Letter to American Workers

A Letter to American Workingmen, or A Letter to American Workers, is an essay by Vladimir Lenin that was written on 20 August 1918.

History

The letter was Lenin's response to a message received from members of the Industrial Workers of the World who were participating in a worker's demonstration in Seattle. That message had been delivered to Russia by the crew of the steamship Shilka. Lenin wrote the letter on 20 August 1918, and it appeared in the Pravda newspaper a few days later on 22 August.
Delivery of Lenin's letter to the United States was entrusted to Mikhail Borodin. The letter, which was printed in multiple copies on thin paper, was carried to the US by several couriers. One of them was the American poet Carl Sandburg, an acquaintance of Borodin, who received the letter in Oslo, along with propaganda materials and a check for 10,000 US dollars, with instructions to deliver them to Chicago. Since Sandburg notified US embassy staff in Oslo before his departure, American authorities confiscated both the propaganda and the check upon arrival in New York City. A copy of the letter, however, was passed to Santeri Nuorteva, an employee of the Russian Information Bureau in the United States. Another copy, sewn into a special belt, was delivered by the engineer P.I. Travin (Sletlov).
In December 1918, an English version of the letter was published in the Boston-based biweekly newspaper The Revolutionary Age, and in the New York-based Socialist Party magazine The Class Struggle. In autumn 1919, Lenin met with Travin, who reported on the delivery and distribution of the letter in America. In 1934, it was reprinted in New York as a separate pamphlet.

Lenin's revolutionary characterization of the United States

The most cited passage of the letter is Lenin's revolutionary characterization of America:

Reception

During the entire Soviet period, Lenin's letter was considered an example of a class-based approach to evaluating events, an invaluable contribution to scientific socialism, and an inspiring document for the progressive and peace movements in the United States.
Historian noted that the letter "played an important role in changing public opinion in the United States and intensified the mass movement in defense of Soviet Russia".