V. I. Lenin

Letter To American Workers [1]

Comrades! A Russian Bolshevik who took part in the 1905 Revolution,
and who lived in your country for many years afterwards, has
offered to convey my letter to you. I have accepted his proposal
all the more gladly because just at the present time the
American revolutionary workers have to play an exceptionally
important role as uncompromising enemies of American imperialism—the freshest, strongest and latest in joining
in the world-wide slaughter of nations for the division of
capitalist profits. At this very moment, the American multimillionaires, these modern slaveowners have turned an
exceptionally tragic page in the bloody history of bloody
imperialism by giving their approval—whether direct or indirect, open or hypocritically concealed, makes no
difference—to the armed expedition launched by the brutal
Anglo-Japanese imperialists for the purpose of throttling the
first socialist republic.

The history of modern, civilised America opened with one of
those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars of which
there have been so few compared to the vast number of wars of
conquest which, like the present imperialist war, were caused by
squabbles among kings, landowners or capitalists over the division
of usurped lands or ill-gotten gains. That was the war the
American people waged against the British robbers who oppressed
America and held her in colonial slavery, in the same way as these
“civilised” bloodsuckers are still oppressing and holding in colonial slavery hundreds of millions of people in
India, Egypt, and all parts of the world.

About 150 years have passed since then. Bourgeois civilisation
has borne all its luxurious fruits. America has taken first place
among the free and educated nations in level of development of the
productive forces of collective human endeavour, in the
utilisation of machinery and of all the wonders of modern
engineering. At the same time, America has become one of the
foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies
between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in
filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who
constantly live on the verge of pauperism. The American people,
who set the world an example in waging a revolutionary war against
feudal slavery, now find themselves in the latest, capitalist
stage of wage-slavery to a handful of multimillionaires, and find
themselves playing the role of hired thugs who, for the benefit of
wealthy scoundrels, throttled the Philippines in 1898 on the
pretext of “liberating” them, and are throttling the
Russian Socialist Republic in 1918 on the pretext of “protecting” it from the Germans.

The four years of the imperialist slaughter of nations,
however, have not passed in vain. The deception of the people by
the scoundrels of both robber groups, the British and the German,
has been utterly exposed by indisputable and obvious facts. The
results of the four years of war have revealed the general law of
capitalism as applied to war between robbers for the division of
spoils: the richest and strongest profited and grabbed most, while
the weakest were utterly robbed, tormented, crushed and strangled.

The British imperialist robbers were the strongest in number of
“colonial slaves”. The British capitalists have not lost an inch of “their” territory (i.e., territory
they have grabbed over the centuries), but they have grabbed all
the German colonies in Africa, they have grabbed Mesopotamia and
Palestine, they have throttled Greece, and have begun to plunder
Russia.

The German imperialist robbers were the strongest in organisation and discipline of “their” armies, but
weaker in regard to colonies. They have lost all their colonies,
but plundered half of Europe and throttled the largest number of
small countries and weak nations. What a great war of “liberation” on both sides! How well the robbers of
both groups, the Anglo-French and the German capitalists, together
with their lackeys, the social-chauvinists, i.e., the socialists
who went over to the side of “ their own ” bourgeoisie, have “defended their country”!

The American multimillionaires were, perhaps, richest of all,
and geographically the most secure. They have profited more than
all the rest. They have converted all, even the richest, countries
into their tributaries. They have grabbed hundreds of billions of
dollars. And every dollar is sullied with filth: the filth of the
secret treaties between Britain and her “allies”, between Germany and her vassals, treaties for the division of the
spoils, treaties of mutual “aid” for oppressing the workers and persecuting the internationalist socialists. Every
dollar is sullied with the filth of “profitable” war contracts, which in every country made the rich richer and the
poor poorer. And every dollar is stained with blood—from
that ocean of blood that has been shed by the ten million killed
and twenty million maimed in the great, noble, liberating and holy
war to decide whether the British or the German robbers are to get
most of the spoils, whether the British or the German thugs are to
be foremost in throttling the weak nations all over the
world.

While the German robbers broke all records in war atrocities, the
British have broken all records not only in the number of colonies
they have grabbed, but also in the subtlety of their disgusting
hypocrisy. This very day, the Anglo-French and American bourgeois
newspapers are spreading, in millions and millions of copies, lies and
slander about Russia, and are hypocritically justifying their
predatory expedition against her on the plea that they want to
“protect” Russia from the Germans!

It does not require many words to refute this despicable and
hideous lie; it is sufficient to point to one well-known fact. In
October 1917, after the Russian workers had overthrown their
imperialist government, the Soviet government, the government of
the revolutionary workers and peasants, openly proposed a just
peace, a peace without annexations or indemnities, a peace that
fully guaranteed equal rights to all nations—and it proposed
such a peace to all the belligerent countries.

It was the Anglo-French and the American bourgeoisie who
refused to accept our proposal; it was they who even refused to
talk to us about a general peace! It was they who betrayed the interests of all nations; it was they who prolonged
the imperialist slaughter!

It was they who, banking on the possibility of dragging Russia
back into the imperialist war, refused to take part in the peace
negotiations and thereby gave a free hand to the no less predatory
German capitalists who imposed the annexationist and harsh Brest
Peace upon Russia!

It is difficult to imagine anything more disgusting than the
hypocrisy with which the Anglo-French and American bourgeoisie are
now “blaming” us for the Brest Peace
Treaty. The very capitalists of those countries which could have
turned the Brest negotiations into general negotiations for a
general peace are now our “accusers”! The Anglo-French imperialist vultures, who have profited from the plunder of
colonies and the slaughter of nations, have prolonged the war for
nearly a whole year after Brest, and yet they “accuse” us , the Bolsheviks, who proposed a just peace to all
countries, they accuse us , who tore up, published and exposed to public disgrace the secret, criminal treaties concluded
between the ex-tsar and the Anglo-French capitalists.

The workers of the whole world, no matter in what country they
live, greet us, sympathise with us, applaud us for breaking the
iron ring of imperialist ties, of sordid imperialist treaties, of
imperialist chains—for breaking through to freedom, and
making the heaviest sacrifices in doing so—for, as a socialist republic, although torn and plundered by the
imperialists, keeping out of the imperialist war and raising the banner of peace, the banner of socialism for the whole
world to see.

Small wonder that the international imperialist gang hates us
for this, that it “accuses” us, that all the lackeys of the imperialists, including our Right Socialist-Revolutionaries
and Mensheviks, also “accuse” us. The hatred these watchdogs of imperialism express for the Bolsheviks, and the
sympathy of the class-conscious workers of the world, convince us
more than ever of the justice of our cause.

A real socialist would not fail to understand that for the
sake of achieving victory over the bourgeoisie, for the sake of
power passing to the workers, for the sake of starting the world proletarian revolution, we cannot and must
not hesitate to make the heaviest sacrifices, including
the sacrifice of part of our territory, the sacrifice of heavy
defeats at the hands of imperialism. A real socialist would have
proved by deeds his willingness for “his” country to make the greatest sacrifice to give a real push forward
to the cause of the socialist revolution.

For the sake of “their” cause, that is, for the sake of winning world hegemony, the imperialists of Britain and
Germany have not hesitated to utterly ruin and throttle a whole
number of countries, from Belgium and Serbia to Palestine and
Mesopotamia. But must socialists wait with “their” cause, the cause of liberating the working people of the whole
world from the yoke of capital, of winning universal and lasting
peace, until a path without sacrifice is found? Must they fear to
open the battle until an easy victory is “guaranteed”?
Must they place the integrity and security of “their” bourgeois-created “fatherland” above the interests of
the world socialist revolution? The scoundrels in the international socialist movement who think this way, those lackeys
who grovel to bourgeois morality, thrice stand condemned.

The Anglo-French and American imperialist vultures “accuse” us of concluding an “agreement”
with German imperialism. What hypocrites, what scoundrels they are
to slander the workers’ government while trembling because
of the sympathy displayed towards us by the workers of “their own” countries! But their hypocrisy will be
exposed. They pretend not to see the difference between an
agreement entered into by “socialists” with the bourgeoisie (their own or foreign) against the workers ,
against the working people, and an agreement entered into for the protection of the workers who have defeated their
bourgeoisie, with the bourgeoisie of one national colour
against the bourgeoisie of another colour in order that
the proletariat may take advantage of the antagonisms between the
different groups of bourgeoisie.

In actual fact, every European sees this difference very well,
and, as I shall show in a moment, the American people have had a
particularly striking “illustration” of it in their own history. There are agreements and agreements, there are
fagots et fagots , as the French say.

When in February 1918 the German imperialist vultures hurled
their forces against unarmed, demobilised Russia, who had relied
on the international solidarity of the proletariat before the
world revolution had fully matured, I did not hesitate for a
moment to enter into an “agreement” with the French monarchists. Captain Sadoul, a French army officer who, in words,
sympathised with the Bolsheviks, but was in deeds a loyal and
faithful servant of French imperialism, brought the French officer
de Lubersac to see me. “I am a monarchist. My only aim is to
secure the defeat of Germany,” de Lubersac declared to me. “That goes without saying ( cela va sans dire ),” I replied. But this did not in the least prevent me
from entering into an “agreement” with de Lubersac concerning certain services that French army officers, experts in
explosives, were ready to render us by blowing up railway lines in
order to hinder the German invasion. This is an example of an
“agreement” of which every class-conscious worker will approve, an agreement in the interests of socialism. The French
monarchist and I shook hands, although we knew that each of us
would willingly hang his “partner”. But for a time our interests coincided. Against the advancing rapacious Germans,
we , in the interests of the Russian and the world socialist revolution, utilised the equally rapacious
counter-interests of other imperialists. In this way we
served the interests of the working class of Russia and of other
countries, we strengthened the proletariat and weakened the
bourgeoisie of the whole world, we resorted to the methods, most
legitimate and essential in every war, of manoeuvre, stratagem, retreat, in anticipation of the moment when the rapidly
maturing proletarian revolution in a number of advanced countries
completely matured.

However much the Anglo-French and American imperialist sharks
fume with rage, however much they slander us, no matter how many
millions they spend on bribing the Right Socialist-Revolutionary,
Menshevik and other social-patriotic newspapers, I shall not hesitate one second to enter into a similar
“agreement” with the German imperialist vultures if an attack upon Russia by Anglo-French troops calls for it. And I know
perfectly well that my tactics will be approved by the class-conscious proletariat of Russia, Germany, France, Britain,
America—in short, of the whole civilised world. Such tactics
will ease the task of the socialist revolution, will hasten it,
will weaken the international bourgeoisie, will strengthen the
position of the working class which is defeating the bourgeoisie.

The American people resorted to these tactics long ago to the
advantage of their revolution. When they waged their great war of
liberation against the British oppressors, they had also against
them the French and the Spanish oppressors who owned a part of
what is now the United States of North America. In their arduous
war for freedom, the American people also entered into “agreements” with some oppressors against others for
the purpose of weakening the oppressors and strengthening those
who were fighting in a revolutionary manner against oppression,
for the purpose of serving the interests of the oppressed
people. The American people took advantage of the strife
between the French, the Spanish and the British; sometimes they
even fought side by side with the forces of the French and Spanish
oppressors against the British oppressors; first they defeated the
British and then freed themselves (partly by ransom) from the
French and the Spanish.

Historical action is not the pavement of Nevsky Prospekt, said
the great Russian revolutionary Chernyshevsky. [2] A revolutionary would not “agree” to a proletarian
revolution only “on the condition” that it proceeds easily and smoothly, that there is, from the outset, combined
action on the part of the proletarians of different countries,
that there are guarantees against defeats, that the road of the
revolution is broad, free and straight, that it will not be
necessary during the march to victory to sustain the heaviest
casualties, to “bide one’s time in a besieged fortress”, or to make one’s way along extremely
narrow, impassable, winding and dangerous mountain tracks. Such
a person is no revolutionary, he has not freed himself from the
pedantry of the bourgeois intellectuals; such a person will be
found constantly slipping into the camp of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, like our Right
Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and even (although more
rarely) Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Echoing the bourgeoisie, these gentlemen like to blame us for
the “chaos” of the revolution, for the “destruction” of industry, for the unemployment and
the food shortage. How hypocritical these accusations are, coming
from those who welcomed and supported the imperialist war, or who
entered into an “agreement” with Kerensky who continued this war! It is this imperialist war that is the cause
of all these misfortunes. The revolution engendered by the war can
not avoid the terrible difficulties and suffering bequeathed it by
the prolonged, ruinous, reactionary slaughter of the nations. To
blame us for the “destruction” of industry, or for the “terror”, is either hypocrisy or dull-witted pedantry;
it reveals an inability to understand the basic conditions of the
fierce class struggle, raised to the highest degree of intensity
that is called revolution.

Even when “accusers” of this type do “recognise” the class struggle, they limit themselves
to verbal recognition; actually, they constantly slip into the
philistine utopia of class “agreement” and “collaboration”; for in revolutionary epochs the class
struggle has always, inevitably, and in every country, assumed the
form of civil war , and civil war is inconceivable without
the severest destruction, terror and the restriction of formal
democracy in the interests of this war. Only unctuous parsons—whether Christian or “secular” in the
persons of parlour, parliamentary socialists— cannot see,
understand and feel this necessity. Only a life less “man in
the muffler” [3] can shun the revolution for this reason instead of plunging into battle with the utmost ardour and
determination at a time when history demands that the greatest
problems of humanity be solved by struggle and war.

The American people have a revolutionary tradition which has
been adopted by the best representatives of the American
proletariat, who have repeatedly expressed their complete
solidarity with us Bolsheviks. That tradition is the war of
liberation against the British in the eighteenth century and the
Civil War in the nineteenth century. In some respects, if we only
take into consideration the “destruction” of some branches of industry and of the national economy, America in 1870
was behind 1860. But what a pedant, what an idiot would anyone be
to deny on these grounds the immense, world-historic, progressive
and revolutionary significance of the American Civil War of
1863-65!

The representatives of the bourgeoisie understand that for the
sake of overthrowing Negro slavery, of overthrowing the rule of
the slaveowners, it was worth letting the country go through long
years of civil war, through the abysmal ruin, destruction and
terror that accompany every war. But now, when we are confronted
with the vastly greater task of overthrowing capitalist
wage -slavery, of overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie—now, the representatives and defenders of the
bourgeoisie, and also the reformist socialists who have been
frightened by the bourgeoisie and are shunning the revolution,
cannot and do not want to understand that civil war is necessary
and legitimate.

The American workers will not follow the bourgeoisie. They
will be with us, for civil war against the bourgeoisie. The whole
history of the world and of the American labour movement
strengthens my conviction that this is so. I also recall the words
of one of the most beloved leaders of the American proletariat,
Eugene Debs, who wrote in the Appeal to Reason , [4] I believe towards the end of 1915, in
the article “What Shall I Fight For” (I quoted this article at the beginning of 1916 at a public meeting of workers in
Berne, Switzerland) [5] —that he, Debs, would rather be
shot than vote credits for the present criminal and reactionary
war; that he, Debs, knows of only one holy and, from the
proletarian standpoint, legitimate war, namely: the war against
the capitalists, the war to liberate mankind from wage-slavery.

I am not surprised that Wilson, the head of the American
multimillionaires and servant of the capitalist sharks, has thrown
Debs into prison. Let the bourgeoisie be brutal to the true
internationalists, to the true representatives of the revolutionary proletariat! The more fierce and brutal they are,
the nearer the day of the victorious proletarian revolution.

We are blamed for the destruction caused by our revolution. . . . Who are the accusers? The hangers-on of the
bourgeoisie, of that very bourgeoisie who, during the four years
of the imperialist war, have destroyed almost the whole of
European culture and have reduced Europe to barbarism, brutality
and starvation. These bourgeoisie now demand we should not make a
revolution on these ruins, amidst this wreckage of culture, amidst
the wreckage and ruins created by the war, nor with the people who
have been brutalised by the war. How humane and righteous the
bourgeoisie are!

Their servants accuse us of resorting to terror. . . . The
British bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1649, the French
bourgeoisie have forgotten their 1793. Terror was just and
legitimate when the bourgeoisie resorted to it for their own
benefit against feudalism. Terror became monstrous and criminal
when the workers and poor peasants dared to use it against the
bourgeoisie! Terror was just and legitimate when used for the
purpose of substituting one exploiting minority for another
exploiting minority. Terror became monstrous and criminal when
it began to be used for the purpose of overthrowing every exploiting minority, to be used in the interests
of the vast actual majority, in the interests of the proletariat
and semi-proletariat, the working class and the poor peasants!

The international imperialist bourgeoisie have slaughtered ten
million men and maimed twenty million in “their” war, the war to decide whether the British or the German vultures are
to rule the world.

If our war, the war of the oppressed and exploited against the oppressors and the exploiters, results in half a
million or a million casualties in all countries, the bourgeoisie
will say that the former casualties are justified, while the
latter are criminal.

The proletariat will have something entirely different to say.

Now, amidst the horrors of the imperialist war, the proletariat is receiving a most vivid and striking illustration of
the great truth taught by all revolutions and bequeathed to the
workers by their best teachers, the founders of modern socialism. This truth is that no revolution can be successful
unless the resistance of the exploiters is crushed. When
we, the workers and toiling peasants, captured state power, it
became our duty to crush the resistance of the exploiters. We are
proud we have been doing this. We regret we are not doing it with
sufficient firmness and determination.

We know that fierce resistance to the socialist revolution on the
part of the bourgeoisie is inevitable in all countries, and that this
resistance will grow with the growth of this revolution. The
proletariat will crush this resistance; during the struggle against
the resisting bourgeoisie it will finally mature for victory and for
power.

Let the corrupt bourgeois press shout to the whole world about
every mistake our revolution makes. We are not daunted by our
mistakes. People have not become saints because the revolution
has begun. The toiling classes who for centuries have been
oppressed, downtrodden and forcibly held in the vice of poverty,
brutality and ignorance cannot avoid mistakes when making a
revolution. And, as I pointed out once before, the corpse of
bourgeois society cannot be nailed in a coffin and buried.[*]
The corpse of capitalism is decaying and disintegrating in our
midst, polluting the air and poisoning our lives, enmeshing that
which is new, fresh, young and virile in thousands of threads
and bonds of that which is old, moribund and decaying.

For every hundred mistakes we commit, and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys (including our own Mensheviks and
Right Socialist-Revolutionaries) shout about to the whole world,
10,000 great and heroic deeds are performed, greater and more
heroic because they are simple and inconspicuous amidst the
everyday life of a factory district or a remote village, performed
by people who are not accustomed (and have no opportunity) to
shout to the whole world about their successes.

But even if the contrary were true—although I know such
an assumption is wrong—even if we committed 10,000 mistake
for every 100 correct actions we performed, even in that case our
revolution would be great and invincible, and so it will be in the eyes of world history , because, for the first time , not the minority, not the rich alone, not the educated
alone, but the real people, the vast majority of the working
people, are themselves building a new life, are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of
socialist organisation .

Every mistake committed in the course of such work, in the
course of this most conscientious and earnest work of tens of
millions of simple workers and peasants in reorganising their
whole life, every such mistake is worth thousands and millions of
“lawless” successes achieved by the exploiting minority—successes in swindling and duping the working
people. For only through such mistakes will the workers
and peasants learn to build the new life, learn to do without capitalists; only in this way will they hack a path for
themselves—through thousands of obstacles—to victorious socialism.

Mistakes are being committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our peasants, who at one stroke, in one
night, October 25-26 (old style), 1917, entirely abolished the
private ownership of land, and are now, month after month,
overcoming tremendous difficulties and correcting their mistakes
themselves, solving in a practical way the most difficult tasks of
organising new conditions of economic life, of fighting the
kulaks, providing land for the working people (and not for the rich), and of changing to communist large-scale
agriculture.

Mistakes are being committed in the course of their revolutionary work by our workers, who have already, after a few
months, nationalised almost all the biggest factories and plants,
and are learning by hard, everyday work the new task of managing
whole branches of industry, are setting the nationalised
enterprises going, overcoming the powerful resistance of inertia,
petty-bourgeois mentality and selfishness, and, brick by brick,
are laying the foundation of new social ties, of a new labour discipline, of a new influence of the
workers’ trade unions over their members.

Mistakes are committed in the course of their revolutionary
work by our Soviets, which were created as far back as 1905 by a
mighty upsurge of the people. The Soviets of Workers and Peasants
are a new type of state, a new and higher type of democracy, a form of the proletarian dictatorship, a means of
administering the state without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie. For the first time democracy is
here serving the people, the working people, and has ceased to be
democracy for the rich as it still is in all bourgeois republics,
even the most democratic. For the first time, the people are
grappling, on a scale involving one hundred million, with the
problem of implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat and
semi-proletariat—a problem which, if not solved, makes socialism out of the question.

Let the pedants, or the people whose minds are incurably
stuffed with bourgeois-democratic or parliamentary prejudices,
shake their heads in perplexity about our Soviets, about the
absence of direct elections, for example. These people have
forgotten nothing and have learned nothing during the period of
the great upheavals of 1914-18. The combination of the proletarian
dictatorship with the new democracy for the working people—of civil war with the widest participation of the
people in politics—such a combination cannot be brought
about at one stroke, nor does it fit in with the outworn modes of
routine parliamentary democracy. The contours of a new world, the
world of socialism, are rising before us in the shape of the
Soviet Republic. It is not surprising that this world does not
come into being ready-made, does not spring forth like Minerva
from the head of Jupiter.

The old bourgeois-democratic constitutions waxed eloquent
about formal equality and right of assembly; but our proletarian
and peasant Soviet Constitution casts aside the hypocrisy of
formal equality. When the bourgeois republicans overturned thrones
they did not worry about formal equality between monarchists and
republicans. When it is a matter of overthrowing the bourgeoisie,
only traitors or idiots can demand formal equality of rights for
the bourgeoisie. “Freedom of assembly” for workers and peasants is not worth a farthing when the best buildings belong to
the bourgeoisie. Our Soviets have confiscated all the good buildings in town and country from the rich and have
transferred all of them to the workers and peasants for
their unions and meetings. This is our freedom of assembly—for the working people! This is the meaning and
content of our Soviet, our socialist Constitution!

That is why we are all so firmly convinced that no matter what
misfortunes may still be in store for it, our Republic of Soviets
is invincible.

It is invincible because every blow struck by frenzied imperialism, every defeat the international bourgeoisie inflict on
us, rouses more and more sections of the workers and peasants to
the struggle, teaches them at the cost of enormous sacrifice,
steels them and engenders new heroism on a mass scale.

We know that help from you will probably not come soon,
comrade American workers, for the revolution is developing in
different countries in different forms and at different tempos
(and it cannot be otherwise). We know that although the European
proletarian revolution has been maturing very rapidly lately, it
may, after all, not flare up within the next few weeks. We are
banking on the inevitability of the world revolution, but this
does not mean that we are such fools as to bank on the revolution
inevitably coming on a definite and early date. We have
seen two great revolutions in our country, 1905 and 1917, and we
know revolutions are not made to order, or by agreement. We know
that circumstances brought our Russian detachment of the
socialist proletariat to the fore not because of our merits, but
because of the exceptional backwardness of Russia, and that
before the world revolution breaks out a number of separate revolutions may be defeated.

In spite of this, we are firmly convinced that we are invincible, because the spirit of mankind will not be broken by
the imperialist slaughter. Mankind will vanquish it. And the first
country to break the convict chains of the imperialist war was our country. We sustained enormously heavy
casualties in the struggle to break these chains, but we
broke them. We are free from imperialist dependence, we have raised the banner of struggle for the complete
overthrow of imperialism for the whole world to see.

We are now, as it were, in a besieged fortress, waiting for
the other detachments of the world socialist revolution to come to
our relief. These detachments exist , they are more numerous than ours, they are maturing, growing, gaining more
strength the longer the brutalities of imperialism continue. The
workers are breaking away from their social traitors—the
Gomperses, Hendersons, Renaudels, Scheidemanns and Renners. Slowly
but surely the workers are adopting communist, Bolshevik tactics
and are marching towards the proletarian revolution, which alone
is capable of saving dying culture and dying mankind.

In short, we are invincible, because the world proletarian
revolution is invincible.

N. Lenin

August 20, 1918

Endnotes

[1]
The dispatch of the letter to America was organised by the
Bolshevik M. M. Borodin, who had recently been there. With the
foreign military intervention and the blockade of Soviet Russia
this involved considerable difficulties. The letter was
delivered to the United States by P. I. Travin (Sletov). Along
with the letter he brought the Constitution of the
R.S.F.S.R. and the Soviet Government’s Note to President
Wilson containing the demand to stop the intervention. The
well-known American socialist and journalist John Reed secured
the publication of all these documents in the American press.

In December 1918 a slightly abridged version of the letter appeared in the New York magazine The Class Struggle and the Boston weekly The Revolutionary Age , both organs of the Left wing of the American Socialist
Party. The Revolutionary Age was brought out by John Reed
and Sen Katayama. The letter evoked keen interest among readers
and it was published as a reprint from The Class Struggle
in a large number of copies. Subsequently it was published many
times in the bourgeois and socialist press of the U.S.A. and
Western Europe, in the French socialist magazine Demain
No. 28-29, 1918, in No. 138 of the Call , organ of the
British Socialist Party, the Berlin magazine Die Aktion
No. 51-52, 1918, and elsewhere. In 1934 the letter was brought out
in New York in the form of a pamphlet, which contained the
passages omitted in earlier publications.

The letter was widely used by the American
Left Socialists and was instrumental in aiding the development of
the labour and communist movement in the U.S. and Europe. It
helped advanced workers to appreciate the nature of imperialism
and the great revolutionary changes effected by the Soviet
government. Lenin’s letter aroused a mounting protest in the
U.S. against the armed intervention.

[2]
Lenin quotes from Chernyshevsky’s review of the book by
the American economist H. Ch. Carey, Letters to the President on the Foreign and Domestic Policy of the Union, and its Effects. Chernyshevsky wrote: “The path of
history is not paved like Nevsky Prospekt; it runs across
fields, either dusty or muddy, and cuts through swamps or forest
thickets. Anyone who fears being covered with dust or muddying
his boots, should not engage in social activity.”

[3]
Man in the muffler —a character from
Chekhov’s story of the same title, personifying a narrow-minded philistine scared of initiative and new ideas.

[4]
Appeal to Reason —American socialist newspaper, founded in Girard, Kansas, in 1895. The newspaper propagated
socialist ideas and was immensely popular among the workers. During the First World War it pursued an
internationalist policy.

Debs’s article appeared in the paper on
September 11, 1915. Its title, which Lenin most probably quoted
from memory, was “When I Shall Fight”.

[5]
See present edition, Volume 22, page 125. Speech Delivered at an International Meeting in Berne .