made by Zinoviev in the telegram, and in favour of the amendment of Radek, for I believed that if the intention of entering the Saxon Government was in order to make it possible to arm, this could only follow after intensive preparation both in Saxony and in the rest of the Reich. The decision to enter the Government was precipitately carried into effect. The object of entering the Government was not a parliamentary manœuvre, but in order to procure arms, Since the entry into the Government took place practically without preparation, the necessary measures could not be taken. In order to procure arms one must know the bureaucratic machine and one must know the arms depots. For this purpose certain preparatory measures are necessary, of which not a single one was taken. The bureaucratic machine must be conquered and learned before we can use it. These may appear to petty and irrelevant details, but for us they were of the greatest importance. The Communist period of power lasted nine days in all. During these nine days nothing was done, except that attempts were made to procure weapons. The attempts failed owing to insufficient preparation.
I am still of the opinion that it was possible to make a better thing of the Saxon experiment than was actually the case. It is highly probable that in future things will develop quite differently and we shall never have a similar situation again. We must learn from the mistakes we have made.
Thälmann said that at bottom we did not believe in the revolution and that therefore when the moment became ripe for the fight, we were unable to make a sudden spring. This argument, stated with Thälmann's power of conviction, seems very plausible. Nevertheless it is false. I put the question thus: was the situation in October objectively ripe? Does the revolution depend upon the fact—although nobody more appreciates the subjective role of the Communist Party than I—that leaders of the Communist Party have no inner faith in the revolution? Does revolution come to a hilt on that account? Or are there other forces objectively at work preventing it from breaking out? If Thälmann is right then we have betrayed the revolution. The matter is then quite simple. The traitors must be removed and the 100 per cent. revolutionists put in their place.
Comrades, the March action in 1921 showed us that the whole class situation, the objective relations as a whole, had not ripened to such a degree that we could overthrow capitalism by a storm attack. Objective factors so brought it about that in the March action after a storm attack we were badly defeated. For this defeat, I personally was made just as responsible as for the October defeat, although the situations were entirely different. But that by the way. I have committed political errors, and so did other conrades. But I think it is my nature not to commit the same error twice. I assume full responsibility for the October retreat. I assert that if I had not intervened in the very critical situation
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