V. I.   Lenin

1922

ON THE QUESTION OF STRUGGLE AGAINST WAR


Published: First published on January 20, 1929 in Pravda No. 17. Printed from a typescript copy. Received by telephone by L. A. Fotieva.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 36, page 559.
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


 

TO COMRADES BUKHARIN, ZINOVIEV AND MOLOTOV (FOR MEMBERS OF THE POLITICAL BUREAU)

On the subject of yesterday’s report from Hanover that the International Federation of Metalworkers is raising the question of struggle against war and has adopted a resolution to respond to war with a strike,[1] I suggest the following:

1. That a number of articles be printed in Pravda and Izvestia, giving a reminder of the fate of the Basle Manifesto and a detailed explanation of all the childishness or all the social-treachery, now being repeated by the metal-workers.

2. That at the next enlarged meeting of the Executive Committee of the Comintern there be put on the agenda the question of struggle against war, and that circumstantial resolutions be adopted explaining that only a ready and experienced revolutionary party, with a good illegal machinery, can successfully wage a struggle against war, and that the means of struggle is not a strike against war, but the formation of revolutionary groups in the warring armies and their preparation for the carrying out of a revolution.

February 4, 1922

Lenin


Notes

[1] A reference to the following telegram published in Pravda and Izvestia on February 3, 1922: “Hanover, January 31 (Radio). The International Metalworkers’ Federation has proposed to the Commission for the Convocation of an International Workers’ Congress due to open in Rome on April 21, that a general strike of the organised workers should be declared in the event of the outbreak of war. The Metalworkers’ Federation has elected a special commission for the vigorous propaganda of its proposal.” = This decision was taken by the Vienna conference of the Executive Committee of the International Metalworkers’ Federation, which was affiliated to the reformist Amsterdam International of Trade Unions. The latter existed from 1919 to 1945.


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