This leaflet, of course, cannot be published legally, but we must strive to achieve its illegal publication. It would be utterly stupid if we were to risk closing our legal newspapers (which we maintain with tremendous difficulty and which are terribly important to us) and, having failed to do what we were able to do in 1912–1914: utilize legal opportunities. We should neither print legally nor spoil the articles of the leaflet by rewriting them to meet legal requirements.

And it would be not only stupid but base if we limited ourselves to legal speech when freedom of speech is plainly curtailed by the government and is being curtailed daily.

I know that the inertia of our Bolsheviks is great and that it will cost much effort to achieve the publication of illegal leaflets. But I will insist and insist, because this is a demand of life, a demand of the movement.

We must publish illegally free leaflets and flyers that speak with full voice, that do not restrain themselves. We must sign them: "Group of Persecuted Bolsheviks." One can confine oneself to this signature, or one can add to it, at the bottom, in small print: "The Group of Persecuted Bolsheviks was formed from those Bolsheviks whom government persecution forced to work illegally." Or as follows: "The Group of Persecuted Bolsheviks was formed from Bolsheviks forced by government persecution and the deprivation of freedom of the press to publish free leaflets illegally, acting outside the framework of the legal Bolshevik party."

A LEAFLET ON THE OCCASION OF THE CAPTURE OF RIGA

Workers, soldiers, and all toilers!

Enemy forces have occupied Riga. We have suffered yet another grave defeat. The calamities, unprecedented calamities, inflicted upon the people by war, grow ever more severe, dragging on endlessly.

Why is the war dragging on? As before, because of the division of plunder among robber capitalists, because of whether the German predatory capitalists will keep Belgium, Serbia, Poland, Riga, and so forth, whether the English predatory capitalists will keep Baghdad and the German colonies they plundered, whether the Russian predatory capitalists will keep Armenia, and so on. The Kerensky government, with the participation and support of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, shamelessly deceives the people, lulling it with empty phrases about their desire for peace that commit them to nothing, while in fact prolonging the predatory war, not publishing the secret treaties that the tsar concluded with English and French capitalists for the enrichment of Russian capitalists, who received the promise of Constantinople, Galicia, Armenia.

The Russian people, even under a republic, shed their blood for the fulfillment of secret treaties, predatory treaties between capitalists.

Russian workers and peasants have been deceived for months by the "republicans" Kerensky, Skobelev, Chernov and Co., instead of having the secret predatory treaties torn up, instead of being offered to all warring peoples exact, clear, just conditions of peace.

Kerensky with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries have deceived the people. Only a workers' government can save the country, free it from the losses of war, from the plunder of capitalist marauders.

The bourgeoisie, on the occasion of the Riga defeat, is already relishing the introduction of new convict laws and convict measures for soldiers, workers, and peasants. Grain has already begun to be taken from the peasants, while capitalists are left with their absurdly high profits, their sacred "commercial secret" is preserved, protecting bankers and millionaires from exposure, preventing workers' control.

And the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, shamefully fawning before the bourgeoisie, continue to support it and cry out about the necessity of "leaving" "all party disputes," i.e., about leaving the absolute power of capitalists and the plunder of the country by capitalists, about preserving for them the "freedom" to prolong the war…

Tens and hundreds of thousands of people have perished from the offensive that the Kerensky government, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries launched in June. Tens and hundreds of thousands will perish from the prolongation of the war, as long as the people tolerate such a government.

Only a workers' government can save the country. Only it will not deceive the people, but will immediately offer all countries exact, clear, just conditions of peace.

The bourgeoisie terrorizes the people, tries to create panic and convince simple folk that it is impossible now to immediately offer peace, that this would mean "losing Riga" and so forth. This is a deception of the people.

Even if peace were negotiated by governments, that is, governments protecting the sacred rights of capitalists to their plundered wealth and seizures of foreign lands (annexations), even then the offer of peace would not mean abandoning Riga. Riga is the plunder of German robber capitalists. Armenia is the plunder of Russian robber capitalists. When robbers negotiate peace, they either each keep their own plunder, or exchange pieces of plunder. Thus all wars have ended and thus will all wars end, so long as power remains with the capitalists.

But we speak of a workers' government, which alone can immediately offer just conditions of peace—workers and peasants throughout all Russia have said this hundreds of times in countless mandates and resolutions. These conditions are: peace without annexations, that is, without seizures of foreign lands. This means: neither German nor Russian can forcibly, without the voluntary consent of the Poles, attach Poland or the Latvian region, neither Turk nor Russian can seize Armenia, and so forth.

But such just conditions of peace a workers' government will immediately offer to all warring countries without exception. Until this is done, until exact, clear, formal offers of peace are made, until secret predatory treaties remain, until the absolute power and plunder of capitalists profiteering hundreds of millions from military supplies is broken—until then all talk of peace is one deception of the people, sheer and shameless deception.

All capitalist governments are engaged in this deception of the people, including the government of Kerensky, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. All speak empty phrases about peace that commit them to nothing; no one offers exact conditions of peace; no one tears up secret treaties; all continue in fact to prolong the criminal, predatory war that destroys peoples, all for capitalist profits.

Down with war! Down with the government of Kerensky, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, which deceives the people, prolongs the war, defends the predatory interests of capitalists, delays elections to the Constituent Assembly!

Only a workers' government, supported by the poorest peasants, will offer peace, putting an end to capitalist plunder, giving bread and freedom to the toilers. Let every worker and soldier explain to the people the necessity of overthrowing the Kerensky government and establishing a workers' government.

Written in August, after the 22nd (September 4), 1917.

Published for the first time, from a typescript copy