V. I.

Lenin

A combination of the old and the new—this has always been the case with methods of exploitation and repression
used by tsarism. It has not changed in republican Russia. The
counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie flavour their political
baiting of the Bolsheviks, the party of the international
revolutionary proletariat, with the foulest slander and
“campaigning” in the press that is quite like the campaign of the French clerical and monarchist papers in the
Dreyfus case.

The watchword at that time was that Dreyfus must be indicted for
espionage at all costs! Today the watchword is that some
Bolshevik or other must be indicted for espionage at all costs!
The foulest slander, garbling, crude lies and artful tricks to
confuse the reader—all these devices are being used by the
yellow press and the bourgeois press generally with great
zeal. The net result is a wild,, furious uproar in which it is
sometimes impossible to make out articulate words, let alone
arguments.

Here are some of the methods used in our modern, republican
Dreyfusiad. First they trotted out three main “arguments”: Yermolenko, Kozlovsky’s twenty million,
and the implication of Parvus.

Next day Zhivoye Slovo , the chief riot-instigating paper, published two “corrections” admitting that
the “leader” of the Bolsheviks had not been bribed but was a fanatic, and changing the twenty million to twenty
thousand. Mean while another paper declared Yermolenko’s
testimony to be of secondary importance.

In Listok “Pravdy” [3] of July 6, we showed the complete
absurdity of Yermolenko’s testimony. [1]

Obviously, it had become inconvenient to refer to it.

In the same issue of Listok there is a letter from
Kozlovsky denying the slander. Following the denial 20,000,000
is reduced to 20,000—a “round” figure again instead of an exact one.

They implicate Parvus, trying hard to establish some sort of
connection between him and the Bolsheviks. In reality it was the
Bolsheviks who in the Geneva
Sotsial-Demokrat” [4] called Parvus a renegade, [2] denounced him ruthlessly as a German
Plekhanov, and once and for all eliminated all possibility of
close relations with social- chauvinists like him. It was the
Bolsheviks who at a meeting held in Stockholm jointly with the
Swedish Left
Socialists [5] categorically refused to admit Parvus in any capacity, even as a guest, let alone speak to him.

Hanecki was engaged in business as an employee of the firm in
which Parvus was a partner. Commercial and financial correspondence was censored, of course, and is quite open to
examination. An effort is being made to mix these commercial
affairs with politics, although no proof whatsoever is being
furnished!!

They have gone to the ridiculous extreme of blaming
Pravda for the fact that its dispatches to the socialist papers of Sweden and all other countries (dispatches
which, of course, had to pass the censor and are fully known to
him) were reprinted by German papers, often with distortions! As
if reprinting, or malicious distortions, can be blamed on the
original source!

It is a veritable Dreyfusiad, a campaign of lies and slander
stemming from fierce political hatred. How foul the sources must
be to substitute slander for the clash of ideas!

---
Notes:
[1]
See pp. 157–61 of this volume.— Ed .

[2]
See present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 421–22.— Ed .

[3]
See Note 23.

[4]
Sotsial-Demokrat —illegal Central Organ of the R.S.D.L.P.
published from February 1908 to January 1917. Beginning with issue
No. 2, it was brought out abroad, the issues 2 to 32 (February 1909
to December 1913) being published in Paris and 33 to 58 (
November 1914 to January 1917) in Geneva. Altogether 58 issues appeared,
five of them with supplements. From December 1911 the paper was
edited by Lenin, who contributed over eighty articles and other
items.

During the First World War Sotsial-Demokrat played a prominent role in the struggle against international opportunism,
nationalism and chauvinism, in the propaganda of Bolshevik
watchwords, and in the matter of arousing the working class and working
people generally to fight against the imperialist war and its
inspirers. It published Lenin’s article “On the Slogan for a United States
of Europe”, which for the first time formulated the conclusion of
the possibility of socialism triumphing first in one country. The
dissemination of the paper in Russia and the reprinting of its more
important items by local Bolshevik papers contributed to the
political enlightenment and internationalist education of Russia’s
proletariat and to the training of the working people for the coming
revolution.

Sotsial-Demokrat did much to unify the internationalist
elements of the world Social-Democratic movement. It made its way
into many countries in the face of war-time obstacles.

Lenin, who had a high opinion of Sotsial-Demokrat ’s role during
the First World War, wrote afterwards that “no class-conscious
worker who wishes to understand the development of the ideas of
the international socialist revolution and of its first victory on
October 25, 1917, can manage without” = studying articles published
in Sotsial-Demokrat (see present edition, Vol. 27, p. 221).

[5]
The Swedish Left Socialists (or the Party of the Young) constituted
the Left trend among the Swedish Social-Democrats. During the
First World War they adhered to an internationalist position and
formed part of the Zimmerwald Left. In May 1917 they founded
the Left Social-Democratic Party of Sweden. The congress which
this party held in 1919 resolved to join the Communist
International. In 1921 the party’s revolutionary wing became the
Communist Party of Sweden.