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Special pages :
Letter to Alexandra Kollontai, March 19, 1916
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 36, pages 373-374.
March 19, 1916
Dear A. M.,
We have received your letter, and once again congratulate you on your success.
I was terribly irritated by the fact that ânobleâ France had (actually!) confiscated some of my registered letters to you in America. Well, we canât help that, can we? Now you must do your very best about contacts with America.
You did write me that while in America you received Internationale Flugblätter No. 1 in German, and that you would try to publish it in English![1] And now thereâs not a word about it?
What does it mean?!
Is that to say that no sympathisers are to be found in America and that Internationale Flugblätter cannot be published in English?
This is incredible!
But if that is so, it should be published in Norway (in English). Would you undertake to translate it, and how much will it cost to publish it?
I also wrote to you in America that I had received a Socialist Propaganda League[2] leaflet from Boston, Mass. (signed by 20 Socialists with addresses, mostly in Massachusetts). This league is internationalist, with a programme clearly tending to the left.
I sent them the longest letter[3] in English (and Internationale Flugblätter in German). There has been no reply. I wonder if ânobleâ France has confiscated the lot.
If you received nothing and know nothing about them, I shall send you their address and a copy of my letter. Will you undertake to send it on to America?
And what of the Socialist Labour Party? After all, they are internationalists (even if there is something narrowly sectarian about them). Have they got their copy of Internationale Flugblätter? Have you any contacts with them?
Furthermore, you also wrote that you had started negotiations with CharlesH. Kerr. Whatâs the result? He did promise to publish a part of our pamphlet (by Lenin and Zinoviev).
Now you say nothing more about it.... How are we to understand this?[4]
Internationale Korrespondenz[5] reported that the New Review in America had undertaken to publish articles by the Zimmerwald Left. Is that true? Do you know the New Review?
Reply as soon and as circumstantially as you can. You will, of course, find out everything in great detail about direct mail steamers from Norway to America.
As for HÜglund and the Norwegians, I am still unable to find out whether or not they have received Internationale Flugblätter, whether or not they have published it in Swedish and Norwegian, whether or not they have officially affiliated to the Zimmerwald Left (like the Rev. Soc. Verband of Roland-Holst). Please take the trouble to find out, get things done, give them a piece of your mind, make them do it, follow it through! Let Bukharin inform you of the contents of our special letter to him about the Zimmerwald people, and please see that this is done.
Regards,
Yours,
Lenin
My address is: Herrn Uljanow (Schuhladen Kammerer). Spiegelgasse. 12. ZĂźrich. I.
P.S. What interesting books and pamphlets have you brought along? SchlĂźterâs history of Chartism? What else?
P.S. Am sending you our âthesesâ (from Vorbote No. 2). Drive this home to the Scandinavians.
- â The effort to publish Internationale Flugblätter No. 1 in America was unsuccessful.
- â Socialist Propaganda League was founded in Boston in 1915, as an independent group within the Socialist Party. It adopted the platform of the Zimmerwald Left and rallied the revolutionary elements of the Socialist Party.
- â A letter to the secretary of the Socialist Propaganda League in America, written by Lenin in November 1915 (see present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 423â28).
- â The talks with Charles Kerr, the publisher of socialist literature, on the publication in America of the pamphlet Socialism and War in English did not yield any results.
- â Internationale Korrespondenz (International Correspondence)âa weekly, published in Berlin by the German social-chauvinists from the end of September 1914 to October 1, 1918.