Lenin CW-Vol. 23.pdf - From Marx to Mao

364V. I. LENINThe question arises: Was not Chernomazov, directly orindirectly, connected with the new Pravda, which beganpublication in St. Petersburg after the revolution? Aboutthis I know nothing, for from the first day of the revolutionthe Guchkov-Milyukov government does not allow mytelegrams to reach Pravda, and, of course, Pravda’s telegramsto reach me. I do not even know whether the C.C. Bureauis still in existence, or whether Kamenev and the Dumamembers have returned to St. Petersburg. They know Mironand would have immediately removed him if he had againwormed his way into the organisation by taking advantage ofthe fact that new people were in charge. 155The French social-chauvinist paper l’Humanité of March25 quoted a telegram supposedly received from St. Petersburgby the Petit Parisien. 156 In this telegram Chernomazov isreferred to as the “former editor of the extremist Social-Democratic paper Pravda”.The reader will, I hope, now understand the perfidyand the foul methods employed by the government of Guchkov-Milyukovand its friends in their attempt to cast ashadow on our Party by alleging that it is working in collusionwith the old regime and the enemy. The governmentand its friends hate our Party and slander it, because wedeclared, as far back as October 13, 1915, in No. 47 of ourpaper Sotsial-Demokrat (Geneva), that we were unconditionallyopposed to the imperialist war, even if it were to be conductednot by the tsarist government, but by a chauvinistrevolutionary,chauvinist-republican Russian government.*The Guchkov-Milyukov government is such a government,for it has confirmed the predatory treaties tsarismconcluded with Anglo-French imperialism and in thiswar is pursuing predatory aims (the conquest of Armenia,Galicia, Constantinople, etc.).(Tomorrow I shall forward this to Volksrecht and Avanti!)Published in VolksrechtNo. 81, April 5, 1917Signed: N. LeninFirst publishedin Russian in 1924in Lenin Miscellany IIPublished according tothe manuscript* See present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 401-04.—Ed.