I'm putting an end to this. The myth of the German agents was made up by the Provisional government, on Kerensky's orders, during the July Crisis to blame the military disaster of the Kerensky Offensive and the ongoing social unrest on the Bolsheviks and discredit/repress any revolutionary opposition. The original claim came from a fake testimony given by a Russian army intelligence officer called Dmitri Yermolenko, who alleged that the Bolshevik leaders were on the payroll of the German General Staff, and this was presented as evidence by the provisional government. Right wing media outlets regurgitated this claim, intending to discredit and shatter the Bolsheviks' popularity. It was spread by both allies and tsarists afterwards, and by 1918 similar stories were being published on American newspapers. As mentioned ITT these type of political accusations weren't a new thing in Russia and the Sisson papers later marked a new attempt to legitimize the claims.
<A popular right-wing newspaper published ‘documents’ alleging that Lenin had been in the pay of the German General Staff; and writs were issued for the arrest of Lenin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. The documents could be recognized at a glance as a clumsy fabrication. The witness who produced them, a certain Yermolenko, turned out to be a former stool-pigeon, now in the service of military counter-intelligence. But at first the impression made by the accusation was devastating [1]Trotsky also came under attack, by a Kadet-owned newspaper:
<Ryech, Miliukov’s paper, published a story that before his departure from New York Trotsky had received 10,000 dollars from German-Americans, which he was to use for defeatist agitation in Russia. In less respectable newspapers the German General Staff figured as the source of the money (…) [Trotsky] remarked ironically that the German-Americans or the German General Staff apparently considered the overthrow of a régime in an enemy country an extremely cheap affair, costing only 10,000 dollars. He attacked the sources from which the story emanated, saying that it had come from Sir George Buchanan, the British Ambassador. The Ambassador denied the charge, but this did not prevent Miliukov from claiming that he had the story from that source. [2]
>but Germany sent Lenin in a sealed trainYes, but this always ignores the context. What they really fail to mention is that the German government organized the passage to Russia for many people from all political groups, not just Lenin and the Bolsheviks. They sent SocDems, SRs, Mensheviks, moderate socialists, labor zionists, Bundists and even anarchists [3]. And, as Isaac Deutscher wrote, "Lenin had resolved to travel through Germany only after all other routes, via France and England, had been denied to him". Finally, by the time Lenin got in power, even AFTER signing the peace treaty, German aggression against Russia continued as German forces occupied parts of the Don, Georgia and Crimea. So at this point claiming that Lenin and Germany were buddies is just ridiculous.
>but German wired moneyPartly true. The German government indeed allocated funds for political propaganda in enemy countries, and I'll quote the historian Alexander Rabinowich to explain:
<It is now known that during World War I the Germans expended a substantial sum for the purpose of disrupting Russian internal affairs and that a portion of this money was funneled to the Bolsheviks. Relevant sources suggest, however, that most Bolshevik leaders, not to speak of the party’s rank and file, were unaware of these subventions. While Lenin seems to have known of the German money there is no evidence that his policies or those of the party were in any way influenced by it. Ultimately, this aid did not significantly affect the outcome of the revolution. As for the July events, the charge that the uprising was instigated by Lenin in cooperation with the Germans was obviously groundless; from mid-June on, as we have seen, Lenin had worked with energy to prevent an insurrection from breaking out. [4]And lastly, what totally destroys this myth with great irony is the fact that
Lenin and the Bolsheviks actually contributed to the downfall of the German Empire. The German divisions and prisoners returning from the Eastern Front were significantly affected and demoralized by all the revolutionary propaganda they encountered, which they had never seen before. German commander-in-chief Erich Ludendorff describes with regret [5]:
<A decided deterioration in the army’s moral resulted from the re-enrolment, after long leave, of soldiers returned from captivity in Russia. They introduced a spirit of general insubordination, showing itself particularly in definite refusal to return to the front, thinking that, like the prisoners of war exchanged from England and France, they were under no obligation to fight any longer.<Divisions recently removed from East to West had not done well under their new conditions and I had had very unfavourable reports of them. In spite of the shortage of men, drafts from the East were received with the greatest reluctance. They brought a bad moral and had an unfavourable effect on their fellows.Luddendorff blamed it on "Bolshevik propaganda" and "Jew traders in the East", and admitted that the Russian Revolution had a major effect on Germany's collapse:
<How often had I not hoped for a revolution in Russia in order that our military burden might be alleviated (…) At that time I never contemplated the possibility that it might undermine our own position later on<Looking back I can see that our decline obviously began with the outbreak of the Revolution in Russia<While Bolshevism showed itself officially obsequious towards Germany, was able to undermine the fighting power of the German people in a way that the Entente alone, despite blockade and propaganda, could never have doneGeneral Max Hoffman, Luddendorff's chief of staff who signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, had similar thoughts on Vladimir Lenin:
<"Lenin was the Entente's best ally; without Bolshevism in Russia you could have not won the war" [6]tl;dr not only lenin was no german agent but he helped put an end to the german empire. also disinformation is a hell of a drugSources and links:
1, 2. Trotsky: The Prophet Armed 1879-1921. Isaac Deutscher
3.
http://wiki.istmat.org/%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%84:%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BD4. The Bolsheviks Come to Power, The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd – New Edition. Alexander Rabinowitch
5. My War Memories – Volume II. Erich Ludendorff
6. Armed Intervention in Russia 1918-1922. W.P. Coates and Zelda K. Coates
A physical copy of the Yermolenko testimony:
https://hermitagefineart.com/en/lots/2022-march-east-european-art/400/https://www.bolshevik.info/kronstadt-and-petrograd-in-1917/viii.-in-kerensky-s-prison.htm