To All

A number of foreign newspapers are circulating false information about alleged horrors and chaos in Petrograd, etc.

All such information is absolutely incorrect. In Petrograd and Moscow there is complete calm. No arrests of socialists have been carried out. Kiev is in the hands of the Ukrainian Soviet power. The Kiev bourgeois Rada has fallen and scattered. The authority of the Kharkov Ukrainian Soviet power is fully recognized. On the Don, 46 regiments of Cossacks have risen up against Kaledin. Orenburg has been taken by the Soviet authorities and the Cossack leader Dutov has been defeated and fled. In Finland the victory of the worker Finnish government is being rapidly consolidated and the troops of the counterrevolutionary white guard have been pushed back to the north; the workers' victory over them is assured.

As regards food supplies in Petrograd, there is an improvement; today, January 22, 1918 (old style), the Petrograd workers are providing 10 wagons of provisions to aid the Finns.

Information from Germany is scanty. It is evident that the Germans are concealing the truth about the revolutionary movement in Germany. Trotsky is telegraphing to Petrograd from Brest-Litovsk that the Germans are dragging out the negotiations. The German bourgeois press, clearly coached, is spreading false information about Russia, trying to frighten the public.

Yesterday, January 21, 1918, a decree was published on the complete separation of the church from the state and on the confiscation of all church property.

Written January 22 (February 4), 1918.

First published in 1929 in Lenin Miscellany XI

Printed from the manuscript