Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Interview with the Correspondent of The New York Herald^[1]

Published: ( Krasnaya Gazeta (Petrograd) No. 84, April 14, 1922 ). Printed from the newspaper text.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, page 417^a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala and D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). 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.

In his talk with the correspondent of the American newspaper The New York Herald on the subject of the Genoa Conference, Lenin stated:

This Conference should be guided only by one economic principle. Russia is well aware of what she can expect from the bourgeois states. The present state of affairs cannot continue any longer. It is disastrous both for Russia and for the whole world.

Russia stands in need of trade with the bourgeois states. On the other hand, the bourgeois governments are well aware that the economic life of Europe cannot be adjusted without Russia.

However, those who intend to offer humiliating terms to the Russian delegation at Genoa are deeply mistaken. Russia will not allow herself to be treated as a vanquished country. If the bourgeois governments try to adopt such a tone towards Russia they will be committing the greatest folly.

Notes

[1] The New York Herald—an American daily, organ of the Republican Party. Published in New York from 1835 to 1924.