Manolo writes; " Here the history of the Russian Revolution provides an indispensable lesson. In 1918, the young Soviet Republic faced the advancing German imperial army with a shattered military and no capacity for effective resistance. Vladimir Lenin, against the objections of the so-called “Left Communists” who demanded a “revolutionary war” to defend the whole territory, led the young revolutionary state to sign the humiliating Brest-Litovsk Treaty. That agreement ceded vast territories, including all of Ukraine, and forty percent of Russia’s industrial base to German imperialism. It was, by any measure, a massive defeat. Lenin’s critics called this a betrayal of the revolution, and especially of all the workers, peasants, and oppressed nationalities in the ceded territories who had fought and sacrificed everything in 1917, only to be returned to capitalism in the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty. Yet Lenin understood what his critics did not: the goal was not to die beautifully but to preserve the political instrument of revolution."
Manolo forget an important aspect of the agreement. As José Antonio Hernández writes in Aporrea on the BL treaty analogue: "During the negotiations of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, spokesmen for the German bourgeoisie denounced—and on this point they were not mistaken—that Leon Trotsky and the Bolshevik delegation were using the negotiating table not as a traditional diplomatic forum, but as a platform for revolutionary agitation aimed at the European proletariat. Georg von Hertling, imperial chancellor at the time, stated in the Reichstag that the Bolsheviks were using the negotiations to destabilise Germany's internal order. In parliamentary debates in January 1918, it was denounced that the Soviet delegation was not negotiating in the usual sense of international law, but was attempting to turn the conference into a platform for agitation. This appears in Reichstag records and in the conservative German press of the time." https://www.aporrea.org/ideologia/a350122.html In contrast here is how the Rodriguez government is using its supposed modern-day Brest-Litovsk Treaty to talk about US imperialism: "I thank President @realDonaldTrump for the kind willingness of his government to work together on an agenda that strengthens binational cooperation for the benefit of the peoples of the United States and Venezuela." https://x.com/delcyrodriguezv/status/2029303103980245356 In solidarity Fred -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40939): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40939 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/118145856/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
