In several gubernias of Russia, famine is raging—apparently only slightly less severe than the calamity of 1891.
This is a grave consequence of Russia’s backwardness and of the seven-year-long war—first imperialist, then civil—which landlords and capitalists of every country imposed upon workers and peasants alike.
Help is urgently needed. The Soviet Republic of Workers and Peasants awaits this assistance from the toiling masses—both industrial workers and small-scale farmers.
The masses of both groups are themselves oppressed by capitalism and imperialism everywhere; yet we are confident that, despite their own dire circumstances—marked by unemployment and soaring prices—they will respond to our call.
Those who have borne the weight of capital’s oppression throughout their lives will understand the plight of Russia’s workers and peasants—either through direct comprehension or through the instinctive solidarity of the toiling, exploited human being—with the pressing need to aid the Soviet Republic, which has been compelled, for the first time, to shoulder the noble yet arduous task of overthrowing capitalism. For this very reason, capitalists of every nation are exacting vengeance upon the Soviet Republic—and they are already hatching new schemes of military campaigns, interventions, and counterrevolutionary conspiracies against it.

All the more energetically, we are certain, with all the greater self-sacrifice, workers and smallholder farmers—those who earn their living through their own labor—will come to our aid from every corner of the globe.

2 August 1921
N. Lenin
Pravda, No. 172, 6 August 1921

Printed according to the text of Pravda, verified against the manuscript