V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v47;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

Statement. In issue No. 24 of the newspaper *Berner Tagwacht* (Thursday, January 30) there is a statement by L. Martov concerning the case of the Russian comrade Dr. Semashko, who was arrested in Geneva. In this statement Martov strangely refers to Semashko only as one of the journalists who attended the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart; at the same time he calls himself “the delegate of Russian Social-Democracy to the Stuttgart Congress.”

Such an expression by Martov will undoubtedly be interpreted by Swiss workers to mean that Russian Social-Democracy has no connection whatsoever with Semashko.

In order that this manner of expression by Martov, with its absolute unreliability, should not mislead anyone, I, as the representative of Russian Social-Democracy in the International Socialist Bureau, declare that Dr. Semashko is an old member of our Party and that at the International Congress he was present both as a member of our Party and as a journalist of the Party press.

I consider such an explanation necessary, because our Swiss comrades undoubtedly take a considerable interest in Semashko’s arrest. All Russian comrades who know him are firmly convinced that he is not in the slightest degree implicated in the Tiflis “expropriation” and could not have been implicated in it. And this is not only because the last Congress (London) of our Party decisively rejected this “method of struggle,” but also because Dr. Semashko has been living continuously in Geneva since February 1907 and has been engaged in literary work.

We express the firm conviction that the press of international Social-Democracy will in the very near future greet the release of the comrade arrested in Geneva with the same well-founded joy with which *Vorwärts!* (in Berlin) and *L’Humanité* (in Paris) once greeted the release of comrades innocently arrested in Paris.

Representative of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party
in the International Socialist Bureau

N. Lenin