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A LETTER TO AMERICAN WORKINGMEN

_From the Socialist Soviet Republic of Russia_

By N. LENIN

Reprinted from THE CLASS STRUGGLE

December, 1918

Price--5 Cents

  NEW YORK
  THE SOCIALIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY
  431 PULASKI ST., BROOKLYN, N. Y.
  December, 1918


[Illustration]




A Letter to American Workingmen

By N. Lenin.


                                               Moscow, August 20, 1918.

Comrades: A Russian Bolshevik who participated in the Revolution of
1905 and for many years afterwards lived in your country has offered to
transmit this letter to you. I have grasped this opportunity joyfully
for the revolutionary proletariat of America--insofar as it is the
enemy of American imperialism--is destined to perform an important task
at this time.

The history of modern civilized America opens with one of those really
revolutionary wars of liberation of which there have been so few
compared with the enormous number of wars of conquest that were
caused, like the present imperialistic war, by squabbles among kings,
landholders and capitalists over the division of ill-gotten lands and
profits. It was a war of the American people against the English who
despoiled America of its resources and held in colonial subjection,
just as their "civilized" descendants are draining the life-blood of
hundreds of millions of human beings in India, Egypt and all corners
and ends of the world to keep them in subjection.

Since that war 150 years have passed. Bourgeois civilization has born
its most luxuriant fruit. By developing the productive forces of
organized human labor, by utilizing machines and all the wonders of
technique America has taken the first place among free and civilized
nations. But at the same time America, like a few other nations, has
become characteristic for the depth of the abyss that divide a handful
of brutal millionaires who are stagnating in a mire of luxury, and
millions of laboring starving men and women who are always staring
want in the face.

Four years of imperialistic slaughter have left their trace.
Irrefutably and clearly events have shown to the people that both
imperialistic groups, the English as well as the German, have been
playing false. The four years of war have shown in their effects the
great law of capitalism in all wars; that he who is richest and
mightiest profits the most, takes the greatest share of the spoils
while he who is weakest is exploited, martyred, oppressed and outraged
to the utmost.

In the number of its colonial possessions, English imperialism has
always been more powerful than any of the other countries. England
has lost not a span of its "acquired" land. On the other hand it
has acquired control of all German colonies in Africa, has occupied
Mesopotamia and Palestine.

German imperialism was stronger because of the wonderful organization
and ruthless discipline of "its" armies, but as far as colonies are
concerned, is much weaker than its opponent. It has now lost all of its
colonies, but has robbed half of Europe and throttled most of the small
countries and weaker peoples. What a high conception of "liberation"
on either side! How well they have defended their fatherlands, these
"gentlemen" of both groups, the Anglo-French and the German capitalists
together with their lackeys, the Social-Patriots.

American plutocrats are wealthier than those of any other country
partly because they are geographically more favorably situated. They
have made the greatest profits. They have made all, even the weakest
countries, their debtors. They have amassed gigantic fortunes during
the war. And every dollar is stained with the blood that was shed by
millions of murdered and crippled men, shed in the high, honorable
and holy war of freedom.

Had the Anglo-French and American bourgeoisie accepted the Soviet
invitation to participate in peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk,
instead of leaving Russia to the mercy of brutal Germany a just peace
without annexations and indemnities, a peace based upon complete
equality could have been forced upon Germany, and millions of lives
might have been saved. Because they hoped to reestablish the Eastern
Front by once more drawing us into the whirlpool of warfare, they
refused to attend peace negotiations and gave Germany a free hand to
cram its shameful terms down the throat of the Russian people. It
lay in the power of the Allied countries to make the Brest-Litovsk
negotiations the forerunner of a general peace. It ill becomes them
to throw the blame for the Russo-German peace upon our shoulders!

The workers of the whole world, in whatever country they may live,
rejoice with us and sympathize with us, applaud us for having burst the
iron ring of imperial