To all German workers’, soldiers’, and sailors’ councils:
We have heard by radio from Kiel that Germany’s workers, soldiers, and sailors have taken power. The Russian Soviet government congratulates you with all our heart and joins you in mourning those who have fallen in the glorious struggle for the workers’ liberation. Unfortunately they will not be the last victims. We also learned from these broadcasts that Prince Max von Baden still heads the government, and [Friedrich] Ebert, who supported Wilhelm and the capitalists for four years, is to become Reich chancellor.
Workers, soldiers, and sailors of Germany: so long as you tolerate a government consisting of princes, capitalists, and [Philipp] Scheidemanns, then you do not really have power. The Scheidemanns together with the Erzbergers will sell you out to capital.1 In the armistice agreement they will arrange with the English and French capitalists for you to surrender your weapons. Soldiers and sailors, do not give up your arms, or the united capitalists will rout you. It is essential that you genuinely take power everywhere, arms in hand, and build a workers’, soldiers’, and sailors’ government headed by [Karl] Liebknecht. Do not allow them to foist a national assembly upon you. You know what the Reichstag got you.
Only the workers’, soldiers’, and sailors’ councils and a workers’ government will inspire the trust of the workers and sailors of other countries. Such a government will propose an honorable peace to the English and French workers. We are firmly convinced that they will follow your and our examples and settle accounts with their capitalists and generals. Then an honorable people’s peace will be signed.
It is essential to link the fight for peace and freedom with the fight for bread. In Russia there is enough bread for you and us in the Ukraine, in the Kuban, and on the Don. That is why the English government is trying to get quickly through the Black Sea to south Russia, where it will help Generals Denikin, Krasnov, and Skoropadsky snatch the workers’ bread. Our Red Army is fighting heroically against the bands of workers’ enemies, who are also supported by your generals and the Scheidemann government. If you want bread, then it is essential to act quickly, before the British steal it away. The German workers’, soldiers’, and sailors’ councils must immediately give the German soldiers in the Ukraine the order, by radio and by sending delegations. Krasnov’s forces are very weak. While the Red Army attacks these bands from the north, together we can crush them in a few weeks, and then there will be bread for you.
Workers’, soldiers’, and sailors’ councils: the Scheidemann government chased the Russian Soviet government’s envoy out of Berlin for fear that he would be able to establish the link between German and Russian soldiers. We cannot send delegates to you immediately, until you have reined in Generals Hoffmann and Beseler, because the German generals in Lithuania and Poland block our way. Contact us by radio, call the Moscow and Tsarskoe Selo radio stations and let us know what is happening in Berlin. We are doing everything possible to send bread to you as quickly as we can.
Long live international solidarity of workers and soldiers! Long live the alliance between the free Russian workers and the German soldiers and sailors!
Long live the German Soviet republic!
The Russian workers’, peasants’,
and soldiers’ Soviet government