only accepted the Brest-Litovsk peace terms under strong pressure from Lenin and in the absence of Trotsky. Further, I am able to state as a fact that, after the conclusion of peace in March 1918, Trotsky negotiated with several representatives of the Entente in the hope of securing the services of General Berthelot who was about to leave Russia with his Military Mission; but the French Ambassador, M. Noulens, who was then at Vologda, opposed the idea. This I learned after I had left Russia, and I cannot say how Lenin then behaved. I knew the Soviet state of mind in regard to the Germans, watched it constantly and was well-informed about it. Naturally I took it into account and was anxious, for this reason also, not to drive the Bolshevists into the arms of Germany by attacking them. Moreover, the anti-German mood among the Bolshevists led me to hope that they would not put obstacles in the way of our march through Russia and Siberia.
I know that the Bolshevists are accused of one-sided pro-Germanism because they made peace with the Germans; but that is not my view. What were they to do? There was no other way out. All the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, particularly the so-called Supplementary Treaty and the way in which the Germans forced peace upon them, show how unwillingly the Bolshevists made it. They followed the example of their predecessors during the Tsarist and post-Tsarist régimes. I have already said that Milyukoff would likewise have been ready to make peace with the Germans; and Tereshtchenko carried on peace negotiations with Austria though, in principle, he wished to continue the war. To this I shall refer later. The Bolshevists can rightly be charged with having foolishly accelerated the decomposition of the army (it had begun under the Tsar and was deliberately continued during the Provisional Government and under Kerensky) and with having exploited pacifist tendencies for purposes of agitation; though they soon found military reorganization indispensable. It may also be admitted that there were one-sided pro-Germans among them. But the chief errors of the Bolshevists lie in their home policy, not in their foreign; and, in so far as they were pro-German, they were the children of Tsarism.
The ignorance of Russia—and therefore also of the Bolshevists—which prevailed among the Western Allies was largely responsible for their mistaken relationship to Russia, both under the Tsar and during the Revolution. The anti-Bolshevist documents which have been published show how uncritically and ignorantly the Bolshevists were judged. What the
