Note to Lev Kamenev, July 5, 1917

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Comrade Kamenev

Entre nous: if they do me in, I ask you to publish my notebook: “Marxism on the State ” (it got left behind in Stockholm).[1] It’s bound in a blue cover. It contains a collection of all the quotations from Marx and Engels, likewise from Kautsky against Pannekoek. There are a number of remarks and notes, and formulations. I think it could be published after a week’s work. I believe it to be important, because not only Plekhanov but also Kautsky have bungled things. The condition: all this is absolutely entre nous!

  1. ↑ Lenin’s work Marxism on the State was written in Zurich in January and February 1917 and contains all the principal statements by Marx and Engels on the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat, extracts from books and articles by Kautsky, Pannekoek and Bernstein, with remarks, additions, generalisations and conclusions by Lenin.
    When setting out from Switzerland to Russia in April 1917, Lenin left it along with other material for safekeeping abroad.
    After the events of July 1917, when Lenin was in hiding at Razliv station, he asked that his notes be sent to him. He used them to prepare his book The State and Revolution.