Within days of Trotsky’s revealing retort, the Bolsheviks provided a vivid demonstration of their uncompromising commitment to violence as a means of making history. On the morning of 18 January, the negotiations were halted to allow Trotsky to return to Petrograd with a map showing the full extent of Germany’s demands. But the first item on the Bolsheviks’ agenda that day was not the peace, but the final liquidation of the democratic revolution in Russia.
