Letter to the Polish Bolshevik-Leninists, July 28, 1935

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Perspectives in Poland

Dear Comrades:

I would like to complete my first letter with some remarks. The more I think about it the more inaccurate it seems to me to assert that, without great revolutionary events in other countries, the Polish proletariat would be incapable of struggling. In Poland there has not been any catastrophe to paralyze the working class for years. There is great disillusionment there, but underneath, the still-unbroken power of the proletariat is sleeping. It is possible that a powerful external blow is necessary; but a blow like this could also come from purely Polish events. First: the situation of the peasantry seems unbearable. The agrarian question remains unsolved. Second: the national question. Third: the conflicts between the bourgeois parties; boycott of the elections, etc. Fourth: the quarrel — almost inevitable — in the leaderless camp of Piłsudski To diagnose these processes in good time one shouldn’t go to sleep from a pessimistic anticipation of events. Such a state of mind is particularly dangerous in a revolutionary general staff.

In my first letter I quoted the example of France and Belgium. I must now quote a third example, that of Switzerland. There, our group publishes an independent sheet! Trotz Alledem! [In spite of everything!] Yet, at the same time, the majority of the group is inside the SP, gathers the left opposition there, and tries successfully to take over the leadership. You understand the differences: in France, entry with one’s own organization and paper; in Belgium, giving up the paper in favor of systematic, internal, faction work; in Switzerland, internal faction work plus an independent paper outside the party.

The PPS is a legal party. Our participation in its inner life and its activities (in whatever form this participation takes place) coincides to a large extent with a combination of legal and illegal work. If you were to succeed in creating a faction inside the PPS (and a complementary one inside the Bund) you would certainly have to complement your work with legal and illegal publications.

All this is only hypothetical. I hold firmly to my first proposal: devote some months to research work and making approaches, then and finally take a firm position.