fresh assault on international law surprisingly calmly. Indeed, the Americans went out of their way to assure the Bolsheviks they had nothing to fear from them. Iurii Larin, Lenin’s closest economic adviser, had a visit from the American Consul in Petrograd, who told him that while the United States could not accept “in principle” the annulment of international loans, it was ready
to accept it de facto, not to demand payment, and to open relations with Russia as if it were a state that had just made its appearance in the world. In particular, the United States could offer us [Soviet Russia] large-scale commercial credit, on the account of which Russia could draw from America machines and raw materials of all kinds with delivery to Murmansk, Archangel, or Vladivostok.
To ensure repayment, the U.S. Consul suggested, Soviet Russia might consider depositing some gold in neutral Sweden and granting the United States concessions in Kamchatka.96
What more proof was needed that one could do business with the “imperialist robbers” even while inciting their citizens to revolution? And why not play the business community of one country against that of another? Or pit capitalist industrialists and bankers against the military? The possibilities of such divide et impera policies were endless. And, indeed, the Bolsheviks would exploit to the fullest these opportunities to compensate for their appalling weakness, luring foreign powers with prospects of industrial imports in exchange for food and raw materials which they did not have, even as their own population was starving and freezing.
Every message which the U.S. Government transmitted to the Bolshevik authorities in the early months of 1918 conveyed the sense that Washington took at face value the Bolsheviks’ professions of democratic and peaceful intentions and ignored their calls for world revolution. Hence Lenin and Trotsky had good reason to expect a positive response to their appeal to Washington for help.