V. I. Lenin
Written: 20 August, 1918.
First Published: Pravda No. 178 August 22, 1918; Published according to the Pravda text checked with the manuscript
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 28, 1965, pages 62-75
Translated (and edited): Jim Riordan
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters
Online Version: V.I.Lenin Internet Archive, 2002
First Published: Pravda No. 178 August 22, 1918; Published according to the Pravda text checked with the manuscript
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 28, 1965, pages 62-75
Translated (and edited): Jim Riordan
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters
Online Version: V.I.Lenin Internet Archive, 2002
Comrades! A Russian Bolshevik
who took part in the 1905 Revolution, and who lived in your country for many
years afterwards, has offered to convey my letter to you. I have accepted his
proposal all the more gladly because just at the present time the American
revolutionary workers have to play an exceptionally important role as
uncompromising enemies of American imperialism—the freshest, strongest and
latest in joining in the world-wide slaughter of nations for the division of
capitalist profits. At this very moment, the American multimillionaires, these
modern slaveowners have turned an exceptionally tragic page in the bloody
history of bloody imperialism by giving their approval—whether direct or
indirect, open or hypocritically concealed, makes no difference—to the armed
expedition launched by the brutal Anglo-Japanese imperialists for the purpose
of throttling the first socialist republic.
The history of
modern, civilised America opened with one of those great, really liberating,
really revolutionary wars of which there have been so few compared to the vast
number of wars of conquest which, like the present imperialist war, were caused
by squabbles among kings, landowners or capitalists over the division of
usurped lands or ill-gotten gains. That was the war the American people waged
against the British robbers who oppressed America and held her in colonial
slavery, in the same way as these “civilised” bloodsuckers are still oppressing
and holding in colonial slavery hundreds of millions of people in India, Egypt,
and all parts of the world.
About 150 years
have passed since then. Bourgeois civilisation has borne all its luxurious
fruits. America has taken first place among the free and educated nations in
level of development of the productive forces of collective human endeavour, in
the utilisation of machinery and of all the wonders of modern engineering. At
the same time, America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to
the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires
who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who
constantly live on the verge of pauperism. The American people, who set the
world an example in waging a revolutionary war against feudal slavery, now find
themselves in the latest, capitalist stage of wage-slavery to a handful of
multimillionaires, and find themselves playing the role of hired thugs who, for
the benefit of wealthy scoundrels, throttled the Philippines in 1898 on the
pretext of “liberating” them, and are throttling the Russian Socialist Republic
in 1918 on the pretext of “protecting” it from the Germans.
The four years of
the imperialist slaughter of nations, however, have not passed in vain. The
deception of the people by the scoundrels of both robber groups, the British
and the German, has been utterly exposed by indisputable and obvious facts. The
results of the four years of war have revealed the general law of capitalism as
applied to war between robbers for the division of spoils: the richest and strongest
profited and grabbed most, while the weakest were utterly robbed, tormented,
crushed and strangled.
The British
imperialist robbers were the strongest in number of “colonial slaves”. The
British capitalists have not lost an inch of “their” territory (i.e., territory
they have grabbed over the centuries), but they have grabbed all the German
colonies in Africa, they have grabbed Mesopotamia and Palestine, they have
throttled Greece, and have begun to plunder Russia.
The German
imperialist robbers were the strongest in organisation and discipline of
“their” armies, but weaker in regard to colonies. They have lost all their
colonies, but plundered half of Europe and throttled the largest number of
small countries and weak nations. What a great war of “liberation” on both
sides! How well the robbers of both groups, the Anglo-French and the German
capitalists, together with their lackeys, the social-chauvinists, i.e., the
socialists who went over to the side of “their own ” bourgeoisie, have
“defended their country”!
The American
multimillionaires were, perhaps, richest of all, and geographically the most
secure. They have profited more than all the rest. They have converted all,
even the richest, countries into their tributaries. They have grabbed hundreds
of billions of dollars. And every dollar is sullied with filth: the filth of
the secret treaties between Britain and her “allies”, between Germany and her
vassals, treaties for the division of the spoils, treaties of mutual “aid” for
oppressing the workers and persecuting the internationalist socialists. Every
dollar is sullied with the filth of “profitable” war contracts, which in every
country made the rich richer and the poor poorer. And every dollar is stained
with blood—from that ocean of blood that has been shed by the ten million
killed and twenty million maimed in the great, noble, liberating and holy war
to decide whether the British or the German robbers are to get most of the
spoils, whether the British or the German thugs are to be foremost in
throttling the weak nations all over the world.
While the German
robbers broke all records in war atrocities, the British have broken all
records not only in the number of colonies they have grabbed, but also in the
subtlety of their disgusting hypocrisy. This very day, the Anglo-French and
American bourgeois newspapers are spreading, in millions and millions of
copies, lies and slander about Russia, and are hypocritically justifying their
predatory expedition against her on the plea that they want to “protect” Russia
from the Germans!
It does not
require many words to refute this despicable and hideous lie; it is sufficient
to point to one well-known fact. In October 1917, after the Russian workers had
overthrown their imperialist government, the Soviet government, the government
of the revolutionary workers and peasants, openly proposed a just peace, a
peace without annexations or indemnities, a peace that fully guaranteed equal
rights to all nations—and it proposed such a peace to all the
belligerent countries.
It was the
Anglo-French and the American bourgeoisie who refused to accept our proposal;
it was they who even refused to talk to us about a general peace! It was they
who betrayed the interests of all nations; it was they who prolonged the
imperialist slaughter!
It was they who,
banking on the possibility of dragging Russia back into the imperialist war,
refused to take part in the peace negotiations and thereby gave a free hand to
the no less predatory German capitalists who imposed the annexationist and harsh
Brest Peace upon Russia!
It is difficult to
imagine anything more disgusting than the hypocrisy with which the Anglo-French
and American bourgeoisie are now “blaming” us for the Brest Peace
Treaty. The very capitalists of those countries which could have turned the
Brest negotiations into general negotiations for a general peace are now our
“accusers”! The Anglo-French imperialist vultures, who have profited from the
plunder of colonies and the slaughter of nations, have prolonged the war for
nearly a whole year after Brest, and yet they “accuse” us, the
Bolsheviks, who proposed a just peace to all countries, they accuse us,
who tore up, published and exposed to public disgrace the secret, criminal
treaties concluded between the ex-tsar and the Anglo-French capitalists.
The workers of the
whole world, no matter in what country they live, greet us, sympathise with us,
applaud us for breaking the iron ring of imperialist ties, of sordid
imperialist treaties, of imperialist chains—for breaking through to freedom,
and making the heaviest sacrifices in doing so—for, as a socialist republic,
although torn and plundered by the imperialists, keeping out of the
imperialist war and raising the banner of peace, the banner of socialism for
the whole world to see.
Small wonder that
the international imperialist gang hates us for this, that it “accuses” us,
that all the lackeys of the imperialists, including our Right
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, also “accuse” us. The hatred these
watchdogs of imperialism express for the Bolsheviks, and the sympathy of the
class-conscious workers of the world, convince us more than ever of the justice
of our cause.
A real socialist
would not fail to understand that for the sake of achieving victory over the
bourgeoisie, for the sake of power passing to the workers, for the sake of starting
the world proletarian revolution, we cannot and must not hesitate
to make the heaviest sacrifices, including the sacrifice of part of our
territory, the sacrifice of heavy defeats at the hands of imperialism. A real
socialist would have proved by deeds his willingness for “his” country
to make the greatest sacrifice to give a real push forward to the cause of the
socialist revolution.
For the sake of
“their” cause, that is, for the sake of winning world hegemony, the
imperialists of Britain and Germany have not hesitated to utterly ruin and
throttle a whole number of countries, from Belgium and Serbia to Palestine and
Mesopotamia. But must socialists wait with “their” cause, the cause of
liberating the working people of the whole world from the yoke of capital, of
winning universal and lasting peace, until a path without sacrifice is found?
Must they fear to open the battle until an easy victory is “guaranteed”? Must
they place the integrity and security of “their” bourgeois-created “fatherland”
above the interests of the world socialist revolution? The scoundrels in the
international socialist movement who think this way, those lackeys who grovel
to bourgeois morality, thrice stand condemned.
The Anglo-French
and American imperialist vultures “accuse” us of concluding an “agreement” with
German imperialism. What hypocrites, what scoundrels they are to slander the
workers’ government while trembling because of the sympathy displayed towards
us by the workers of “their own” countries! But their hypocrisy will be
exposed. They pretend not to see the difference between an agreement entered
into by “socialists” with the bourgeoisie (their own or foreign) against the
workers, against the working people, and an agreement entered into for
the protection of the workers who have defeated their bourgeoisie, with the
bourgeoisie of one national colour against the bourgeoisie of another
colour in order that the proletariat may take advantage of the antagonisms
between the different groups of bourgeoisie.
In actual fact,
every European sees this difference very well, and, as I shall show in a
moment, the American people have had a particularly striking “illustration” of
it in their own history. There are agreements and agreements, there are fagots
et fagots, as the French say.
When in February
1918 the German imperialist vultures hurled their forces against unarmed,
demobilised Russia, who had relied on the international solidarity of the
proletariat before the world revolution had fully matured, I did not hesitate
for a moment to enter into an “agreement” with the French monarchists. Captain
Sadoul, a French army officer who, in words, sympathised with the Bolsheviks,
but was in deeds a loyal and faithful servant of French imperialism, brought
the French officer de Lubersac to see me. “I am a monarchist. My only aim is to
secure the defeat of Germany,” de Lubersac declared to me. “That goes without
saying (cela va sans dire ),” I replied. But this did not in the least
prevent me from entering into an “agreement” with de Lubersac concerning
certain services that French army officers, experts in explosives, were ready
to render us by blowing up railway lines in order to hinder the German
invasion. This is an example of an “agreement” of which every class-conscious
worker will approve, an agreement in the interests of socialism. The French
monarchist and I shook hands, although we knew that each of us would willingly
hang his “partner”. But for a time our interests coincided. Against the
advancing rapacious Germans, we, in the interests of the Russian and the
world socialist revolution, utilised the equally rapacious counter-interests of
other imperialists. In this way we served the interests of the working
class of Russia and of other countries, we strengthened the proletariat and
weakened the bourgeoisie of the whole world, we resorted to the methods, most
legitimate and essential in every war, of manoeuvre, stratagem, retreat,
in anticipation of the moment when the rapidly maturing proletarian revolution
in a number of advanced countries completely matured.
However much the
Anglo-French and American imperialist sharks fume with rage, however much they
slander us, no matter how many millions they spend on bribing the Right
Socialist-Revolutionary, Menshevik and other social-patriotic newspapers, I
shall not hesitate one second to enter into a similar “agreement”
with the German imperialist vultures if an attack upon Russia by Anglo-French
troops calls for it. And I know perfectly well that my tactics will be approved
by the class-conscious proletariat of Russia, Germany, France, Britain,
America—in short, of the whole civilised world. Such tactics will ease the task
of the socialist revolution, will hasten it, will weaken the international
bourgeoisie, will strengthen the position of the working class which is
defeating the bourgeoisie.
The American
people resorted to these tactics long ago to the advantage of their revolution.
When they waged their great war of liberation against the British oppressors,
they had also against them the French and the Spanish oppressors who owned a
part of what is now the United States of North America. In their arduous war
for freedom, the American people also entered into “agreements” with some
oppressors against others for the purpose of weakening the oppressors and
strengthening those who were fighting in a revolutionary manner against
oppression, for the purpose of serving the interests of the oppressed people.
The American people took advantage of the strife between the French, the
Spanish and the British; sometimes they even fought side by side with the
forces of the French and Spanish oppressors against the British oppressors;
first they defeated the British and then freed themselves (partly by ransom)
from the French and the Spanish.
Historical action
is not the pavement of Nevsky Prospekt, said the great Russian revolutionary
Chernyshevsky.[2] A revolutionary would not “agree” to a proletarian revolution only “on the
condition” that it proceeds easily and smoothly, that there is, from the
outset, combined action on the part of the proletarians of different countries,
that there are guarantees against defeats, that the road of the revolution is
broad, free and straight, that it will not be necessary during the march to
victory to sustain the heaviest casualties, to “bide one’s time in a besieged
fortress”, or to make one’s way along extremely narrow, impassable, winding and
dangerous mountain tracks. Such a person is no revolutionary, he has not freed
himself from the pedantry of the bourgeois intellectuals; such a person will be
found constantly slipping into the camp of the counter-revolutionary
bourgeoisie, like our Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and even
(although more rarely) Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.
Echoing the
bourgeoisie, these gentlemen like to blame us for the “chaos” of the
revolution, for the “destruction” of industry, for the unemployment and the
food shortage. How hypocritical these accusations are, coming from those who
welcomed and supported the imperialist war, or who entered into an “agreement”
with Kerensky who continued this war! It is this imperialist war that is the
cause of all these misfortunes. The revolution engendered by the war can not
avoid the terrible difficulties and suffering bequeathed it by the prolonged,
ruinous, reactionary slaughter of the nations. To blame us for the
“destruction” of industry, or for the “terror”, is either hypocrisy or
dull-witted pedantry; it reveals an inability to understand the basic
conditions of the fierce class struggle, raised to the highest degree of
intensity that is called revolution.
Even when
“accusers” of this type do “recognise” the class struggle, they limit
themselves to verbal recognition; actually, they constantly slip into the
philistine utopia of class “agreement” and “collaboration”; for in
revolutionary epochs the class struggle has always, inevitably, and in every
country, assumed the form of civil war, and civil war is inconceivable
without the severest destruction, terror and the restriction of formal
democracy in the interests of this war. Only unctuous parsons—whether Christian
or “secular” in the persons of parlour, parliamentary socialists— cannot see,
understand and feel this necessity. Only a life less “man in the muffler”[3] can shun the revolution for this reason instead of plunging into battle
with the utmost ardour and determination at a time when history demands that
the greatest problems of humanity be solved by struggle and war.
The American
people have a revolutionary tradition which has been adopted by the best
representatives of the American proletariat, who have repeatedly expressed
their complete solidarity with us Bolsheviks. That tradition is the war of
liberation against the British in the eighteenth century and the Civil War in
the nineteenth century. In some respects, if we only take into consideration
the “destruction” of some branches of industry and of the national economy,
America in 1870 was behind 1860. But what a pedant, what an idiot would anyone
be to deny on these grounds the immense, world-historic, progressive and
revolutionary significance of the American Civil War of 1863-65!
The
representatives of the bourgeoisie understand that for the sake of overthrowing
Negro slavery, of overthrowing the rule of the slaveowners, it was worth letting
the country go through long years of civil war, through the abysmal ruin,
destruction and terror that accompany every war. But now, when we are
confronted with the vastly greater task of overthrowing capitalist wage-slavery,
of overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie—now, the representatives and
defenders of the bourgeoisie, and also the reformist socialists who have been
frightened by the bourgeoisie and are shunning the revolution, cannot and do
not want to understand that civil war is necessary and legitimate.
The American
workers will not follow the bourgeoisie. They will be with us, for civil war
against the bourgeoisie. The whole history of the world and of the American
labour movement strengthens my conviction that this is so. I also recall the
words of one of the most beloved leaders of the American proletariat, Eugene
Debs, who wrote in the Appeal to Reason,[4] I believe towards the end of 1915, in the article “What Shall I Fight For”
(I quoted this article at the beginning of 1916 at a public meeting of workers
in Berne, Switzerland)[5]—that he, Debs, would rather be shot than vote credits for the present
criminal and reactionary war; that he, Debs, knows of only one holy and, from
the proletarian standpoint, legitimate war, namely: the war against the
capitalists, the war to liberate mankind from wage-slavery.
I am not surprised
that Wilson, the head of the American multimillionaires and servant of the
capitalist sharks, has thrown Debs into prison. Let the bourgeoisie be brutal
to the true internationalists, to the true representatives of the revolutionary
proletariat! The more fierce and brutal they are, the nearer the day of the
victorious proletarian revolution.
We are blamed for
the destruction caused by our revolution. . . . Who are the accusers? The
hangers-on of the bourgeoisie, of that very bourgeoisie who, during the four
years of the imperialist war, have destroyed almost the whole of European
culture and have reduced Europe to barbarism, brutality and starvation. These
bourgeoisie now demand we should not make a revolution on these ruins, amidst
this wreckage of culture, amidst the wreckage and ruins created by the war, nor
with the people who have been brutalised by the war. How humane and righteous
the bourgeoisie are!
Their servants
accuse us of resorting to terror. . . . The British bourgeoisie have forgotten
their 1649, the French bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1793. Terror was just
and legitimate when the bourgeoisie resorted to it for their own benefit
against feudalism. Terror became monstrous and criminal when the workers and
poor peasants dared to use it against the bourgeoisie! Terror was just and
legitimate when used for the purpose of substituting one exploiting minority
for another exploiting minority. Terror became monstrous and criminal when it
began to be used for the purpose of overthrowing every exploiting
minority, to be used in the interests of the vast actual majority, in the
interests of the proletariat and semi-proletariat, the working class and the
poor peasants!
The international
imperialist bourgeoisie have slaughtered ten million men and maimed twenty
million in “their” war, the war to decide whether the British or the German
vultures are to rule the world.
If our war,
the war of the oppressed and exploited against the oppressors and the
exploiters, results in half a million or a million casualties in all countries,
the bourgeoisie will say that the former casualties are justified, while the
latter are criminal.
The proletariat
will have something entirely different to say.
Now, amidst the
horrors of the imperialist war, the proletariat is receiving a most vivid and
striking illustration of the great truth taught by all revolutions and
bequeathed to the workers by their best teachers, the founders of modern
socialism. This truth is that no revolution can be successful unless the
resistance of the exploiters is crushed. When we, the workers and toiling
peasants, captured state power, it became our duty to crush the resistance of
the exploiters. We are proud we have been doing this. We regret we are not
doing it with sufficient firmness and determination.
We know that
fierce resistance to the socialist revolution on the part of the bourgeoisie is
inevitable in all countries, and that this resistance will grow with the
growth of this revolution. The proletariat will crush this resistance; during
the struggle against the resisting bourgeoisie it will finally mature for
victory and for power.
Let the corrupt
bourgeois press shout to the whole world about every mistake our revolution
makes. We are not daunted by our mistakes. People have not become saints
because the revolution has begun. The toiling classes who for centuries have
been oppressed, downtrodden and forcibly held in the vice of poverty, brutality
and ignorance cannot avoid mistakes when making a revolution. And, as I pointed
out once before, the corpse of bourgeois society cannot be nailed in a coffin
and buried.[*] The corpse of capitalism is decaying and disintegrating in our
midst, polluting the air and poisoning our lives, enmeshing that which is new,
fresh, young and virile in thousands of threads and bonds of that which is old,
moribund and decaying.
For every hundred
mistakes we commit, and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys (including our
own Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries) shout about to the whole
world, 10,000 great and heroic deeds are performed, greater and more heroic
because they are simple and inconspicuous amidst the everyday life of a factory
district or a remote village, performed by people who are not accustomed (and
have no opportunity) to shout to the whole world about their successes.
But even if the
contrary were true—although I know such an assumption is wrong—even if we
committed 10,000 mistake for every 100 correct actions we performed, even in
that case our revolution would be great and invincible, and so it will be in
the eyes of world history, because, for the first time, not the
minority, not the rich alone, not the educated alone, but the real people, the
vast majority of the working people, are themselves building a new life,
are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of
socialist organisation .
Every mistake
committed in the course of such work, in the course of this most conscientious
and earnest work of tens of millions of simple workers and peasants in
reorganising their whole life, every such mistake is worth thousands and
millions of “lawless” successes achieved by the exploiting minority—successes
in swindling and duping the working people. For only through such
mistakes will the workers and peasants learn to build the new life,
learn to do without capitalists; only in this way will they hack a path
for themselves—through thousands of obstacles—to victorious socialism.
Mistakes are being
committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our peasants, who at one
stroke, in one night, October 25-26 (old style), 1917, entirely abolished the
private ownership of land, and are now, month after month, overcoming
tremendous difficulties and correcting their mistakes themselves, solving in a
practical way the most difficult tasks of organising new conditions of economic
life, of fighting the kulaks, providing land for the working people (and
not for the rich), and of changing to communist large-scale agriculture.
Mistakes are being
committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our workers, who have
already, after a few months, nationalised almost all the biggest factories and
plants, and are learning by hard, everyday work the new task of managing whole
branches of industry, are setting the nationalised enterprises going,
overcoming the powerful resistance of inertia, petty-bourgeois mentality and
selfishness, and, brick by brick, are laying the foundation of new
social ties, of a new labour discipline, of a new influence of
the workers’ trade unions over their members.
Mistakes are
committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our Soviets, which were
created as far back as 1905 by a mighty upsurge of the people. The Soviets of
Workers and Peasants are a new type of state, a new and higher type
of democracy, a form of the proletarian dictatorship, a means of administering
the state without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie.
For the first time democracy is here serving the people, the working people,
and has ceased to be democracy for the rich as it still is in all bourgeois
republics, even the most democratic. For the first time, the people are
grappling, on a scale involving one hundred million, with the problem of
implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat and semi-proletariat—a problem
which, if not solved, makes socialism out of the question.
Let the pedants,
or the people whose minds are incurably stuffed with bourgeois-democratic or
parliamentary prejudices, shake their heads in perplexity about our Soviets,
about the absence of direct elections, for example. These people have forgotten
nothing and have learned nothing during the period of the great upheavals of
1914-18. The combination of the proletarian dictatorship with the new democracy
for the working people—of civil war with the widest participation of the people
in politics—such a combination cannot be brought about at one stroke, nor does
it fit in with the outworn modes of routine parliamentary democracy. The
contours of a new world, the world of socialism, are rising before us in the
shape of the Soviet Republic. It is not surprising that this world does not
come into being ready-made, does not spring forth like Minerva from the head of
Jupiter.
The old bourgeois-democratic
constitutions waxed eloquent about formal equality and right of assembly; but
our proletarian and peasant Soviet Constitution casts aside the hypocrisy of
formal equality. When the bourgeois republicans overturned thrones they did not
worry about formal equality between monarchists and republicans. When it is a
matter of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, only traitors or idiots can demand
formal equality of rights for the bourgeoisie. “Freedom of assembly” for
workers and peasants is not worth a farthing when the best buildings belong to
the bourgeoisie. Our Soviets have confiscated all the good buildings in
town and country from the rich and have transferred all of them to the
workers and peasants for their unions and meetings. This is our freedom
of assembly—for the working people! This is the meaning and content of our
Soviet, our socialist Constitution!
That is why we are
all so firmly convinced that no matter what misfortunes may still be in store
for it, our Republic of Soviets is invincible.
It is invincible
because every blow struck by frenzied imperialism, every defeat the
international bourgeoisie inflict on us, rouses more and more sections of the
workers and peasants to the struggle, teaches them at the cost of enormous
sacrifice, steels them and engenders new heroism on a mass scale.
We know that help
from you will probably not come soon, comrade American workers, for the
revolution is developing in different countries in different forms and at
different tempos (and it cannot be otherwise). We know that although the
European proletarian revolution has been maturing very rapidly lately, it may,
after all, not flare up within the next few weeks. We are banking on the
inevitability of the world revolution, but this does not mean that we are such
fools as to bank on the revolution inevitably coming on a definite and
early date. We have seen two great revolutions in our country, 1905 and 1917,
and we know revolutions are not made to order, or by agreement. We know that
circumstances brought our Russian detachment of the socialist
proletariat to the fore not because of our merits, but because of the
exceptional backwardness of Russia, and that before the world revolution
breaks out a number of separate revolutions may be defeated.
In spite of this,
we are firmly convinced that we are invincible, because the spirit of mankind
will not be broken by the imperialist slaughter. Mankind will vanquish it. And
the first country to break the convict chains of the imperialist war was
our country. We sustained enormously heavy casualties in the struggle to
break these chains, but we broke them. We are free from
imperialist dependence, we have raised the banner of struggle for the complete
overthrow of imperialism for the whole world to see.
We are now, as it
were, in a besieged fortress, waiting for the other detachments of the world
socialist revolution to come to our relief. These detachments exist,
they are more numerous than ours, they are maturing, growing, gaining
more strength the longer the brutalities of imperialism continue. The workers
are breaking away from their social traitors—the Gomperses, Hendersons,
Renaudels, Scheidemanns and Renners. Slowly but surely the workers are adopting
communist, Bolshevik tactics and are marching towards the proletarian
revolution, which alone is capable of saving dying culture and dying mankind.
In short, we are
invincible, because the world proletarian revolution is invincible.
N. Lenin
August 20, 1918
Endnotes
[1] The dispatch of the letter to America was organised
by the Bolshevik M. M. Borodin, who had recently been there. With the foreign
military intervention and the blockade of Soviet Russia this involved
considerable difficulties. The letter was delivered to the United States by P.
I. Travin (Sletov). Along with the letter he brought the Constitution of the
R.S.F.S.R. and the Soviet Government’s Note to President Wilson containing the
demand to stop the intervention. The well-known American socialist and journalist
John Reed secured the publication of all these documents in the American press.
In December 1918 a slightly abridged version of the letter appeared in the
New York magazine The Class Struggle and the Boston weekly The
Revolutionary Age, both organs of the Left wing of the American Socialist
Party. The Revolutionary Age was brought out by John Reed and Sen
Katayama. The letter evoked keen interest among readers and it was published as
a reprint from The Class Struggle in a large number of copies. Subsequently
it was published many times in the bourgeois and socialist press of the U.S.A.
and Western Europe, in the French socialist magazine Demain No. 28-29,
1918, in No. 138 of the Call, organ of the British Socialist Party, the
Berlin magazine Die Aktion No. 51-52, 1918, and elsewhere. In 1934 the
letter was brought out in New York in the form of a pamphlet, which contained
the passages omitted in earlier publications.
The letter was widely used by the American Left Socialists and was
instrumental in aiding the development of the labour and communist movement in
the U.S. and Europe. It helped advanced workers to appreciate the nature of
imperialism and the great revolutionary changes effected by the Soviet
government. Lenin’s letter aroused a mounting protest in the U.S. against the
armed intervention.
[2] Lenin quotes from Chernyshevsky’s review of the book
by the American economist H. Ch. Carey, Letters to the President on the
Foreign and Domestic Policy of the Union, and its Effects. Chernyshevsky
wrote: “The path of history is not paved like Nevsky Prospekt; it runs across
fields, either dusty or muddy, and cuts through swamps or forest thickets.
Anyone who fears being covered with dust or muddying his boots, should not
engage in social activity.”
[3] Man in the muffler—a character from
Chekhov’s story of the same title, personifying a narrow-minded philistine
scared of initiative and new ideas.
[4] Appeal to Reason—American
socialist newspaper, founded in Girard, Kansas, in 1895. The newspaper propagated
socialist ideas and was immensely popular among the workers. During the First
World War it pursued an internationalist policy.
Debs’s article appeared in the paper on September 11, 1915. Its title,
which Lenin most probably quoted from memory, was “When I Shall Fight”.
[5] See present edition, Volume 22, page 125. Speech Delivered
at an International Meeting in Berne.
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