A Letter to American Workingmen, from the Socialist Soviet Republic of Russia

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


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.