No honest worker wants to ever be called a scab. To win the soldiers of the imperialists, not to kill them was the greatest victory of the Bolsheviks. Text of three leaflets distributed to soldiers of the intervention armies during the Russian Civil War; the first signed by Lenin and Chicherin to soldiers in Ukraine, the second by a Scots prisoner to his fellow British soldiers, and the third by Karl Liebknecht to German soldiers.

‘Fellow Workingmen!’ from Truth (Duluth). Vol. 3 No. 20. May 16, 1919.

WHY HAVE YOU COME TO UKRAINE?

To British and American Soldiers.

Fellow Workingmen!

Why have you come to Ukraine? Do you not know that the war is over? An armistice is declared on the Western front, and preparations are being made for the peace conference.

Yet instead of arrangements being made, for you to return home, to those dear ones, who with keen longing will be expecting you, you have been brought here to start a new war in Russia?!

What have you got to fight for now?

When the allied governments Invaded Russia from the North, in Mourmansk, and Archangel, and the East from Vladivostok, they publicly made a solemn declaration that they had no hostile intentions against the Russian people.

They said, they had come in fact to help us to get out of the clutches of German Imperialism. President Wilson gave as an additional reason that he desired to protect the Czechoslovaks, who he alleged were in danger of being betrayed to the Germans.

These were merely pretexts. Russia was not in the grip of the Kaiser. Russia did not want this kind of assistance of the Allies. The Czecho-Slovaks were in no danger, of betrayal.

They wore at perfect liberty to leave Russia unharmed, but they were bribed by the Allies to take up arms against the Russian Republic, and were until we had defeated them, a source of danger to us.

But what excuse is there now for this fresh landing in the Ukraine, openly directed against Russia? It may be that you have been kept in ignorance of the tremendous events that have taken place during the last month, although that is hardly possible. We tell you then, that there have been revolutions in Bulgaria, Austria-Hungary and Germany.

Prussianism has been overthrown by the German workers and soldiers. Kaiser Wilhelm had fled to Holland. The Crown Prince has been shot. There is a new Government in Berlin controlled by a Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council.

On the west front fighting has ceased and the German, French, and British soldiers are fraternizing. In Austria-Hungary toe the old order has been overthrown by the workers. The Emperor Karl has abdicated.

Hungary has broken away from Austria, and the Czechoslovaks, as well as the other nations hitherto under the dominion of the Hapsburgs have established their independence.

What pretext have the Allied governments now for invading Russia from the South? The menace of Prussian militarism no longer exists thanks to the German Revolution.

We have offered to the Czecho-Slovaks all facilities to return to their own country, to join their liberated countrymen.

There is no excuse at all for your landing in the Ukraine. If there was ever the slightest doubt as to the intentions of the Allied Governments, there can be none now. The purpose of the Allied invasion of Russia is to crush the Socialist Republic, and re-establish the reign of capitalism and landlordism. You surely cannot be unaware of the tremendous change that has taken place in Russia. We have abolished capitalism and landlordism. The land belongs to the whole people. So, too, do the factories, mines, railways and all the means of wealth production. All these things are under the direct control of workers and peasants.

We are constructing a new society in which the fruits of labor will go to our vast storehouse of wealth. They want to control the rich coal basin of the Don, the oil wells of Baku, the cotton fields of Turkestan and minerals of the Caucasus, the great timber forests of the North, and the vast corn lands of the South. They want to convert the million of workers and peasants of Russia into wage slaves to grind out profits for them.

Fellow workingmen, this is the purpose for which you have been brought here. You have not come to fight Prussian Militarism, that is finished. You have not come to fight for liberty. You have come to overthrow the first real Workers Republic. There is another important fact which you should know. In this attack on Soviet Russia from the South, your government will be co-operating with the present government of the Ukraine. Last year we had a Soviet Republic in the Ukraine. But the present head of the government, Skorpadski, with the assistance of the Kaiser suppressed the Soviet Republic, and since then has maintained an iron rule over the Ukraine people with the aid of German bayonets.

The German soldiers have now refused any longer to be the policemen for the Ukrainian-German capitalists and landlords, and are going home to their now free country. Skoropadski, has now turned to the Allied Governments and they, not in the least troubled by the fact that he has been actually co-operating with the Kaiser, have come to an arrangement with him, to keep the Ukrainian people down, and to sacrifice you in the interests of international capitalism. If you were told that your landing will be welcomed by the people, do not believe it. During the whole period of the German occupation the Ukrainian people hate been in a state of rebellion. The German Commanding General was assassinated. Numbers of other acts of violence and strikes showed the hostility of the people to the present regime, not merely because it was German, but because it was capitalist. At any moment we expect our comrades in the Ukraine to overthrow Sqoropadski and to re-establish the Soviet Republic.

Now you have come to the assistance of the South Russian landlords and capitalists. Comrades, are you going to do the dirty work that the German soldiers refused to do any longer?

The supreme motive which animates the capitalist governments of the Allies for invading Russia is to suppress this stronghold of the revolutionary socialist movement. They fear above everything else that the working people in their own countries will overthrow them and take the power into their own hands. They hope, by crushing the Russian Revolution, to take the heart out of the tremendous movement for working class emancipation that is spreading everywhere.

And how rapidly it is spreading. The soldiers, who only yesterday were slaughtering each other on the Western front are now mingling as brothers. Will it be long before the voice of revolution is heard in France, England, America and Italy?

Comrades, if the workers of England or America made a revolution would you suppress it? You would not. You would side with your own class. We also are workers, we belong to the same class as you do. Will you then, fight against us.

Comrades, we are living today at the beginning of a new period in the history of mankind. This is the last struggle between Capital and Labor. If you continue your present job, you will he siding with the gang of imperialists, who during four years have sacrificed ten millions of the flower of manhood, have mutilated thirty millions more, have caused unutterable misery and devastation, and who, if allowed to remain in power will reduce us workers, to a worse slavery than has ever been known.

Comrades, don’t do it. You have arms in your hands. Your officers are powerless against you. Raise the red flag of working class freedom. Join with us, and with the revolutionary workers of Germany and Austria to make the world free for Labor.

Down with capitalism! Long live the Social Revolution

Signed; N. Lenin. President of the Council of Peoples’ Commissaries.

C. Chicherin. Peoples’ Commissary for Foreign Affairs.

QUIT FIGHTING, BRITISH SOLDIERS AND JOIN YOUR RUSSIAN COMRADES!

English Prisoner From Archangel Front Writes to His Brother Scots

Is it right for working peoples of one country to kill working people of another?

The Allied troops, invading Russia, have so often been told that if they are taken prisoner they will be tortured and killed by the bolsheviks, that it is interesting to see what in fact happens when an English soldier falls into the hands of the Russian workmans and peasants’ army. Here is the letter of a private of the Royal Scots taken prisoner last month near Archangel:

To the men of the Royal Scots.

I wonder if you all know the kind of men you are fighting. I do. You are fighting an army of working men and there are no officers amongst them. Everybody is the Game. They ask, why do we fight them. Well, that is more than I can say; in fact I do not know why we have come to fight them, and another thing that counts, is they do not want to fight us. They are not fighting their own class, the working class, but the capitalists of Russia and all countries. Since I have been a prisoner I have been treated as one of themselves, and given me plenty to eat and drink. I have also seen one of our men that lies in hospital wounded. He tells me he has been well treated and looked after and as a friend, a working man, and not as a soldier.

Now I ask this Question; is it right, that the working class of one country should come and fight the working class of another country? We are not at war with Russia, and the Russians are not at war with us, but with the capitalists of all the countries, the people whom we work for and keep in plenty, while we, the working class, merely exist. If the working class knew why they are fighting and for who, they would refuse to fight any longer. Think things over and ask yourselves, is it worth wile killing each other to please other people, who care not what happens, as long as their pockets are being filled at our expense. From what I have seen the Russians are a good people and they are fighting for a good cause, a cause that every country in the world should follow.

Private Lapham, 10th Royal Scots

Now isn’t it clear that English and American soldiers are being fooled when they believe that a mob of robbers and criminals have seized power in Russia and are murdering right and left. Here is an example of a Scotch soldier taken prisoner in square fight. He says himself he did not know what sort of people he was fighting, till he was in their hands. He had probably been told by his officers and by some rag like the Daily Mail that the most terrible things would happen to him, if he fell in the hands of the bloodthirsty bolsheviks. Of course he was told that, because the rich people who rule England must hide from English workmen the truth about the Russian people and their revolution.

But what happens in fact when an English soldier gets into the hands of the Red army? The Russian soldier, who is a working man or peasant, like the English soldier, looks upon him at once like a comrade and secs that his interests lie not in killing his prisoner but in treating him as a fellow worker, who has the same hard life of toil as he has. But the Russian workman and peasant is trying to improve his lot. He has turned out his criminal government and put an end to the rich parasites that have lived so long at his expense,—landlords, war profiteers, bankers, industrial bosses. He is making a new world here now, where only those people rule, who labor by muscle and brain.

Therefore every workingman and peasant from any country in the world, no matter what language he speaks is welcome to him and will find a home in Russia. He wants to make Russia the refuge of all those who are oppressed under the cruel regime of capitalism and wage-slavery. He has abolished that regime in his country and invites fellow workers of other lands to come and see what he has done and then go home and do the same.

For this reason a special order has been issued by the commander of the Red army on the Archangel and Merman fronts to all soldiers of the Red army to treat all prisoners with the utmost kindness and consideration, to provide for their material wants and to send them down to the bases, where they will be welcome as fellow workers. The commander of every battalion is now responsible for the safety of prisoners taken. If any prisoner is shot, then he answers for it with his life before the military revolutionary tribunal of the republic.

THE SHAME OF BEING A SCAB

Is there a more contemptible creature in the world than the one who deserts his fellows and helps to defeat his own side? No there is not.

Are you aware, American and British soldiers, that you are earning such contempt for yourselves?

It may seem strange to you, but you are really fighting against your own side. You are showing loyalty to the master-class. But it is treachery to your own class, the working class.

You are working men. In your home country you have surely had many opportunities of experiencing the hostility of the employing class. You may have been working for a fellow countryman, or he may have been a foreigner, it made no difference. Consciously or unconsciously you knew that the employer was no friend of yours. You knew that he did not employ you for your benefit, but for his own. Even if you did not think it out, you felt that he was of different kind to you. And you knew also that he regarded you as different from himself; as ac ow to be milked, or a sponge out of you.

Most likely you worked for a company or a trust. You did not know who your employers were. It was simply an impersonal soulless machine pumping your life and vitality out of you.

Times came when your patience gave out, and you came out on strike together with your fellow workers. Then you knew that it was open war between you and the employers.

Then there were no ties of blood, or calls of nationality.

You experienced only the bitter hatred of the class antagonism. You knew that your security and that of your wife and children depended on the loyalty of the workers to each other.

It happened on some such occasions that some spineless creatures did not stick it out, and went sneaking back to work. What were your feelings then?

Rage, contempt, disgust.

The traitors! They betray their class. In the struggle for a decent living they go over to the wealthy powerful sweaters.

Scabs! Blacklegs!

What mean cringing ears they look as they march up to the factory gates under the protection of the police or even soldiers.

You learned then, did you not, that a nation is divided into two opposing classes, the working class on the one side and the employing class on the other.

The State machine, the Government, the Courts, the Politicians, and the Press, all condemn, and persecute the striker, but protect the scab. They are all the tools of the employing class.

A working man who sides with the employing class, no matter of what nationality, is a traitor to his own class.

There can be no worse treachery than being a scab,

You are scabbing now! Are you not ashamed?

You are fighting on the side of the employers against us, the working class of Russia. You have come here avowedly for the purpose of overthrowing the Soviet government.

Do you know what the Soviet government is? It is the government of the working class. Try to imagine a Federation of shop stewards acting as the governments of Great Britain or America and you will get some idea of what a Soviet government is.

Labor is in supreme control in Russia. When you fight against the Soviets you are fighting against Labor; against your own class.

Our revolution was like a strike on a huge scale. We came out not merely for a rise in wages, but for the full product of our labor. We won, because the workers and soldiers of Russia stood together. There were no scabs.

Just as in a strike all the forces of capitalist government, and its agents are employed against the workers, so in this great successful strike of the Russian workers, the forces of international capitalism are being set in motion to crush the victorious workers in Russia, and rob them of the fruits of their victory.

The capitalist class does not allow national differences to interfere with its class interests. The victory of the Russian workers was as much a blow to the capitalists of England and America as it was to the Russian capitalists.

They have therefore come to take their revenge.

All their talk of intervention to save Russia, amounts to this; that they are going to return the land to the landlords, the factories and mines to the capitalists and incidentally to grab a bit for themselves in the way of trading rights and concessions. Furthermore they want to compel Russian workers to repay the loans contracted by the tyrannical and corrupt Tzar.

And you are doing it for them. You are the tools of our mutual enemies the capitalists. You hold the rifles, you work the guns to shoot us, your fellow workers with.

Cannot you see that this is part of the same class war that you are siding with the bosses, and helping defeat your own class.

Comrades! Drop this dirty work. Turn your guns on your real enemies, the sweaters and capitalists.

Come with us in the far nobler struggle to establish the triumph of labor the world over.

Signed N. Lenin. President of the council of Workmens and Soldiers Deputies

G. Tchicherin. Peoples Commissary for Foreign Affair.

Friends, Comrades, Brothers!

In the midst of the earthquake of the world war, of the chaotic collapse of the tzaristic imperialist society the Russian proletariat, in spite of misunderstanding, hatred and slander, has established its rule-—the Socialist Republic of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants. It is the titanic beginning of the Socialist construction of the world, the work which constitutes now the historic task of the international proletariat. The Russian revolution has tremendously stimulated the revolutionizing process of the world’s proletariat.

Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary are already drawn into the struggle. The German revolution, too, is awakening. Still, tremendous difficulties are arising on the way to victory of the German proletariat. The bulk of the people of Germany are with us. The power of the most bitter enemies of the working class is breaking down. Still they are striving by means of lies and deception to chain the masses to their chariots and to put off the hour of the emancipation of the people of Germany.

And just as the imperialism of the Entente powers was strengthened by the robberies and murders perpetrated by German imperialism in Russia, so have the German rulers made use of the assault of the Entente powers on Russia for the maintenance of their power in Germany.

Have you seen how a few weeks ago Kaiser Wilhelm II, who after the overthrown of Tzarism is the representative of the most infamous reaction, made use of the intervention of the Entente powers against proletarian Russia to arouse anew the war spirit of the masses of workers?

We cannot allow that such welcome opportunities for demagogy he placed into the hands of our contemptible enemies—the most abominable enemy of the world proletariat.

It cannot be that the proletariat of the Entente powers should allow such a thing to happen. Of course we know that you have already raised your voice against the machinations of your governments. But the danger is constantly growing.

The united front of the world imperialism against the proletariat is becoming a reality in the case of the campaign against the Russian Soviet Republic.

It is to fight to prevent this that I am appealing to you!

The world proletariat cannot allow the heart of the Socialist Revolution to be put out if it does not want to see Its own hopes and power vanish. The downfall of the Russian Soviet Republic would mean the defeat of the world proletariat.

Friends, Comrades, Brothers! Raise your arms against your masters!

Long live Russia of the Workers, Peasants and Soldiers!

Long live the revolution of the French, British and American proletariat!

Long live the emancipation of workingmen of all countries from the hell of war, exploitation and slavery!

Berlin, October 31st, 1918

Carl Leibknecht

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the IWW leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-IWW raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor JO Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the CP.

PDF of full issue: https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/lccn/sn89081142/1919-05-16/ed-1/seq-1