Written: Written July 31, 1920
Published:
First published in 1965 in the Fifth Russian Edition of the Collected Works, Vol. 54.
Printed from the manuscript.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
2nd English Printing,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 42,
page 205b.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
D. Walters
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2003).
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 move the following resolution by a collection of signatures in the Politbureau:
The Politbureau of the C.C. considers the publication in No. 12 of the Communist International of Gorky’s articles extremely inappropriate, especially the editorial, as there is not only nothing communist about these articles, but a good deal that is anti-communist in them. In future such articles must on no account be published in the Communist International.
Lenin[1]
[1] The draft is signed also by L.D. Trotsky, N. N. Krestinsky and M.I. Kalinin.—Ed.
[2] This refers to Maxim Gorky’s article “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" published as an editorial in the journal The Communist International No. 12, 1920, and Gorky’s letter to H. G. Wells published in the same issue.
Both the article and the letter, though inspired by genuine affection for Lenin and admiration for his activities, were written from erroneous positions of the personality cult and contained a number of politically harmful theses. Gorky gave extremely subjective and virtually idealist appraisals of the role of Lenin and the Russian people, and the nature of the revolution in Russia. He overlooked the leading role of the Communist Party, the decisive role of the working class and the peasantry in the revolution.
Lenin’s motion was adopted by the Politbureau of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) on July 31, 1920.
The Communist International, organ of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, was published in Russian, German, French, English, Spanish and Chinese. The first issue appeared onMay 1, 1919.
The journal published theoretical articles and documents of the Comintern and a number of articles by Lenin (“The Third International and Its Place in History”, The Tasks of the Third International”, “Ramsay MacDonald on the Third International”, “Greetings to Italian, French and German Communists”, “The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, “Notes of a Publicist" and others). All member Parties of the Comintern were represented on the journal’s edi torial board. The journal dealt with the fundamental questions of Marxist-Leninist theory bearing on the problems of the inter-national labour and communist movements and the experience of socialist construction in the Soviet Union. It quickly became a mouthpiece for the Stalin faction of the Communist Party, supporting all the zig-zags of the Comintern during the 30s and 40s. Publication finally ceased in June 1943 following the decision by the Presidium of the Comintern’s Executive on May 15, 1943, dissolving the Communist International.
| | | | | | |