# To the Soldiers and Sailors

Comrade soldiers! Comrade sailors!

The capitalist newspapers, from *Rech* to *Russkaya Volya*, are waging the most shameless campaign of lies and slander regarding the passage through Germany of myself and 30 other émigrés.

The capitalist newspapers shamelessly lie, asserting or hinting that we supposedly availed ourselves of some impermissible or unusual handouts from the German government, which we consider just as predatory, just as criminal, as all the capitalist governments waging the present war.

Wealthy people who had "connections" with high-ranking officials of the tsarist monarchy, such as the liberal professor Kovalevsky, a friend of the Milyukovs and Co., constantly entered into negotiations with the German government, through the mediation of the Russian, tsarist, government, for the exchange of Russians captured by the Germans for Germans captured by the Russians.

Why, then, are émigrés who languished abroad because of their struggle against the tsar not entitled, without the government, to arrange an exchange of Russians for Germans?

Why did the government of Milyukov and Co. not permit the Swiss socialist Fritz Platten, who traveled with us and concluded an agreement with the German government on the exchange, to enter Russia?

The government lies, spreading rumors that Platten is a friend of the Germans. This is slander. Platten is a friend of the workers and an enemy of the capitalists of all countries.

The capitalists lie, spreading rumors that we are for a separate peace with the Germans, that we conferred or intended to confer in Stockholm with such German socialists as stand on the side of their government.

This is a lie and slander. We have not participated and will not participate in any conferences with such socialists. We consider the socialists of all countries who help their capitalists wage this criminal war to be traitors to socialism.

Our friends are only such socialists as, like Karl Liebknecht, sentenced to penal servitude by the predatory German government, rise up against their capitalists.

We want not a separate, not a particular peace with Germany; we want peace for all peoples; we want the victory of the workers of all countries over the capitalists of all countries.

The capitalists of Russia lie and slander us, just as the German capitalists slander Liebknecht. The capitalists lie, claiming that we want discord and enmity between the workers and soldiers.

Untrue! We want the unity of workers and soldiers. We want to explain to the members of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies that all state power must be in the hands of these Soviets.

The capitalists slander us, reaching such shamelessness that not a single bourgeois newspaper reprinted from *Izvestia of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies* our report on our journey and the resolution of the Executive Committee of Workers and Soldiers.

Every worker and every soldier knows his Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. To the Executive Committee of this Soviet we made our report on the very next day after our arrival. The report was printed in No. 32 of *Izvestia*.[41] Why did not a single capitalist newspaper reprint this report?

Because these newspapers spread lies and slander and fear that our report to the Executive Committee will expose the deceivers.

Why did not a single newspaper print the resolution of the Executive Committee regarding our report, the resolution that was printed in the same issue of *Izvestia*?

Because this resolution exposes the deceit of the capitalists and their newspapers, demanding that the government take measures for the return of the émigrés.

In *Izvestia* of the Soviet, a protest against the arrest of Trotsky by the British was printed; a letter from Zurabov exposing the lie of Milyukov{118} was printed; a telegram from Martov, speaking of the same thing, was printed.

Soldiers and sailors! Do not believe the lies and slander of the capitalists! Expose the deceivers who suppress the truth published in *Izvestia*!

Written between April 11 and 14 (24 and 27), 1917.

First published in 1925 in Lenin Miscellany IV.

Printed from the manuscript.