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Special pages :
Letter to Georgy Chicherin, August 3 or 4, 1919
Published: First published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 51. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1975, Moscow, Volume 44, page 272a.
Lenin, who was resting at Gorki on August 3 and 4, 1919, apparently wrote this note in connection with the fact that at the end of July and beginning of August 1919 strong rumours were current in the West-European press, and were also spread by the Russian Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, about an imminent replacement of the Soviet Government in Russia by a coalition government (with the participation of Mensheviks and Socialistâ Revolutionaries). = Pravda on August 6 and Izvestia on August 8 published articles ridiculing these rumours, which reflected the imperialistsâ hopes for the overthrow of Soviet rule in Russia with the aid of social traitors, as had occurred in Hungary.
Comrade Chicherin,
I have received your note and the radio message. I donât think it is worth while taking this seriously and hastening to reply. Let us rather wait and have the laugh on them. Today we shall give it to the press as a joke, with a directive to the editors to ridicule it thoroughly (hinting: are they not going by the news from Budapest?) and call the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries all the names they deserve. We shall talk it over again when I arrive.
Yours,
Lenin