Letter to Joseph Vanzler, May 2, 1940

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A Serious Work on Russian Revolutionary History

Dear Comrade:

I read your manuscript attentively. My original impression was only reinforced: You are very well acquainted with the literature on the question and have composed a very serious work. I have no principled objections at all to make, only some isolated, partial observations. I am writing in Russian, because it is easier for me.

Your first chapter is called “Peculiarities of Russian Capitalist Development: An Historical Illustration of Combined and Uneven Development.” I would put uneven before combined, because the second grows out of the first and completes it. Aside from that, in the text of this same chapter the concepts of uneven and combined development, although they are illustrated factually, are not defined by a single word. In my opinion, you ought to give a short theoretical definition of uneven and combined development.

On page 12, the tenth line from the bottom, it is said that the Narodniks had no understanding whatever of the classes in society. This assertion is too categorical. Like any petty-bourgeois radical movement, they distinguished very well the class of the nobility, the big bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy, and even the kulaks. But they ignored the distinction between the proletariat and the peasantry, as also the stratification of the peasantry itself. In other words, they transformed all working people into one “class.”

Page 13. At the end of the paragraph you ascribe to Lenin that which rightfully belongs to the Emancipation of Labor Group(thirteenth line from the bottom).

Page 14. You write that Volkhovsky, Shishko, and Kravchinsky later remained with the right Socialist Revolutionaries. As far as I know, they all died before the Social Revolutionary Party split into lefts and rights. Kravchinsky died even before the founding of the Social Revolutionary Party.

On the same page it is said that around 1879 a section of the Narodniks lost faith in conspiratorial methods of organization. This could give cause for misunderstanding. The Narodniks lost faith in the possibility of illegal organization of the masses. But the organization of the Narodniks remained conspiratorial.

On the same page you say that the new organization was called “People and Freedom” [Narod i Volya]. This is a misunderstanding. The name was “People’s Will” [Narodnaya Volya]; as is known, the word “volya” in Russian has two meanings: freedom and will, in the sense of the right to decide.

On the same page you say that Plekhanov organized a third group, which was called at first the “Black Redistribution.” In reality “Land and Freedom” split into two organizations: “People’s Will” and “Black Redistribution.”

Page 16. You say at the beginning: “The Narodnik movement was anti-Marxist precisely because it ignored the workers.” It would be better to say, it seems to me, that it ignored the independent class character of the proletariat, dissolving the workers into the laboring people in general.

On page 17 you say about the People’s Will movement that it was quixotic and heroic. I would leave out the designation “quixotic.” In quixotism there is a comical element that was altogether lacking in the People’s Will.

Page 21. The thirteenth line from the bottom. Here you are talking about the adherents of People’s Will; whereas you should, in my opinion, be speaking about the Narodniks in general.

Page 26. You speak of the fact that Plekhanov’s view of the intelligentsia was a typical Menshevik view. This sounds like an anachronism, because the Mensheviks appeared significantly later.

At the end of the same page it is stated with condemnation that the Emancipation of Labor Group still adhered to terror. It would be necessary, it seems to me, to explain that it is a question of individual terror, which isolated the revolutionists from the workers’ movement and concentrated all hopes on the activities of small circles of “heroes.” We also stood for terror, but mass terror carried out by the revolutionary class.

Page 28. The opposition of Blagoyev and Plekhanov is true only to the extent that is well known. It is true that Blagoyev turned up in the Third International, which did him credit. But all the same he remained a fairly big opportunist in questions of revolutionary struggle.

These are all of my observations. As you see, they touch more the formulation than the essence of the thing. In general the work will be useful to the highest degree.

P.S. Has your interest been drawn to the so-called Tanaka Memorial by the former Japanese minister of foreign affairs? The Japanese pretension to world supremacy is expounded in this memorial. Do you perhaps have, by any chance, any kind of materials or data related to this memorial? If not, it’s not necessary to search for any.

Warmest greetings.

Yours,

L.T.