V. I.   Lenin

Speech at a Joint Meeting of
The Bolshevik and Left S.R. Groups in the All-Russia Central Executive Committee. February 19, 1918

Brief Newspaper Report

Delivered: February 19, 1918
Published: Sotsial-Demokrat No. 28 February 20 (7), 1918. Printed from the text of the newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, pages 58^c-59^a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2003). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. • README

In a long speech lasting two hours, Lenin propounded the theses that there was no way out for Russia, that it was necessary immediately to conclude a separate peace,   since the Germans were advancing all along the front en masse and we were powerless to offer any resistance to this million-strong pressure. Having concluded peace, we would be able to start putting things in order at home and deepening the socialist revolution, and we would succeed in completing the radical reforms that would bring us nearer to the introduction in Russia of a socialist system.

Notes