V. I.

Lenin

Are some of the “leaders” of our General Staff planning to re-enact the Dreyfus
case [1] ?

This idea is suggested by the outrageously insolent and
monstrous slander published in Zhivoye Slovo and analysed by us in detail elsewhere.

In the Dreyfus case, the French General Staff made it self sadly
and disgracefully famous throughout the world by resorting to
wrong, unfair and downright criminal (base) measures to indict
Dreyfus.

Our General Staff showed their hand in a “case” against the Bolsheviks, doing it publicly for the first time, I
think, through—this is strange and significant and incredible— Zhivoye Slovo , a Black Hundred rag,
which printed an obvious slander about Lenin being a spy. The
report begins as follows:

“ The Chief of Staff of the Supreme Command sent the record
of interrogation [of Yermolenko] to the War Minister, with his
letter No. 3719 of May 16, 1917.”

Is it conceivable—if the case is handled properly at all—that records of interrogation belonging to the
General Staff should be published in the Black Hundred press
before investigation is instituted and before the suspects are arrested?

The General Staff is in charge of intelligence. This is beyond
question. But how can an intelligence service function if a
document dispatched on May 16 and received by Kerensky long ago
is put in circulation by a Black Hundred rag instead of
Kerensky ?

In what way does this differ, in point of fact, from the methods
used in the Dreyfus case?

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Notes:
[1]
Dreyfus case —the trial of the Jew Dreyfus, a French General Staff
officer, whom the reactionary monarchists among the French
military, bent on provocation, falsely charged in 1894 with
espionage and high treason. The French reactionaries took advantage of
the framed-up indictment of Dreyfus, who was sentenced to life
imprisonment, to foment anti-Semitism and attack the republican
regime and democratic liberties. When, in 1898, the socialists and
progressive spokesmen of bourgeois democracy, including Emile

Zola, Jean Jaurès and Anatole Franco, started a campaign for a
re-examination of the Dreyfus case, the latter assumed a markedly
political character. The country split into two camps over it,
with the republicans and democrats on one side and the bloc of
monarchists, clericals, anti-Semites and nationalists on the other.
In 1899, under pressure from public opinion, Dreyfus was pardoned
and released. In 1906, he was acquitted by the Court of Cassation
and was reinstated in the Army.