V. I. Lenin

Letter to the Workers of Europe and America [1]

Comrades, at the end of my letter to American workers dated August 20, 1918, I wrote that we are in a besieged fortress so long as the other armies of the world socialist revolution do not come to our aid. I added that the workers are breaking away from their social-traitors, the Gomperses and Renners. The workers are slowly but surely coming round to communist and Bolshevik tactics.

Less than five months have passed since those words were written, and it must be said that during this time, in view of the fact that workers of various countries have turned to communism and Bolshevism, the maturing of the world proletarian revolution has proceeded very rapidly.

Then, on August 20, 1918, only our Party, the Bolshevik Party, had resolutely broken with the old, Second International of 1889-1914 which so shamefully collapsed during the imperialist war of 1914-18. Only our Party had unreservedly taken the new path, from the socialists and social-democracy which had disgraced themselves by alliance with the predatory bourgeoisie, to communism; from petty-bourgeois reformism and opportunism, which had thoroughly permeated, and now permeate, the official Social-Democratic and socialist parties, to genuinely proletarian, revolutionary tactics.

Now, on January 12, 1919, we already see quite a number of communist proletarian parties, not only within the boundaries of the former tsarist empire—in Latvia, Finland and Poland, for example—but also in Western Europe—Austria, Hungary, Holland and, lastly, Germany. The foundation of a genuinely proletarian, genuinely internationalist, genuinely revolutionary Third International, the Communist International , became a fact when the German Spartacus League, with such world-known and world-famous leaders, with such staunch working-class champions as Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring, made a clean break with socialists like Scheidemann and Südekum, social-chauvinists (socialists in words, but chauvinists in deeds) who have earned eternal shame by their alliance with the predatory, imperialist German bourgeoisie and Wilhelm II. It became a fact when the Spartacus League changed its name to the Communist Party of Germany. Though it has not yet been officially inaugurated, the Third International actually exists.

No class-conscious worker, no sincere socialist can now fail to see how dastardly was the betrayal of socialism by those who, like the Mensheviks and “Socialist-Revolutionaries” in Russia, the Scheidemanns and Südekuns in Germany, the Renaudels and Vanderveldes in France, the Hendersons and Webbs in Britain, and Gompers and Co. in America, supported “their” bourgeoisie in the 1914-18 war. That war fully exposed itself as an imperialist, reactionary, predatory war both on the part of Germany and on the part of the capitalists of Britain, France, Italy and America. The latter are now beginning to quarrel over the spoils, over the division of Turkey, Russia, the African and Polynesian colonies, the Balkans, and so on. The hypocritical phrases uttered by Wilson and his followers about “democracy” and “union of nations” are exposed with amazing rapidity when we see the capture of the left bank of the Rhine by the French bourgeoisie, the capture of Turkey (Syria, Mesopotamia) and part of Russia (Siberia, Archangel, Baku, Krasnovodsk, Ashkhabad, and so on) by the French, British and American capitalists, and the increasing animosity over the division of the spoils between Italy and France, France and Britain, Britain and America, America and Japan.

Beside the craven, half-hearted “socialists” who are thoroughly imbued with the prejudices of bourgeois democracy, who yesterday defended “their” imperialist governments and today limit themselves to platonic “protests” against military intervention in Russia - beside these there is a growing number of people in the Allied countries who have taken the communist path, the path of Maclean, Debs, Loriot, Lazzari and Serrati. These are men who have realised that if imperialism is to be crushed and the victory of socialism and lasting peace ensured, the bourgeoisie must be overthrown, bourgeois parliaments abolished, and Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat established.

Then, on August 20, 1918, the proletarian revolution was confined to Russia, and “Soviet government”, i.e., the system under which all state power is vested in Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, still seemed to be (and actually was) only a Russian institution.

Now, on January 12, 1919, we see a mighty “Soviet” movement not only in parts of the former tsarist empire, for example, in Latvia, Poland and the Ukraine, but also in West-European countries, in neutral countries (Switzerland, Holland and Norway) and in countries which have suffered from the war (Austria and Germany). The revolution in Germany—which is particularly important and characteristic as one of the most advanced capitalist countries—at once assumed “Soviet” forms. The whole course of the German revolution, and particularly the struggle of the Spartacists, i.e., the true and only representatives of the proletariat, against the alliance of those treacherous scoundrels, the Scheidemanns and Südekums, with the bourgeoisie—all this clearly shows how history has formulated the question in relation to Germany:

“Soviet power” or the bourgeois parliament, no matter under what signboard (such as “National” or “Constituent” Assembly) it may appear.

That is how world history has formulated the question. Now, this can and must be said without any exaggeration.

“Soviet power” is the second historical step, or stage, in the development of the proletarian dictatorship. The first step was the Paris Commune. The brilliant analysis of its nature and significance given by Marx in his The Civil War in France showed that the Commune had created a new type of state, a proletarian state. Every state, including the most democratic republic, is nothing but a machine for the suppression of one class by another. The proletarian state is a machine for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat. Such suppression is necessary because of the furious, desperate resistance put up by the landowners and capitalists, by the entire bourgeoisie and all their hangers-on, by all the exploiters, who stop at nothing when their overthrow, when the expropriation of the expropriators, begins.

The bourgeois parliament, even the most democratic in the most democratic republic, in which the property and rule of the capitalists are preserved, is a machine for the suppression of the working millions by small groups of exploiters. The socialists, the fighters for the emancipation of the working people from exploitation, had to utilise the bourgeois parliaments as a platform, as a base, for propaganda, agitation and organisation as long as our struggle was confined to the framework of the bourgeois system. Now that world history has brought up the question of destroying the whole of that system, of overthrowing and suppressing the exploiters, of passing from capitalism to socialism, it would be a shameful betrayal of the proletariat, deserting to its class enemy, the bourgeoisie, and being a traitor and a renegade to confine oneself to bourgeois parliamentarism, to bourgeois democracy, to present it as “democracy” in general, to obscure its bourgeois character, to forget that as long as capitalist property exists universal suffrage is an instrument of the bourgeois state.

The three trends in world socialism, about which the Bolshevik press has been speaking incessantly since 1915, stand out with particular distinctness today, against the background of the bloody struggle and civil war in Germany.

Karl Liebknecht is a name known to the workers of all countries. Everywhere, and particularly in the Allied countries, it is the symbol of a leader’s devotion to the interests of the proletariat and loyalty to the socialist revolution. It is the symbol of really sincere, really self-sacrificing and ruthless struggle against capitalism. It is the symbol of uncompromising struggle against imperialism not in words, but in deeds, of self-sacrificing struggle precisely in the period when “one’s own” country is flushed with imperialist victories. With Liebknecht and the Spartacists are all those German socialists who have remained honest and really revolutionary, all the best and dedicated men among the proletariat, the exploited masses who are seething with indignation and among whom there is a growing readiness for revolution.

Against Liebknecht are the Scheidemanns, the Südekums and the whole gang of despicable lackeys of the Kaiser and the bourgeoisie. They are just as much traitors to socialism as the Gomperses and Victor Bergers, the Hendersons and Webbs, the Renaudels and Vanderveldes. They represent that top section of workers who have been bribed by the bourgeoisie, those whom we Bolsheviks called (applying the name to the Russian Südekums, the Mensheviks) “agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement”, and to whom the best socialists in America gave the magnificently expressive and very fitting title: “labour lieutenants of the capitalist class”. They represent the latest , “modern”, type of socialist treachery, for in all the civilised, advanced countries the bourgeoisie rob—either by colonial oppression or by financially extracting “gain” from formally independent weak countries—they rob a population many times larger than that of “their own” country. This is the economic factor that enables the imperialist bourgeoisie to obtain superprofits, part of which is used to bribe the top section of the proletariat and convert it into a reformist, opportunist petty bourgeoisie that fears revolution.

Between the Spartacists and the Scheidemann men are the wavering, spineless “Kautskyites”, who in words are “independent”, but in deeds are entirely, and all along the line, dependent upon the bourgeoisie and the Scheidemann men one day, upon the Spartacists the next, some following the former and some the latter. These are people without ideas, without backbone, without policy, without honour, without conscience, the living embodiment of the bewilderment of philistines who stand for socialist revolution in words, but are actually incapable of understanding it when it has begun and, in renegade fashion, defend “democracy” in general, that is, actually defend bourgeois democracy.

In every capitalist country, every thinking worker will, in the situation varying with national and historical conditions, perceive these three main trends among the socialists and among the syndicalists, for the imperialist war and the incipient world proletarian revolution engender identical ideological and political trends all over the world.

The foregoing lines were written before the brutal and dastardly
murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg by the Ebert and
Scheidemann government. Those butchers, in their servility to the
bourgeoisie, allowed the German whiteguards, the watchdogs of sacred
capitalist property, to lynch Rosa Luxemburg, to murder Karl
Liebknecht by shooting him in the back on the patently false plea that
he “attempted to escape” (Russian tsarism often used that
excuse to murder prisoners during its bloody suppression of the 1905
Revolution). At the same time those butchers protected the whiteguards
with the authority of the government, which claims to be quite
innocent and to stand above classes! No words can describe the foul
and abominable character of the butchery perpetrated by alleged
socialists. Evidently, history has chosen a path on which the role of
“labour lieutenants of the capitalist class” must be played to the “last degree” of brutality, baseness and
meanness. Let those simpletons, the Kautskyites, talk in their
newspaper Freiheit [2] about a “court” of representatives of “all” “socialist” parties
(those servile souls insist that the Scheidemann executioners are
socialists)! Those heroes of philistine stupidity and petty-bourgeois
cowardice even fail to understand that the courts are organs of state
power, and that the issue in the struggle and civil war now being
waged in Germany is precisely one of who is to hold this
power—the bourgeoisie, “served” by the Scheidemanns as executioners and instigators of pogroms, and by the Kautskys as
glorifiers of “pure democracy”, or the proletariat, which
will overthrow the capitalist exploiters and crush their
resistance.

The blood of the best representatives of the world proletarian
International, of the unforgettable leaders of the world
socialist revolution, will steel ever new masses of workers for
the life-and-death struggle. And this struggle will lead to
victory. We in Russia, in the summer of 1917, lived through the
“July days”, [3] when the Russian
Scheidemanns, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, also
provided “state” protection for the “victory” of the whiteguards over the Bolsheviks,
and when Cossacks shot the worker Voinov in the streets of
Petrograd for distributing Bolshevik leaflets. [4] We know from experience how quickly such “victories” of
the bourgeoisie and their henchmen cure the people of their
illusions about bourgeois democracy, “universal suffrage”, and so forth.

The bourgeoisie and the governments of the Allied countries seem to be wavering. One section sees that demoralisation is already setting in among the Allied troops in Russia, who are helping the whiteguards and serving the blackest monarchist and landlord reaction. It realises that continuation of the military intervention and attempts to defeat Russia—which would mean maintaining a million strong army of occupation for a long time—is the surest and quickest way of carrying the proletarian revolution to the Allied countries. The example of the German occupation forces in the Ukraine is convincing enough of that.

Another section of the Allied bourgeoisie persists in its policy of military intervention, “economic encirclement” (Clemenceau) and strangulation of the Soviet Republic. The entire press in the service of that bourgeoisie, i.e., the majority of the capitalist-bought daily newspapers in Britain and France, predicts the early collapse of the Soviet government, draws lurid pictures of the horrors of the famine in Russia, lies about “disorders” and the “instability” of the Soviet Government. The whiteguard armies of the landowners and capitalists, whom the Allies are helping with officers, ammunition, money and auxiliary detachments, are cutting off the starving central and northern parts of Russia from the most fertile regions, Siberia and the Don.

The distress of the starving workers in Petrograd and Moscow, in Ivanovo-Voznesensk and other industrial centres is indeed great. If the workers did not understand that they are defending the cause of socialism in Russia and throughout the world they would never be able to bear the hardships, the torments of hunger to which they are doomed by the Allied military intervention (often covered up by hypocritical promises not to send their “own” troops, while continuing to send “black” troops, and also ammunition, money and officers).

The “Allied” and whiteguard troops hold Archangel, Perm, Orenburg, Rostov-on-Don, Baku and Ashkhabad, but the “Soviet movement” has won Riga and Kharkov. Latvia and the Ukraine are becoming Soviet republics. The workers see that their great sacrifices are not in vain, that the victory of Soviet power is approaching, spreading, growing and gaining strength the world over. Every month of hard fighting and heavy sacrifice strengthens the cause of Soviet power throughout the world and weakens its enemies, the exploiters.

The exploiters are still strong enough to murder the finest
leaders of the world proletarian revolution, [5] to in crease the sacrifices and suffering of the workers in occupied or
conquered countries and regions. But the exploiters all over the
world are not strong enough to prevent the victory of the world
proletarian revolution, which will free mankind from the yoke of
capital and the eternal menace of new imperialist wars, which are
inevitable under capitalism.

N. Lenin

January 21, 1919

Endnotes

[1]
Lenin’s letter to the workers of Europe and America helped
the advanced workers to rally round the Communist Parties and
unite their forces in the struggle against international
imperialism.

[2] The letter was published in Berlin in the March
issue of the magazine Die Aktion and in the April issue
of the magazine Der Arbeiter-Rat ( The Workers’ Council ) for 1919. It also appeared as a separate pamphlet
in English.

[3]
Die Freiheit —a daily newspaper, organ of the
Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, published in
Berlin from November 15, 1918, to September 30, 1922.

[4]
This refers to mass demonstrations in Petrograd on July 3-4
(16-17) 1917. The obviously hopeless offensive launched by the
Provisional Government and which ended in expected failure aroused
indignation among the workers, soldiers and sailors who turned out
for a demonstration. The movement was initiated by the 1st Machine
Gun Regiment which took action on July 3 (16) in the Vyborg
District. The demonstration threatened to develop into armed
action against the government.

The Bolshevik Party was opposed to armed action, considering that a revolutionary crisis had not yet
matured in the country. At a meeting of the Central Committee
called on July 3 (16) at 4 p.m. it was decided to attempt to
stop the demonstration. A similar decision was adopted at the
Second Petrograd City Conference of the Bolsheviks, which met at
the same time. The delegates went to the factories and the
districts to dissuade the people from demonstrating. But it was
too late, the demonstration had already begun.

Late at night on July 3 (16) the Central und
Petrograd Committees and the Military Organisation, taking into
account the popular mood, decided to take part in the demonstration with a view to keeping it peaceful and
organised. Lenin had been out of town at the time, resting for a
few days from the strain of his work. As soon as he learned
about the developments in Petrograd, he left for the city where
he arrived on the morning of July 4 (17) and took over the
leadership of the movement. That same day he addressed the
Kronstadt sailors from the balcony of the Kshesinskaya
Palace. He called on them to be staunch, steadfast and vigilant.

Over 500,000 people took part in the demonstration under the slogan “All Power to the
Soviets!” and other Bolshevik slogans. The demonstrators
demanded that the Central Executive Committee take over power. The
Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders did not comply with
the demand.

With the knowledge and connivance of the
Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik Central Executive Committee, the
Provisional Government ordered officer cadet and Cossack units to
deal with the demonstrators. The troops opened fire. Counter-revolutionary units had been brought from the front
to crush the demonstration.

The meeting of the Central and Petrograd
Committees, which took place on the night of July 4-5 with Lenin
in the chair, decided to call off the demonstration in an
organised way. It was a wise move, as it enabled the Party to make
a timely retreat and stave off the defeat of the main forces of
the revolution. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries
actually turned out to have aided and abetted the counter-revolutionary repression. They lined up with the
bourgeoisie to attack the Bolshevik Party. Pravda , Soldatskaya Pravda and other Bolshevik papers were
suppressed and the printing-plant Trud, acquired with workers’ money, was wrecked. Workers were disarmed and
arrests, house searches and pogroms began. Revolutionary units of
the Petrograd garrison were withdrawn from the capital and sent to
the front.

After the July days power in the country completely passed into the hands of the Provisional Government,
and the Soviets became its impotent appendage. Dual power came
to an end, as did the peaceful period of the revolution’s
development. The Bolsheviks were now faced with the task of
preparing an armed uprising to overthrow the Provisional
Government. Lenin described the July days in his articles
“Three Crises” , “An Answer” , “Marxism and Insurrection” , “The Russian Revolution and Civil War”