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tarian Government of Russia since the first day of its existence appeared to me, retrospectively, with wonderful transparency.
I understood now that the bourgeois Governments, parliamentary as well as non-parliamentary, republican as well as monarchical, had never during the course of this war represented the interests of their peoples, but only, exclusively the interests of financial groups whose, agents they were, and that Bolshevism had been right in substituting the strugge against the appetites of Wilhelm, by a struggle against the appetites of all capitalists, of ail Imperialisms, without distinction. To-day German Imperialism was defeated, but its acts remained in force, for another Imperialism (that I had not been able to distinguish as yet, my observation being exclusively occupied with German Imperialism) that of the Entente, freed from the competition of a rival Imperial bloc, was able, henceforward, to give, with reserve, a free course to its appetites.
Thus, it had now become clear to me that peace could not be re-established, and that the realisation of principles which up till then had been proclaimed by the bourgeois governments only in order to delude and lull the masses of the people to sleep, could be proclaimed only when the time would come for collapse of this Imperialism and when the people would take the free command of their destinies into their own hands.
Well, that is what the soviet form is, this grand and wonderful creation of the proletarian revolution. The Soviet system of government is government by the people, that is to say of the masses of workers and peasants
