The following day Lenin appeared before the Congress to defend his policy in person. But the rebellious Left Socialist Revolutionaries were not cowed. Rather than promoting Soviet power, Lenin’s policy of ever closer accommodation with Berlin was leading to a ‘dictatorship of German imperialism’. Count Mirbach’s presence at the Congress of Soviets, the hallowed assembly of the Russian revolution, was a flagrant admission of this subservience. Undaunted by the howling Leninist majority, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries demanded the renunciation of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.
