Published:
First published in 1960 in the journal Voprosy Istorii KPSS No. 5.
Sent to Brussels.
Printed from the typewritten text signed by Lenin.
Translated from the French.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1977],
Moscow,
Volume 43,
pages 209b-210.
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
Paris, May 26, 1909
Dear Comrade,
The press reports that the tsar is going on a trip and intends to visit Sweden, Italy, Britain and France.[1]
The Swedish socialists have already found it necessary to take action on this score, and our comrade Branting, on their behalf, has voiced in the Swedish parliament—in the form of an interpellation to the government—a strong protest permeated with the spirit of international socialist solidarity.
We are confident that our comrades in other countries share Branting’s view that the tsar’s visit cannot be regarded as an ordinary official diplomatic act and will on their part protest as the circumstances demand.
It is important, however, to urge them to act without delay. Clearly, the Russian section cannot do so directly. We also believe that the Executive Committee and the Inter-Parliamentary Commission could take the initiative and issue an appeal to affiliated parties and also to their parliamentary groups pointing to the role played by Tsar Nicholas II in the outrages committed by the regime, of which he is not only a representative, but an active and criminal instigator.
The attention of our comrades in the other sections should be especially drawn to the brutality practised in the Russian political prisons, where tens of thousands of our comrades are paying for their striving for freedom and for having fought for the workers’ cause and socialism. These facts were the subject of an interpellation made recently by the Social-Democratic group in the Duma, and we are sending you a translation of this interpellation[2] and would ask you to take note of it in drawing up your appeal and if necessary to forward it to the sections with the re quest that they print it in the press.
With fraternal greetings,
N. Lenin
I. Rubanovich
[1] See Lenin’s article “The Tsar Visits Europe and Members of the Black-Hundred Duma Visit England” (present edition, Vol. 15, pp. 461–66).—Ed.
[2] After receiving this letter, which was signed also by I. Rubanovich, the representative of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in the International Socialist Bureau, the Bureau called on all socialist parties to protest against the tsar’s projected visit to their countries, and if the visit took place, to demonstrate the European workers’ attitude towards it.
The Socialist and Labour groups in the Swedish, British, French, Italian and other parliaments introduced interpellations concerning the visit of the tsar, and in Sweden, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and other countries protest meetings and demonstrations were organised.
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