V. I.

Lenin

The August 20 issue of
Rech , and Russkaya Volya , a newspaper founded with notoriously questionable money and recommending
“socialist-minded” voters to vote for
Yedinstvo and for the
Popular Socialists, have again published slanderous statements
against me.

The information comes, according to both papers, from the
“War Ministry”, and “ Rech ” even asserts that it is backed by “documentary evidence and numerous testimonies by
individuals”.

The law on libel in the press has virtually been suspended in
Russia. Slanderers, especially those contributing to the bourgeois
papers, have been granted complete freedom. They can come out in
the papers anonymously, lie and slander as much as they please,
and hide behind allegedly official reports not signed by any
official—they can get away with anything! Those infamous
slanderers, headed by Mr. Milyukov and his like, enjoy the
privilege of immunity.

The slanderers assert that I had certain relations with the
Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine. Milyukov’s newspaper
writes: “The German Government instructed Lenin to advocate
peace.” “In Berlin,” it says, “there were two socialist meetings in which Lenin and Yoltukhovsky took part.”
Rasskaya Volya adds to the latter phrase: “Lenin stopped at
Yoltukhovsky’s.”

Since Mr. Milyukov and other scoundrels like him—knights of
the foul slander—are allowed to slander with impunity, all I
can do is repeat that it is slander and again confront the knights
of blackmail, who refer to witnesses, with a reference to a
witness known to the masses.

I have known Basok, one of those active in the Union for the
Liberation of the Ukraine, since 1906, when he was a Menshevik and
attended the Stockholm Congress together with me. In the autumn of
1914, or early 1915, when I was living in Berne, I received a
visit at my home from the well-known Caucasian Menshevik Tria, who
had come from Constantinople. He told me about Basok’s activity in
the Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine, and of the connection
between that Union and the German government. He handed me a
letter from Basok, who expressed sympathy with me and said he
hoped our views would become closer. I was so angry that I wrote
an answer to Basok there and then, in the presence of Tria, and
gave the letter to Tria asking him to pass it on since he was
about to make another trip to Constantinople.

In my letter to Basok, I declared that since he was entering
into relations with one of the imperialists, our ways parted for
good and we had nothing in common.

That is all the “relations” I have ever had with the
Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine.

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