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Special pages :
Letter to Inessa Armand, December 17, 1916
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1977, Moscow, Volume 43, pages 587b-588.
Dear Friend,
I have just received your postcard. I sent a postcard to you in Berne, poste restante, a very short one containing a single request for your response, as your silence began to worry me a bit.
I am very keen now on the idea of publishing leaflets on Swiss affairs.
Something in the nature of a circle of Left-wingers has formed here. This term is inaccurate, though: so far just a number of meetings (evoked by my theses). Attended by Nobs, Platten, MĂźnzenberg and several others of the Young. We discuss the war resolution in connection with the tasks of the Lefts. These talks have brought home to me most clearly: 1) how devilishly weak (in all respects) the Swiss Lefts are; 2) how poor is the âsystemâ of influence of Bronski and Radek, who have been writing articles about the Lefts in other countries! The whole point is that everyone is willingly Left when it comes to foreign countries: itâs cheap!! But when it comes to Switzerland... nothing doing!
Abramovich promises to distribute 1,500 copies of pamphlets and leaflets (will you undertake to translate them? Systematically and regularly? Answer!), while MĂźnzenberg, with whom I spoke yesterday, the head of the organisation of the Young with 4,000!! German members, undertakes to distribute a maximum of 1,500!!
Guilbeaux, to whom I sent the theses,[1] writes that he is very pleased with them and will use them as a basis for his newly formed Committee of Internationalists. We shall see!
I have read Humbert-Drozâs Plaidoirie!![2] My God, what muddle in his head! And this in 1916! A hopeless Tolstoyan, Iâm afraid.
Grigory writes me that in No. 25 of Arbeiterpolitik there is a paragraph on âThree Editors of Kommunistâ[3] and that âRadek is taking the same line with Y. B.+Bukharin as Tyszka with Lyovaâ.... At last Grigory too has come to see it, although he still hangs back on the grounds that âdespite this we ought not to break with Radekâ. Ha, ha!
I wonder how you are fixed up. Itâs a cold flat, Maison Vincent, isnât it? Do you go skiing? I strongly recommend itâitâs very good for the health. Go skiing in the mountains near Rocher de Naye.
My best regards,
Lenin
P.S. What sort of person is Usiyevichâs wife? An energetic woman, I believe? Will he make a Bolshevik of her or she make a neither-this-nor-that of him?
- â See âTasks of the Left Zimmerwaldists in the Swiss Social-Democratic Partyâ (present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 137â48).âEd.
- â This refers to Humbert-Drozâs pamphlet Guerre Ă la Guerre. A bas lâArmèe. Plaidoirie complète devant le Tribunal Militaire Ă Neuchâtel le 26 aoĂťt 1916 (War to the War. Down with the Army. Complete text of a speech for the defence at the Military Tribunal in Neuchâtel on August 26, 1916). Its author was arrested for refusing to answer a call-up notice.
- â The newspaper Arbeiterpolitik No. 25 for December 9, 1916, published in its âOur Political Diaryâ section an unsigned paragraph dated December 6, 1916. Touching on the discussion of the question of the right of nations to self-determination in the pages of No. 1 of Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata, the writer stated that Leninâs views on this question were not shared by âthree members of the Editorial Board of Kommunist, a theoretical review of Russian Left radicalsâ. Such a report could only disorientate the reader, as it did not mention a word either about the theoretical mistakes or the anti-Party factional behaviour of this group after the appearance of Kommunist.
The same issue of Arbeiterpolitik carried as an editorial a short article by Bukharin entitled âThe Imperialist Stateâ with a footnote from the editors commenting favourably on his article.