Written: Written on April 22 (May 5), 1917
Published:
Published on May 6 (April 23), 1917 in Pravda No. 39.
Printed from the Pravda text.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1977,
Moscow,
Volume 41,
pages 407.2-408.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Copyleft:
V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
© 2004
Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
The ministerial gentlemen, having secured a fresh expression of confidence on the part of the majority of the Soviet leaders, have started a fresh offensive against Pravda and against our Party.
Rech, the ministerial newspaper, has adopted the worst methods of Russkaya Volya.{1}
In today’s two editorials, the ministerial newspaper, rehearsing the Russkaya Volya elements, does enough lying for two papers.
“The whole ”(sic)“ of Petrograd has awakened; it has gone out into the street and has loudly and solemnly proclaimed its confidence in the Provisional Government.”
“The whole” of Petrograd!—the ministerial paper will have nothing less.... If from the “whole” of Petrograd we subtract all the workers, who demonstrated against the Provisional Government, if we subtract the vast majority of the soldiers who went out into the street and demonstrated against the Provisional Government, if we subtract the hundreds of thousands of people who simply stayed at home, if the “whole” of Petrograd is taken to mean an insignificant minority of the bourgeoisie, a small section of the students, and a section of the senior army officers—then the ministerial paper is right: the “whole” of Petrograd has come out for the Guchkovs and the Milyukovs....
Relying on the “whole” of Petrograd (remember the Potemkin villages!{2}), the ministerial newspaper launches directly into pogrom baiting against us.
“...Those shots by some armed men, these killings of soldiers, in connection with the unprecedentedly brazen flying of the defeatist flags from the German embassy.... Yesterday’s bloody outrages by the Leninists have worn thin everyone’s tolerance and have dealt an irreparable blow to this anti-national treasonable propaganda. Let us hope that this propaganda will never again dare to rear its head.”
Let the reader judge where the brazenness lies. Every word there is lies and slander. Our comrades did not fly any flags at all from the German embassy. Our comrades are not to blame for the killings of the soldiers. Responsibility for yesterday’s acts of violence falls on the Provisional Government and no one else.
Let the reader judge whose propaganda is really treasonable.
{1} Russkaya Volya (Russian Will)—a bourgeois daily founded by the tsarist Minister for the Interior, A. D. Protopopov, which was financed by the big banks; it was published in Petrograd from December 1916. After the bourgeois-democratic revolution in February 1917, it carried on a slander campaign against the Bolsheviks. Lenin called it “one of the most infamous bourgeois news- resent edition, Vol. 25, p. 298). It was closed down E¶C A˜o&tionary [[ERROR here... don’t know what it is.]] Military Committee on October 25, 1917.
{2} Show-window villages erected for the benefit of Empress Catherine by her favourite Potemkin. p. 408
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