Letter to Grigori Zinoviev, August 1916

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Author(s) Lenin
Written August 1916


MIA-bannière.gif
Letters written in August 1916. Sent from Flums to Hertenstein.
First published in 1964 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 49.
Republished in Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1977, Moscow, Volume 43, page 565-569.
Printed from the original.
Keywords : Grigori Zinoviev, Letter

First letter[edit source]

1) On the question of the “commissioned” article, you are wrong in trying to exonerate yourself. You couldn’t help noticing that I was extra-careful to avoid any sharply worded expression of displeasure in my first letter (which you have not answered).

I wrote nothing about bad faith: omission, too, is a mild, and not harsh expression, which includes simple forgetfulness and inattentiveness, and these are far removed from bad faith, Why this exaggeration, this talk about “bad faith”?

Where, in my own hand, have I written about 5 pages? Send it to me, if you are not yet persuaded that you were wrong.

2) About Franz,[1] we quite agree with you (both Nadya and myself): it seems worse at first than afterwards.

3) I am sending you two draft of a letter to N. I.[2] I shall not object to making it more polite: send corrections and additions, if you consider them necessary.[3]

Best regards,

Lenin

Second letter[edit source]

I have just read the Swedish and Norwegian articles.

They cannot be separated. They should go in together and cannot go in without our own article against disarmament. It changes our plans.

I shall sit down and write (rewrite) this article for Sbornik, which will necessarily have to be increased within these limits, and the rest cut down as much as possible. What nonsense, this disarmament, yet it’s beginning to get some people muddled in our Party too!

N.B. |||

P.S. Since the question of the Paris collection has not yet been settled, we should hold up Strannik’s article, for if we have to choose, it should certainly be Alexander’s.

Third letter[edit source]

This is Nadya’s draft of the cuts.[4]

I read the article a second time (I read it once before). I am definitely against any cuts. It means spoiling the article. An integral summarising article (with minor details, mentioning the participant or interlocutor) is extremely important.

Honestly, this article cannot be cut.

What’s to be done?

As a matter of fact, we can seriously “unload” only by holding over your article. Reasons:

1) It is written not for this collection.

2) It is part of a book, for the publication of which we already have an agreement; the chances of its being published, therefore, are real. Double publication is a luxury we can ill afford.

3) The main and important things about the history of the International have already been said by you in your article in Sotsial-Demokrat.

4) The collection must be limited (ι) to Russian material+(β) to highlights of the controversy, to vexed and mooted questions of the Party.

5) And defeatism—where does that come in?

Write and tell me candidly what you think of this proposition: from a businesslike editorial point of view (specifically) or from the point of view of grievance.

{{

But our disputes and efforts towards agreement must continue in any case. }}

A 160–page collection, according to my plan, would give rich, extremely valuable Russian material+a discussion on self-determination (without Yuri[5] )

+ defeatism+Trotsky,

+about the Interna- tional (Chkheidze),

that is, everything that brooks no delay.

Cost about 2,500 frs. +400 to Ludmila (=ditto transport) +about 500 for transport =nearly 3,400. We can just about manage that, and no more.

I agree to put out a No. of the CO (+another 100–200 frs.).

Fourth letter[edit source]

Well, now you’ve said it!! I couldn’t help smiling, really. You’ve written yourself into “court”.... In fact, any court in every case would find that to label a proposal to hold over an article as “uncomradely”, would make collegiate work impossible.

Luckily for you there is no “court”, otherwise you would certainly be “convicted”.

We still have to “cut down” though. We have bulged out of the former plan of the collection (Russian material +the discussion on self-determination). Find out exactly and officially from Benteli what the cost of a sheet is. We shall then calculate exactly how much we can print (for nobody prints anything free of charge—remember that!).

Salut!

Lenin

Do I have to return Hamburger Echo to you?

I am sending you Alexander’s article: I don’t under take to cut it!

The Swedish and Norwegian articles are going in too!![6] What a bother!!

Safarchik must go in, though. You are right. We shall put him in!

Do you get Arbeiterpolitik? I haven’t seen No. 5 and No. 7 ff[7]

Fifth letter[edit source]

There is no conflict: you are imagining too much, really. Recollect (or reread) my letter: I did not state that I was voting against your article, I only wrote: “write and tell me candidly” what you think of such-and-such a plan.[8] You wrote.

And that’s all.

So the article is going in.

Yuri will “reconcile” us still more, I believe,[9] as it is precisely his conclusion that “in the epoch of imperialism” there can be no “defence of the fatherland”.

||

In fact, “in an imperialist war, engendered by the epoch of imperialism, defence of the fatherland is a deception”.

These are “two great differences”.

Best regards,

Lenin

P.S. Isn’t it time we sent a joint letter to N. I. B. about the faction? I think it is. And about his article?

I am for issuing the CO I agree!

  1. ↑ This refers to Franz Koritschoner’s article “From the Life of Austrian Social-Democracy” (published in No. 2 of Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata).
  2. ↑ See present edition, Vol. 35, pp. 230–31.—Ed.
  3. ↑ In the draft letter written by Lenin (see present edition, Vol. 35, pp. 230–31) Zinoviev introduced a number of corrections and changed the concluding part. For Lenin’s attitude to these corrections see documents 514 and 515 in this volume and Vol. 35, pp. 228–29. Lenin’s correspondence with Zinoviev and Bukharin concerning Bukharin’s article “A Contribution to the Theory of the Imperialist State” was published in 1932 in the journal Bolshevik No. 22.
  4. ↑ This letter of Lenin’s is prefaced by a plan of the cuts, written in Krupskaya’s hand, to Zinoviev’s article “The Second Inter national and the Problem of the War” which was intended for Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata (it was published in No. 2).
    Point 5 of Lenin’s letter refers to Zinoviev’s article “ ‘Defeatism’ Before and Now” (printed in the first issue of the collection).
    Lower down Lenin lists his articles for the collection: “The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up”, “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism”, “Efforts to Whitewash Opportunism” and “The Chkheidze Faction and Its Role”.
  5. ↑ As this will mean having to write a reply to Yuri[3] and sending it to him!! —Lenin
  6. ↑ This refers to the articles “Swedish Social-Democracy and the World War” by Karl Kilbom and “Certain Features of the Contemporary Labour Movement in Norway” by Arvid Hansen (published in the second issue of Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata).
  7. ↑ Und folgende—and those following.—Ed.
  8. ↑ See Document 514 in this volume.—Ed.
  9. ↑ Lenin’s ironical comment stresses the error of and certain uniformity in the wordings of Pyatakov’s and Zinoviev’s articles concerning “defence” of the fatherland (see Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata No. 2, December 1916, p. 27).
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