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Special pages :
Letter to Comrade Willi Münzenberg, Secretary of the International Workers' Aid, December 2, 1922
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 35, pages 559-560.
International Workers’ Aid—an international proletarian organisation, set up in 1921 to help the population of the parts of Soviet Russia which in 1921 were struck by famine because of the bad harvest. Its chairman was Clara Zetkin, and its General Secretary, Willi Münzenborg. International Workers’ Aid was active in collecting money, provisions and medical supplies, organising children’s homes, etc. In 1922 the I.W.A. launched a number of industrial and agricultural projects in Soviet Russia to promote her economic rehabilitation. The I.W.A. later grew into a powerful organisation, which rendered great assistance to the international working-class movement.
Supplementing your report at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, I should like in a few words to point out the significance of the organisation of aid.
The assistance given to the starving by the international working class helped Soviet Russia in considerable measure to endure the painful days of last year’s famine and to overcome it. At the present time we have to heal the wounds inflicted by the famine, provide in the first place for many thousands of orphaned children, and restore our agriculture and industry which have suffered heavily as a result of the famine.
In this sphere, too, the fraternal aid of the international working class has already begun to operate. The American tractor column near Perm, the agricultural groups of the American Technical Aid, the agricultural and industrial undertakings of the International Workers’ Aid, the allocation of and subscriptions to the first proletarian loan, through the Workers’ Aid to Soviet Russia—all these are very promising beginnings in the cause of workers’ fraternal aid to promote the economic restoration of Soviet Russia.
The work of economic assistance, so happily begun by the International Workers’ Aid to Soviet Russia, should be supported in every possible way by the workers and toilers of the whole world. Side by side with the continuing strong political pressure on the governments of the bourgeois countries over the demand for recognition of the Soviet government, widespread economic aid by the world proletariat is at present the best and most practical support of Soviet Russia in her difficult economic war against the imperialist concerns, and the best support for her work of building a socialist economy.
Vl. Ulyanov (Lenin)
Moscow, December 2, 1922