as widely as possible among the masses. The new government cannot give the people peace, because it represents the capitalists and landlords and because it is tied to the English and French capitalists by treaties and financial commitments… Only a workers’ government that relies, first, on the overwhelming majority of the peasant population, the farm labourers and poor peasants, and, second, on an alliance with the revolutionary workers of all countries in the war, can give the people peace, bread and full freedom.

New York, March 15 (March 2, O.S.): Trotsky learns of the Revolution

Trotsky learns of the abdication of the Tsar on Thursday, March 15, in the offices of the Russian émigré newspaper Novy Mir at St. Mark’s Place in New York. According to Kenneth D. Ackerman, his“first reaction was to commandeer the telephone” and call Natalya, his wife and comrade. Natalya celebrates with their child Sergei, who “jumped to his feet and danced on the bed.” The comrades, along with thousands of others, begin to plan their return. “We were anxious to leave by the first boat,” Trotsky later recalled. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are raised in the American working class to send the exiles back.

Much like Lenin, Trotsky sees the overthrow of the Tsar as only the beginning of the revolution. In his article for Novy Mir from March 16, he writes: “...it is necessary to liquidate not only tsarism, but the war as well. The second wave of the revolution is sweeping over the heads of the Rodziankos and Miliukovs, who