Published:
First published in Pravda No. 73, June 17 (4), 1917.
Published according to the Pravda text.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1977,
Moscow,
Volume 25,
pages 46-47.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup:
D. Walters and C. Farrell
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
2000
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In today’s leader, Rech writes:
“If Germany had her own Lenin acting with the kind foreign collaboration of the Robert Grimms and the Rakovskys, one could only suppose that the International did not wish to prevent the great Russian revolution from consolidating its position, and, more important still, from growing in depth. But so far the Germans have politely replied that they do not need a republic and are satisfied with their Wilhelm. Vorwärts,[1] for example, is even more amiable in arguing that the Russian democrats ought not to tolerate secret treaties. And the socialist organ modestly fails to mention the German democrats.”
It is a lie to say that “the Robert Grimms and the Rakovskys" have “collaborated” with the Bolsheviks (with whom they have never agreed) in any way.
To confuse the “German” Plekhanovs (it is they and only they who are writing for Vorwärts) with the German revolutionary internationalists, who (like Karl Liebknecht) are thrown into German prisons by the hundred, is the thousand and first, and the most infamous and brazen, lie of Rech and the capitalists generally.
There are two Internationals: 1) the International of the Plekhanovs, j. e., of those who have betrayed socialism, i. e., of people who have deserted to their governments: Plekhanov, Guesde, Scheidemann, Sembat, Thomas, Henderson, Vandervelde, Bissolati and Co.; and 2) the International of the revolutionary internationalists who even in war-time fight everywhere in a revolutionary mood against their governments, against their bourgeoisie.
“The great Russian revolution" can become “great”, can "consolidate its position" and ’"grow in depth" only if it stops supporting the imperialist “coalition” government, the imperialist war which that government is waging, and the capitalist class as a whole.
[1] Vorwärts (Forward)—Central Organ of the German Social– Democratic Party published daily in Berlin from 1891 to 1933.
Engels used the columns of Vorwärts to fight against all manifestations of opportunism. In the second half of the nineties, after Engels’s death, the paper found itself in the hands of the party’s Right wing, and continuously published opportunist articles. It carried biased reports on the struggle against opportunism and revisionism in the R.S.D.L.P. It backed the Economists and then, after the split in the Party, the Mensheviks. In the years of reaction it published slanderous articles by Trotsky, while denying Lenin and other Bolsheviks the opportunity to refute the slander and present an objective picture of the situation in the Party.
During the First World War Vorwärts took a social-chauvinist stand. After the October Socialist Revolution it conducted anti-Soviet propaganda.
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