Written: February 24, 1918
First Published: 1929 in Lenin Miscellany XI; published according to the manuscript
Source: Lenin’s Collected
Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 27, 1972, page 57
Translated: Clemans Dutt, Edited by Robert Daglish
Transcription\HTML Markup:Robert Cymbala and David Walters
Online Version: Lenin Internet Archive
March, 2002
Not to conclude peace at the present moment means declaring an armed uprising or a revolutionary war against German imperialism. This is either phrase-making or a provocation by the Russian bourgeoisie, which is thirsting for the arrival of the Germans. In reality we cannot fight at the present time, for the army is agaiihst the war and is unable to fight. The week of war against the Germans, infaceof whom our troops simply ran away, from February 18 to 24, 1918, has fully proved this. We are prisoners of German imperialism. Not empty phrases about an immediate armed uprising against the Germans, but the systematie, serious, steady work of preparing a revolutionary war, the creation of diseipline and an army, the putting into order of the railways and food affairs. That is the point of view of the majority of the C.E.C., including Lenin (and the majority of the C.C., Bolsheviks), and of Spiridonova and Malkin (the minority of the C.C., Left Socialist-Revolutionaries).