Page:Lenin - Against the Plague of Nations; An Address to Thinking People on the Polish Question (1920).pdf/5

 will give their moral and material support to the Soviet Republic of Russia in its darkest hour of trial.

The remarks of Comrade Lenin, chairman of the Council of the People's Commissars of the Soviet Republic, before a recent conference of Rural Commissars of Soviet Russia may well serve as an inspiration for the gigantic task facing the Soviet Republic and the proletariat of all countries.

"Comrades, you of course are familiar enough with the salient facts of the Polish 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.

"It is alleged that the Polish offensive was started because the Bolshevists submitted to Poland impossible demands. As a matter of fact, you know very well that we were willing to grant the Poles even the enormous territory which they had occupied prior to their offensive. We value higher the preservation of the lives of our Red Soldiers than war for the sake of White Russia and Lithuania captured by Poland.

"We most solemnly declared both in the name of the Council of People's Commissars and in a special manifesto of the All Russian Executive Committee of the Soviets addressed to the Polish Government, aside from our appeal to the Polish workers and peasants, that we were ready to begin peace parleys on the basis of the front existing at that time. 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.

"We do not wish to wage war, because to us the blood of Russian workers and peasants is dearer than any victories. To prove this we were willing to give such concessions as no other government can. We gave to Poland a better boundary than that published by the Supreme Council of the Allied British and French imperialists. These gentlemen capitalists of Great Britain and France are imagining that they are setting the boundaries, but thank God, there is