Imperialism

"Annexation means keeping an alien people by force within the bounds of a given state." Pravda No. 60, May 31 (18), 1917.

The editors of Izvestia, a paper controlled by the Narodnik and Menshevik bloc, are beating all records of muddledom. In that paper’s issue No.67 for May 16, they try to chop logic with Pravda, without, of course, mentioning its name—a usual ill-mannered “ministerial” practice. Pravda, we are told, has a foggy, misleading idea of annexations.

Published in Pravda No. 53, May 23 (10), 1917.

'Soldiers and workers! You are told that you are defending “freedom” and the “revolution”! In reality you are defending the shady treaties of the tsar, which are concealed from you as one conceals a secret disease.'

Published in Pravda No. 47, May 16 (3), 1917.

Published in Pravda No. 47, May 16 (3), 1917.

That is what the proclamation of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet to the socialists of the world, published in today’s papers, amounts to. It has a lot to say against imperialism, but all these words are nullified by a single little phrase which reads:

“The Provisional Government of revolutionary Russia has adopted this platform” (i.e., peace without annexations and indemnities on the basis of self-determination of nations).

Published in Pravda No. 46, May 15 (2), 1917.

Written in January 1917, Lenin analyses the cynical imperialist manoeuvres behind World War One and puts forward the proletarian revolutionary alternative as the only way out of the impasse for the working class.