Another Lie

J. V. Stalin

May 19, 1918

Works, Vol. 4, November, 1917 - 1920

Publisher : Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1953

Nashe Vremya, No. 97 (evening edition), prints a dispatch from its own correspondent giving the text of a German wireless message from Constantinople which alleges that "the Bolsheviks, having received strong reinforcements from Turkestan and Astrakhan, passed to the offensive, and, notwithstanding the heroic resistance of the Moslems, captured the city of Baku."

I publicly declare that this provocative message is devoid of all truth.

Baku recognized the power of the Soviets from the first days of the revolution, and recognizes it now. There was no Bolshevik attack on Baku, nor could there have been. There was merely an adventurist attack of a handful of Tatar and Russian landlords and generals, who suffered complete fiasco because of the detestation in which they are held by the Moslem and Russian workers and peasants. There was no fight between Bolsheviks and Moslems, nor could there have been. The Baku Soviet power was, and remains, the power of the workers and peasants of all the nationalities of Baku and the Baku area, and, above all, the power of the Moslem people.

People's Commissar

J. Stalin

Nashe Vremya (Our Time) — an evening newspaper of Socialist-Revolutionary trend published in Moscow from December 1917 to July 1918.