First Published: Sofia, May 1919.
Source: Georgi Dimitrov, Selected Works
Sofia Press, Sofia, Volume 1, 1972, pp. 59-62.
Transcription/HTML Markup:
Mathias Bismo
Online Version: Marxists Internet Archive
(marxists.org) 2003
Preface to the Pamphlet "Two open letters by Lenin to the American and European workers"
The name of the most authoritative leader of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, Lenin, has become world famous. Today it is pronounced with fear and trepidation by the supporters of the old and shaken bourgeois system in all countries, and with admiration and even religious awe by the proletariat and all enslaved mankind. Side by side with Marx and Engels, the great founders of scientific soand authors of the Communist Manifesto, Lenin imhimself in the history of the workers' emancimovement by the titanic accomplishments of the Russian Socialist Revolution, the practical application of the principles of the Communist Manifesto and the estabof the proletarian Soviet State. His name has become the symbol of the international workers' revolution which, after having triumphed in Russia, swept over Hun shook Germany and is steadily spreading in order to engulf the whole capitalist world.
It is for this very reason that everything written and said by Lenin today assumes tremendous significance for the fighting proletariat in all countries.
Engrossed day and night in the task of building up the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, of crushing the counterfrom within and without, and clearing the road of the workers' revolution in other countries, Lenin has still found time to address two letters - one to the American workers, of August 20, 1918, and the other to the Euroand American workers, of January 21, 1919.
We borrow Lenin's first letter from the Social Demopaper Workers' Education in America, where it was printed after undergoing certain excisions by the American censorship. As can be seen, the deleted passages deal with the situation in America and the present-day revolutionary tasks of the American proletariat.
The second letter is a verbatim translation from the Rusoriginal.
In his first letter, Lenin brilliantly champions the cause of the Russian Socialist Revolution, of the Soviet Republic and its peaceful policy, as well as of the dictatorof the proletariat.
In his second letter, noting the substantial successes of the revolutionary proletariat in various countries in its struggle for political power, he proclaims the actual founof the Communist International, outlining with his customary clarity and sharpness the ways and means of the universal workers' revolution.
We Bulgarian Communists (Left-wing Socialists) are gratified to note that we are in complete agreement with Lenin, that the principles and tactics of the Communist Inare also our principles and tactics.
Lenin's views on bourgeois democracy and parliamenare those most firmly upheld by our Party, which has never been the victim of any parliamentary illusions and has always kept aloof from the fallacies and prejudices of bourgeois democracy. Rejecting bourgeois democracy and parliamentarism, the Bulgarian Communist Party is preparing the proletariat and the working people's masses for a revolution aimed at the conquest of political power. It makes use of electoral campaigns and the parliamentary tribune along with its other means solely for this prepara until the moment about which Lenin is speaking in his second letter sets in in our country, when it will forsake its parliamentary position and go over to an all-round offenin order to overthrow the capitalist state and to replace it by a Soviet proletarian state, by the workers' dicta
The three main trends among the proletariat in all countries, which Lenin has so well described in his second let exist also in Bulgaria. The two trends, the social-patriand the moderate one ('Kautsky's followers') are repby the Right-wing Socialists' party, which with its extreme social-patriots (Sakuzov, Djidrov, Pastouhov, Sakarov, Assen Tsankov, etc.) and its moderates, the Ilautskians (Romanov, Rashenov, etc.), is entirely in the camp of the bourgeois counter-revolution.
The representative of the revolutionary trend is the Bulgarian Communist Party (Left-wing Socialists), which by its nature, its programme and communist slogans, its activity and mass revolutionary struggle is the only ComParty in our country and rightly represents the Bulgarian section of the Communist International.
This being the actual situation, everyone realizes not only how senseless, but also how harmful and treacherous it is to set up various 'communist groups', 'organizations' and 'small parties' outside the Bulgarian Communist Party. These are today ardently desired by some men of unbridled ambition, various supermen, incorrigible individualists, and even parasites of the workers' revolution.
All workers, all working people, all militant and revoelements in our country, who actually adhere to the principles and tactics of the Communist International, and who are - for one reason or another - still outside the Bulgarian Communist Party and its workers' trade unions, outside the workers' revolutionary movement, are today bound to heed Lenin's powerful call, to become deeply imwith his ideas as expounded in these two letters, and to rally without hesitation to the ranks of the Bulgarian Communist Party and its workers' trade unions under the banner of communism.
The 'right' and 'left' counter-revolutionaries are today rapidly organizing and mustering their forces - the latter rallied around the 'leftist' Government of Teodorov-Pas and the former around the Democratand Liberal bourgeois Parties with their military lead pseudo-Macedonian and jingoist gangs.
Against the counter-revolutionists who are thus getting organized, we must set up the mighty revolutionary bloc of the Bulgarian proletariat and the remaining working masses, through the Bulgarian Communist Party and its workers' trade union organizations.
History is posing point-blank the question: either with the counter-revolution - for the preservation of capitalism, or with the workers' revolution - for the abolition of capand through a workers' dictatorship, for the estabof socialism and the complete triumph of communism. There is no middle road!
Everyone ought to find his proper place! Everyone must do his duty!
No splitting of the revolutionary forces of the proletariat! No setting up of separatist groups and organizations! No banking on communism and the communist revolution.
All workers and working people who are ready for a destruggle must be in full revolutionary unity through their Communist Party and their trade unions!
This is the supreme demand of the present historic moment!
This is actually the great practical meaning of the two open letters of the great leader of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic and the world workers' revolution, which we most ardently recommend to the Bulgarian workers and all working people in town and countryside.