V. I.

Lenin

A whole congress of delegates from the front, [1] in a resolution adopted unanimously on May 13, condemns the shabby
methods which Rech uses to slander our Comrade Zinoviev
and sow discord between the army and the Bolsheviks. The worthy
gentlemen of Rech have no intention, of course, of publishing the resolution of the congress of front-line
delegates, although a copy of it was forwarded to the paper by
the congress. Instead, that disreputable newspaper is keeping up
its smear campaign against our paper and comrade Zinoviev in a
deliberate attempt to provoke a minor riot.

“ Pravda regularly publishes reports about Germany which
are to be found in no other paper. Where, how does
Pravda get it’s special [!] information?” Rech asks significantly in an article significantly entitled
“Curious Sources of Information”.

Where, Messrs. Slanderers?

From the telegrams and letters of our correspondent, Comrade
Radek, the Polish Social-Democrat, who spent a number of years
in tsarist prisons, who has been active for over ten years in
the ranks of the German Social-Democrats, who has been expelled
from Germany on account of his revolutionary agitation against
Wilhelm and against the war, and who has gone specially to
Stockholm to keep us sup plied with information. From letters
and telegrams, Messrs. Cadets, which your servants who rule the
roost on the Russian-Swedish frontier are not always able to
intercept, from newspaper cuttings and illegal German newspapers
and leaflets, which our friends, the followers of Karl
Liebknecht, send us, in exactly the same way as we receive
similar material about France from the French socialist-internationalist Henri Guilbeaux, friend of Romain
Rolland and associate of the well-known French internationalist
Comrade Loriot.

“ The German General Staff has banned fraternisation,” we wrote
in Pravda on the basis of information recently published in all the Russian newspapers. The Rech
slanderers make big eyes at this and counter it with the
statement of the Russian War Minister that all sectors of the
front where fraternisation took place have been destroyed by the
enemy’s artillery”.

We do not know, of course, whether this report about destroyed
sectors is true or not. But if it is true, it confirms rather than refutes the report that the German
General Staff is opposed to fraternisation. It is obvious that
by destroying the sectors where fraternisation occurred, the
German General Staff is discouraging fraternisation both on the part of the Russian soldiers and of those honest
German soldiers who do not want to use fraternisation as a trap.

You are not very convincing, you gentlemen counterfeiters of the
Cadet Party!

In conclusion, one more of their lies: At the Peasant Congress,
as we know, Zinoviev was not given a chance to finish his
speech,” writes Milyukov’s mouthpiece. As we know”, you are
lying again, gentlemen of the Cadet Party, just as you lied
about the congress of front-line delegates. Things must be
pretty bad for you, gentlemen, If you are compelled to resort to
such shameless and despicable methods.

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Notes:
[1]
The Congress of delegates from the front , held in Petrograd on
May 12–17 (25–30), discussed, among others, the following
questions: = the war, fraternisation by the soldiers at the front, deserters,
and prisoners of war. The Congress declared in favour of
organising a Front Section under the Petrograd Soviet pending
the formation of an All-Russia Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies. The Congress, whose proceedings were influenced by the
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, came out against
fraternisation and for continuing the war.