against the foreign invasion, but at the same time we hear that you are
trying to organize your own party, a genuine peasants' party that will
be willing to fight even if the Pashas are to make their peace with the
Entente exploiters. Syria has no peace, and you, Armenian peasants, whom
the Entente, despite its promises, allows to die from hunger in order to
keep you under better control, you are understanding more and more that
it is silly to hope for salvation by the Entente capitalists. Even your
bourgeois Government of the Dashnakists, the lackeys of the Entente, is
compelled to turn to the Workers' and Peasants' Government of Russia
with an appeal for peace and help.

"Peasants and workers of the Near East! If you organize yourselves, if
you form your own Workers' and Peasants' Government, if you arm
yourselves, if you unite with the Red Russian Workers' and Peasants'
Army, then you will be able to defy the English, French, and American
capitalists, then you will settle accounts with your own native
exploiters, then you will find it possible, in a free alliance with the
workers' republics of the world, to look after your own interests; then
you will know how to exploit the resources of your country in your own
interest and in the interest of the working people of the whole world,
that will honestly exchange the products of their labour and mutually
help each other.

"We want to talk over all these questions with you at the Congress in
Baku. Spare no effort to appear in Baku on September 1 in as large
numbers as possible. You march, year in and year out, through the
deserts to the holy places where you show your respect for your past and
for your God--now march through deserts, over mountains, and across
rivers in order to come together to discuss how you can escape from the
bonds of slavery, how you can unite as brothers so as to live as men,
free and equal."

From this summons the nature of the Baku congress can be imagined. It
was, in fact, a social revolutionist far more than a nationalist
assembly. Of its 1900 delegates, nearly 1300 were professed communists.
Turkey, Persia, Armenia, and the Caucasus countries sent the largest
delegations, though there were also delegations from Arabia, India, and
even the Far East. The Russian Soviet Government was of course in
control and kept a tight hand on the proceedings. The character of these
proceedings were well summarized by the address of the noted Bolshevik
lead