Vladimir Lenin
To the Soldiers and Sailors
Written: Between April 11 - 14, 1917
First Published: Lenin Miscellany IV, 1925
Online Version: marxists.org 1999
Comrades, soldiers! Comrades, sailors!
The capitalist newspapers, from Rech down to Russkaya Volya, are carrying on a
most shameless campaign of lies and slander concerning the passage through
Germany of myself and thirty other emigrants.
The capitalist newspapers shamelessly lie when they assort or insinuate that we
enjoyed certain inadmissible or unusual favours from the German Government, a
government which we consider just as predatory, just as criminal, as all the
other capitalist governments who are carrying on the present war.
Rich men having "connections" with high-ranking officials of the tsarist
monarchy, men like the liberal professor Kovalevsky, friend of Milyukov and Co.,
have been constantly negotiating with the German Government through the agency
of the tsarist Russian Government with a view to arranging for an exchange of
Russians captured by the Germans, and Germans captured by the Russians.
Why then should emigrants, who have been compelled to live abroad because of
their struggle against the tsar, not have the right to arrange for an exchange
of Russians for Germans without the government's aid?
Why has the government of Milyukov and Co. not admitted into Russia Fritz
Platten, the Swiss socialist, who travelled with us and who had negotiated the
agreement with the German Government concerning the exchange?
The government lies when it spreads rumours that Platten is a friend of the
Germans. This is sheer slander. Platten is the friend of the workers and the
enemy of the capitalists of all countries.
The capitalists lie when they circulate rumours that we are for a separate peace
with the Germans, that we conferred or wanted to confer in Stockholm with those
German socialists who sided with their own government.
This is a libellous lie. We did not participate and shall not participate in any
conferences with such socialists. We look upon the socialists of all countries
who are helping their own respective capitalists to carry on this criminal war
as traitors to the cause of socialism.
Only those socialists are our friends who, like Karl Liebknecht, condemned to
hard labor by the predatory German Government, rise against their own
capitalists.
We do not want a separate peace with Germany, we want peace for all nations, we
want the victory of the workers of all countries over the capitalists of all
countries.
The Russian capitalists are lying about us and slandering us, just as the German
capitalists are slandering Liebknecht. The capitalists lie when they say that we
want discord and enmity between the workers and the soldiers.
It is not true! We want the workers and the soldiers to unite. We want to make
it clear to the members of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies that
it is these Soviets that must wield full state power.
The capitalists are slandering us. They have sunk so low in their shamelessness
that not a single bourgeois newspaper has reprinted from Izvestia our report
concerning our journey and the decision of the Executive Committee of the Soviet
of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. [See: How we Arrived]
Every worker and every soldier knows his Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers'
Deputies. It was to the Executive Committee of this Soviet that we made our
report the day after our arrival. The report appeared in Investia. Why is it
that not a single capitalist paper has reprinted this report?
Because these papers are spreading lies and slander and are afraid that our
report to the Executive Committee will expose the deceivers.
Why is it that not a single paper has reprinted the decision of the Executive
Committee concerning our report, a decision which was published in the same
issue of Izvestia?
Because this decision nails the lies of the capitalists and their newspapers, in
that it demands that the government take steps for the return of the emigrants.
Izvestia has published a protest against Trotsky's arrest by the English; it has
published a letter by Zurabov exposing Milyukov's lies; it has also published a
telegram from Martov on the same subject.
Soldiers and sailors! Do not believe the lies and slander of the capitalists!
Expose the deceivers, who are trying to suppress the truth published in
Izvestia!
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