Lenin

“ The Soviet Government, on the other hand, is gathering its forces and straining every nerve to unite and to strengthen the power of resistance and the morale of the People of Soviet Russia. It is hoped that the workers in other countries will realize the worldwide significance of the battles going on at the Polish front, that they will give their moral and material support to the Soviet Republic of Russia in its darkest hour of trial. ”

“ Everyone of you going to a village either as a delegate or as an envoy from the Central Committee should remember that we have a large state apparatus which is functioning very inefficiently because we do not know enough to manage it well. Every agitator has to co-ordinate his work with the work of the Council of People's Commissars, the Council of General Education and the Commissariat of War. The work should be arranged in such a way that each teacher and every war commissary would work in the spirit of the Soviet. ”

“ Italy has been forced by its working class revolutionary organizations to abandon all attacks against Soviet Russia and virtually to recognize the Soviet Government of the peasants and workers of Russia.
France remains the sworn enemy of every progress, especially in Russia. Her generals, her officers, guns, munitions and airplanes have been fighting the Soviet armies on the Polish front ever since the beginning of the present offensive of Poland against Soviet Russia. ”

“ The Poles are spreading false stories about alleged atrocities of the Soviet Armies. We need not say much to refute their falsehoods. The massacres perpetrated upon the Jewish population by the Poles have been established beyond a scintilla of doubt by the most anti-Bolshevist investigators, by the High Commissioner of Great Britain, Sir Samuel himself. The inhuman treatment accorded by the Poles to the conquered nations was not confined to the Jews alone. They have maimed and killed peaceful peasants, even cattle, which they could not take with them. ”

“ That is to say, on the basis of the front according to which Lithuania and White Russia, altogether non-Polish territories, remained with the Poles.
"We were convinced and still continue to be convinced that the Polish capitalists will not be able to retain foreign lands and that even thru a most disadvantageous peace treaty we will gain more by safeguarding the lives of our Red Soldiers, because every month of peace makes us ten times stronger, whereas every bourgeois government, including that of Poland, is getting more and more disorganized. ”

“ Not only is it important to begin, it is also important to persevere and withstand, and this our brothers, the Russians, do not know. Only through long training and through disciplined proletarian struggle against all confusion and wavering can the toiling masses be brought to cast off this bad Russian habit. ”

“ When we shall have completed this task, we shall be able to provide to the workers two pounds of bread daily.
"Work on a National Scale."
"One of the chief obstacles to our work in the rural districts is the fact that we do not know how to work on a national scale. Even our leading comrades in this work here in the centre are accustomed to the old underground ways when we sat in small circles here or in foreign countries and did not even dare to think of placing our work on a national scale. At present we have to know and remember that we have to manage millions. ”

“ In the Ukraine wheat is fed to the hogs, in the north of Caucasus dishes are washed with milk. From Siberia are arriving trains with wool, hides and other goods; there are tens of millions of poods of salt while our peasants are suffering from want and are declining to give bread for paper while here in Moscow the workers are starving in the shops. ”

“ Because their League of Nations is a League merely on paper, while in fact it is only a group of wild beasts fighting each other, not aiding each other. In reality they are even now boasting that Latvia, Roumania, and Finland will join Poland in her offensive. ”

“ Immense quantities of falsehoods are circulated on this subject owing to the so-called freedom of the press which consists in the fact that all main organs of publicity abroad are bought up by capitalists and 90% of them are filled with articles written by prostitutes of the pen. ”

“ Under such conditions, with the proper direction of our endeavors, you will increase your forces tenfold, and each hundred of agitators will leave after them a trail in the form of an organized apparatus functioning as yet unsatisfactorily, awkwardly, but still existing. ”