Written: Written between March 23 and 25, 1916
Published:
First published in 1964 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 49.
Sent from Zurich to Berne.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1977],
Moscow,
Volume 43,
pages 524b-525a.
Translated: Martin Parker and Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2005).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
• README
Pokrovsky’s proposal should of course be accepted.[3] I am sitting down to work (the library here is better, especially in latest economic literature. If it is possible to have the proof-sheets of the new catalogue for a couple of days—or at least for Sunday—try and get them for me).
Have Pokrovsky answer me and you officially that the terms have been accepted (N. B. send me his old letters concerning format and so on); re the deadline let him say no thing (I daresay I can manage it by V or VI).
I haven’t seen Rakovsky’s speech or the I.S.D. pamphlet on the 21/XII minority.[4] Send me both.
Send me 25 impressions as soon as you can.
I am sending you the proof-sheets of the theses.[1] Have accepted one of your amendments. Regarding non-member ship of the party, I absolutely disagree. 1) Reread the preceding text, 2) read Austerlitz and K. Kautsky in Neue Zeit (3.III.1916) and you will see at once that you are wrong. We, the Editorial Board, must declare outright that we do not consider it compatible with membership of the party—only in this way shall we be drawing a correct Trennungslinie[2] precisely with the chauvinists, precisely with Martov (+Plekhanov)+Axelrod & Co., who cannot accept our formulation. As for Bukharin, he will think it over and accept. A bet?
Salut,
Lenin
N.B. Could you get Chemnitzer Volksstimme for at least 2 days? Please try!! If you can’t, send me its address and the No. of the issue (containing this article) and the date; I shall order it.
[1] The theses of the Editorial Board of Sotsial-Demokrat: “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination” (see present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 143–56).—Ed.
[3] La Vie Ouvrière—journal of the French revolutionary syndicalists, published from 1909 to 1914.
[4] This refers to Kh. G. Rakovsky’s speech at an international public meeting in Berne on February 8, 1916, held in connection with the meeting of the enlarged I.S.C. (the speech was published in Bucharest in pamphlet form).
The group of International Socialists of Germany (I.S.D.) issued a pamphlet Die Minderheit des 21. Dezember 1915 (The Minority of December 21, 1915) analysing the voting of the minority of the Social-Democratic group in the Reichstag against war loans on December 21, 1915.
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