V. I. Lenin

The ministerial gentlemen, having secured a fresh expression of confidence on the part of the majority of the Soviet leaders,
have started a fresh offensive against Pravda and against our
Party.

Rech , the ministerial newspaper, has adopted the worst methods
of Russkaya Volya . {1}

In today’s two editorials, the ministerial newspaper, rehearsing the
Russkaya Volya elements, does enough lying for two papers.

“The whole ”(sic)“ of Petrograd has awakened; it has gone out into the street and has loudly and solemnly proclaimed its
confidence in the Provisional Government.”

“ The whole ” of Petrograd!—the ministerial paper will have
nothing less.... If from the “whole” of Petrograd we subtract all the
workers , who demonstrated against the Provisional
Government, if we subtract the vast majority of the soldiers who went out
into the street and demonstrated against the Provisional
Government, if we subtract the hundreds of thousands of people who simply
stayed at home, if the “whole” of Petrograd is taken to mean an
insignificant minority of the bourgeoisie, a small section of the students,
and a section of the senior army officers—then the ministerial paper is
right: the “whole” of Petrograd has come out for the Guchkovs and the
Milyukovs....

Relying on the “whole” of Petrograd (remember the Potemkin
villages! {2} ), the ministerial newspaper launches directly into pogrom
baiting against us.

“... Those shots by some armed men, these killings of soldiers, in connection with the unprecedentedly brazen flying of the
defeatist flags from the German embassy.... Yesterday’s bloody outrages by
the Leninists have worn thin everyone’s tolerance and have dealt an
irreparable blow to this anti-national treasonable propaganda. Let us hope
that this propaganda will never again dare to rear its head.”

Let the reader judge where the brazenness lies. Every word there is
lies and slander. Our comrades did not fly any flags at all from the German
embassy. Our comrades are not to blame for the killings of the
soldiers. Responsibility for yesterday’s acts of violence falls on the
Provisional Government and no one else.

Let the reader judge whose propaganda is really treasonable.

---
Notes:
{1}
Russkaya Volya (Russian Will)—a bourgeois daily founded by
the tsarist Minister for the Interior, A. D. Protopopov, which was financed
by the big banks; it was published in Petrograd from December 1916. After
the bourgeois-democratic revolution in February 1917, it carried on a
slander campaign against the Bolsheviks. Lenin called it “one of the most
infamous bourgeois newspapers” (see present edition, Vol. 25, p. 298). It was closed down by the Revolutionary Military Committee on October 25, 1917.

{2}
Show-window villages erected for the benefit of Empress Catherine by
her favourite Potemkin.

p. 408