First Lenin had moved to tighten relations with Germany. That had made it impossible for Woodrow Wilson to continue to resist the call for intervention. Now, the intervention that Wilson had been forced to approve triggered Lenin into inviting Germany to transform the uncomfortable modus vivendi of Brest into active military cooperation. As Rosa Luxemburg, the great tribune of the German radical left and long-time critic of Lenin, was to put it, in one of her most devastatingly perceptive attacks, this was ‘the final stage’ of the ‘path of thorns’ that the Russian revolution had been forced to
...more
