V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v49; en:CW/CW35;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

Dear Friend! As for the adaptation for the French, I would not undertake it.* Perhaps you could try?

It was written for the Swiss: both the “military aspect” is special here (for a small state) and the inner-party situation is different, etc., etc. Besides, I would not have the concrete material on France.

I would be heartily glad to do something for the French Left, but somehow no contact is being established. Grisha writes long but extremely muddle-headed letters, pours out verbiage, chews over old stuff, communicates nothing sensible, nothing precise about the French Left, and establishes absolutely no contact with them.

As regards the fatherland, you apparently want to establish a contradiction between my writings of earlier (when? 1913? where exactly? what exactly?) and now. I do not think there are any contradictions. Find the exact texts, then we shall see.

Of course, there have always been differences between the orthodox and the opportunists on the understanding of the fatherland (cf. Plekhanov, 1907 or 1910; Kautsky, 1905 and 1907; and Jaurès, *L’Armée Nouvelle*).** I fully agree with this: here the divergence is fundamental. That I should have said anything anywhere against this, I do not think.

* This refers to V. I. Lenin’s theses “The Tasks of the Left Zimmerwaldists in the Swiss Social-Democratic Party”. — Ed.
** — *The New Army*. — Ed.

That the defence of the fatherland is admissible (when it is admissible) only as the defence of democracy (in the corresponding epoch) is also my opinion.

The proletarians must, of course, never “merge” with the general democratic movement. Marx and Engels did not “merge” with the bourgeois-democratic movement in Germany in 1848. We Bolsheviks did not “merge” with the bourgeois-democratic movement in 1905.

We Social-Democrats always stand for democracy not “in the name of capitalism”, but in the name of clearing the path for our movement, which clearing is impossible without the development of capitalism.

Best greetings. Yours, Lenin
P.S. If you need books, write.

Sörenberg (Switzerland)