Written: Written after March 19, 1916
Published:
First published in 1924 in Lenin Miscellany II.
Sent from Zurich to Christiania.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
pages 375-376.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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
Dear A. M.,
Thank you very much for your letter. I shall send you the address of the Socialist Propaganda League, unless I have left it behind in Berne: in that case I shall send it over from Berne (i.e., in 2 or 3 weeks’ time).
Do you think Appeal to Reason would refuse to reprint Internationale Flugblätter No. 1? Is it worth trying?
Will the Socialist Labour Party agree to publish, if we pay the costs? Are these people hopeless sectarians or not? Have you any connections with them? Why don’t they send us copies of their papers in the Internationale Sozialistische Kommission? (I saw some quite by chance.) Or are they maniacs with an idée fixe about a special “ economic” organisation of workers?
You ask how desirable it is that the Norwegian party should send its official representative to the conference. Of course, it is 1,000 times better to have a class-conscious and intelligent Left-winger from among the youth, than a Right-winger or a 1/2–Kautskyite from the party.
That is clear. Use your influence on these lines, if you can.
I am very much distressed that we do not see eye to eye on self-determination. Let’s try to argue this out in detail without a squabble (which someone is trying very hard to stir up for us on this score)[1].... Entre nous, perhaps Alexander will show you my reply to N. I. Bukharin’s remarks (for the time being this discord must remain strictly confidential, but I trust to your discretion).
This question (“self-determination”) is of the utmost importance. Besides, it is organically bound up with the question of annexations.
The best of everything,
Yours,
Lenin
P.S. I sent Alexander a great big letter a few days ago. Has he got it?
[1] A hint at the differences and the struggle between Lenin, on the one hand, and Radek, Pyatakov and others, on the other, on the question of self-determination of nations, as a result of which Kommunist ceased publication.
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