V. I.   Lenin

456

To:   G. Y. ZINOVIEV

Written: Written between March 2 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 511^b-513^a.
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

I have sent Self-Defence.^[4]

I agree that No. 52 has to be issued, and I undertake to write an article on the tasks of the conference of 23/IV^[5] (or on the “peace programme”, etc.—generally on the editorial subject of immediate tasks).^[1]

Nadya has translated the Manifesto.^[6] I shall send it to you in a day or two, and you send me the MSS. of the articles and paragraphs you are writing for No. 52. We shall prepare everything in manuscript and then hand it all in to be set up.

The article reporting the meeting of 5–8.II should be cut and a paragraph inserted about Orn. in Nos. 51 and 52 of Nashe Slovo^[7] and about Nashe Slovo generally (I am writing this).

Send a cutting from Dyen^[2] about our victory in the insurance councils (and ask Kasparov, also Abram and others, to follow Novoye Vremya and other newspapers and collect everything there is about this).

It is very important to find out whether Chkheidze spoke about Zimmerwald in the Duma. I read his speech only as reported in Leipziger Volkszeitung: there isn’t a word there about Zimmerwald. Try, through Radek, to trace Chkheidze’s speech in the Social-Democratic press of Germany as fully as possible (Martov & Co. speculate on what Chkheidze said or is going to say for Zimmerwald).

I am drawing up the theses for our “Antrag” for 23/IV on the “peace programme”.

Should we enlist Radek’s co-operation for this job? I don’t think we should. Radek is behaving so meanly! I still^[3] haven’t got many copies of the theses, and I find it repugnant to write to Radek, seeing that he is out for squabbles.

Why didn’t you answer whether you sent my insertion to the theses to be set up? You could have handed it in to the printing shop yourself and get the proofs from there (and order many copies: oh, to hell with him, that Dreckseele von Radek!). We have the right, as authors, to order the proofs of the theses.

We must get from Grimm Bulletin No. 3,^[8] as many copies as we can, both French and German, and send them out everywhere, including all our groups abroad. Here too.

You did not send me the issue of Berner Tagwacht carrying the resolution of the Bremen people, and you don’t send the paper at all, and I don’t get it here.^[9]

What does Abramovich write about the publication of the French Internationale Flugblätter No. 1 in La Chaux-de-Fonds? What arrangements have been made?

Salut!
Lenin

P.S. Rybalka called on me in Geneva and said that all the Dzvin people^[10] have gone out for patriotism, which will be dealt with in No. 6 of Borotba^[11] (Have you Nos. 1–5?) Levinsky, on the other hand, says that Rybalka is simply lying!!??

Send the Lettish material.^[12] What is to be done with it? Shall we publish it, and how?

Notes

[1] Lenin wrote the article “The Peace Programme” (see present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 161–68).—Ed.

[2] I have only the cutting from Rech. —Lenin

[3] It was promised 10.II.1916!! The work is suffering terribly. It is simply outrageous. —Lenin

[4] A collection of articles by Vera Zasulich, A. Potresov, P. Maslov, An (N. Jordania) and others, published in Petrograd in 1916.

[5] This refers to a second international socialist conference planned at the time.

[6] Apparently this refers to the appeal “To All Affiliated Parties and Groups” adopted at the meeting of the enlarged I.S.C. in Berne on February 5--9, 1916. The appeal was published in Sotsial-Demokrat No. 52 for March 25, 1916.

[7] This refers to G. V. Chicherin’s article “Arguments over the Con vocation of the International Socialist Bureau (A Letter from Britain)” published over the signature Orn. (Ornatsky) in Nashe Slovo Nos. 51 and 52 for March 1 and 2, 1916. The article is mentioned by Lenin in his item “Split or Decay?” (see present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 180–81).

[8] The I.S.C. Bulletin No. 3 for February 29, 1916, carried the appeal “To All Affiliated Parties and Groups”.

[9] This refers to No. 49 of the newspaper Berner Tagwacht for February 28, 1916, which published the resolution of a group of Bremen Social-Democrats expressing, among others, a demand that the newspaper Bremen Bürger-Zeitung consistently adhere to the Left radical stand it had adopted before the war.

[10] The Dzvin people—contributors to and followers of Dzvin (Bell)—a legal nationalist journal of a Menshevik trend, published in the Ukrainian language in Kiev from January 1913 to mid-1914.

[11] Borotba (Struggle)—a monthly organ of the Ukrainian S.D.L.P. organisation abroad, published in Geneva from February 3, 1915, to December 1916. Under the flag of Marxism the journal stood for the Ukrainian workers forming a separate S.D. party of their own and came out against the Bolshevik slogan of the right of nations to self-determination.

[12] Apparently this refers to the article by J. Ziemelis, “Activities of the Social-Democrats of the Lettish Region During the War”, which was published later in Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata No. 2.