NOTE TO AN UNIDENTIFIED PERSON

Not later than December 14 (27), 1917

The explanation given is a step backward and serves to deprive the first declared program, which was wrested from the German government, of all value. You mention the so-called will already expressed by Poland, Lithuania, and Courland! You know very well that this is a matter of the demands of bourgeois groups, large landowners of occupied territory, but in no way of the people. (?)

F. 2, op. 1, d. 23547 — autograph.

Translation

The given explanation is a step backward and can deprive the first declared program, which was wrested from the German government, of all value. You mention the already expressed demand of Poland, Lithuania, and Courland! You know very well that it was about nothing other than the demand of bourgeois groups, large landowners of occupied territory, but in no way about the people.

1 It is assumed that this document relates to the time of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, up to mid-December 1917. In the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs' appeal to the peoples and governments of the Allied countries on December 17 (30), it was reported that the German government agreed to withdraw the occupation troops and allow the peoples, including those of Poland, Lithuania, and Courland, to decide their own fate (see: Documents of Soviet Foreign Policy. Vol. 1, Moscow, 1957, p. 68).