All-Russia Central Executive Committee and Other Organizations, Appeal to the Toiling Masses of All Countries. December 21, 1917

The October armed uprising of the toiling masses of Russia removed from power the bourgeois imperialists and their servitors and installed a government in the shape of the Council of People's Commissars. This government of the workers, soldiers and peasants of Russia has proposed that all belligerent countries conclude an armistice on all fronts and enter upon negotiations on a universal democratic peace. Representatives of Russia and the Central Powers met on December 2. The delegation of Russian democracy deemed it its primary duty to stress to the representatives of the Central Powers that its objective was not a separate armistice and peace but universal peace on the principles proclaimed by the Russian revolution. With this aim in view the Russian delegates proposed to the Central Powers to address all the belligerent sovereign Powers not represented at the conference with a direct invitation to conclude an armistice. At the same time the Russian delegates laid down the condition that no troops of the Central Powers should be redeployed from the Russian to the Western front during the armistice. On December 5 the armistice was concluded. The terms of the Russian delegation were accepted. The joint meeting of workers, soldiers and peasants fully supports this policy of the Workers' and Peasants' Government, for it opens the way to universal peace.

The joint meeting appeals to you, workers of Germany. You, to whom the predatory aims of German imperialism arc as alien as the aggressive aspirations of Russian imperialism are to us, should support in every way the struggle of the Russian people for a just universal peace. Are you fighting to die, not on the Vistula but on the Isere? In town and country, in the factories and in the trenches you should carry on the most active fight for peace and prevent the imperialists from wrecking the talks that have been started.

And let your rulers not tell you that only by a victorious continuation of the war can you force peace upon the governments of France and Britain. The imperialists of Britain, France and the United States are telling the same to their own peoples. It is for three years now that the peoples have been shedding blood on all fronts, but neither victories nor defeats have brought nearer the longed-for peace. Only the will of the peoples can compel the imperialists of all countries to conclude a democratic peace.

Workers of France, Britain and Italy, peoples of blood-soaked Serbia and ravaged Belgium! You too should raise your voice. Let your governments know that you are no longer willing to shed blood for annexionist aims alien to you. We representatives of the toiling masses of Russia cannot secure universal peace all by ourselves. You should demand that your representatives, too, take part in the talks.

But even that will not suffice. We do not want a peace that would sanctify the old injustices, forge new chains and burden the working people with the grievous consequences of the war. We want a peace of the peoples, a democratic peace, a just peace. But we shall secure such a peace only when the peoples of all countries dictate its terms by their revolutionary struggle--if not only Russia but all other countries send to the peace conference representatives of the popular masses and not those of capitalism and militarism.

On behalf of many millions of working people the joint meeting of workers', soldiers' and peasants' deputies calls upon you, workers of all lands, to fight for a general armistice, for universal peace without annexations and indemnities, based on self-determination of nations!

Long live the international revolutionary struggle of workers, soldiers and peasants!

Long live Socialism!

All-Russia Central Executive Committee of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies
All-Russia Peasants' Congress, Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies
Red Guard Headquarters
Representatives of Trade Unions, factory committees, regimental committees, and district Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies

Source: Decrees of the Soviet Government (Moscow: Institute of Marxism-Leninism, 1957), Vol. I, pp. 118-189.