861.00/3833: Telegram
The Chargé in Russia (Poole) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received February 12, 1 a.m.]
849. It is interesting to read the last message of the Moscow government concerning the Princes Island invitation in parallel with the call for the Workmen’s International51 broadcasted in French from Petrograd January 23, 7 p.m. The condition made in the first message that “the future development of the Soviet Republic will not be endangered” is interpreted by the program for an “international revolution” which the second sets forth. The call for the Workmen’s International is a sincere utterance, while the message on the Princes Island invitation discloses again the shrewd policy which Lenine has summarized in the words, “Draw in and wait, veer and tack”. With that just appreciation of [Page 52] realities which distinguishes him so conspicuously from his fellow Russians and makes him master among the alien genius surrounding him at Moscow, Lenine has seen from the beginning, and has never ceased to impress upon his followers, the fact that the dictatorship of the Russian proletariat cannot long subsist without a similar social revolution abroad. His policy in its ultimate aim, therefore, is not a Russian but a world policy; and he has made it the immediate purpose of domestic and foreign policy alike to gain time, to keep at work a little longer the facilities for world propaganda which the Russian governmental machinery affords. In August last when the Soviet power was tottering the cry was to keep going just a week, just a fortnight longer. Now, in order to gain a further respite in which to prepare the destruction of existing governments, and with an abiding faith in bourgeois venality, Lenine offers to the Entente in the Princes Island message the bait of territory and concessions which was earlier offered to Germany and taken.
Sent to Paris under number 37 same date.
- The first congress of the Communist International met in Moscow Mar. 2, 1919.↩