FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE WAR EPOCH
LETTERS OF V. I. LENIN
TO A. G. SHLYAPNIKOV AND A. M. KOLLONTAI
1914–1917
BERN – ZURICH
prepared for publication and annotated by
St. KRIVTSOV and K. I. SHUTKO
Preface by L. KAMENEV

PREFACE
The letters of Vladimir Ilyich to comrades A. G. Shlyapnikov and A. M. Kollontai cover the period from the first days of the war of 1914 to the first days of the revolution of 1917. Taken together, they provide an irreplaceable, vivid chronicle of events, sketched with all the passion characteristic of Vladimir Ilyich, characterizing the development of our party and the beginnings of the Third International during the war period.
Throughout this entire period, Vladimir Ilyich lived in Switzerland, in Zurich and Bern; Comrade Kollontai lived in Sweden, Norway, and America; Comrade Shlyapnikov during this time traveled to Russia, returned to Scandinavia, and again left for Russia. This explains the intensity of the correspondence, by means of which Vladimir Ilyich endeavored to keep both comrades, through whom he maintained contact from Switzerland with left-wing groups in Sweden, Norway, America, and Russia, informed about the affairs of international socialism.
One must recall the terrible isolation and disconnectedness that set in for Vladimir Ilyich from the beginning of the war. Vladimir Ilyich’s closest collaborators, members of the Central Committee of the party, members of the editorial board, members of the Bolshevik Duma faction (G. I. Petrovsky, A. E. Badaev, M. K. Muranov, F. I. Samoilov, N. R. Shagov, I. V. Stalin, Ya. M. Sverdlov, M. P. Tomsky, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Timofei Spandaryan, L. B. Kamenev, etc., etc.)—all were either in penal servitude or in remote corners of Siberia. Under these conditions, it was natural that Vladimir Ilyich had to value and intensively “develop” any “connection” that offered even the faintest hope of transmitting his thoughts and directives to Russia or to the “left-wing” groups abroad.
Comrade Shlyapnikov, who left Petrograd at the very beginning of the war, and A. M. Kollontai, who had an excellent command of foreign languages, could serve as these transmission points so necessary to Vladimir Ilyich, and that is why Vladimir Ilyich systematically concerned himself with keeping them informed.

LENIN MISCELLANY.
These letters, therefore, represent an essential commentary on the articles by Vladimir Ilyich collected now in Volume XIII of the Collected Works. But, beyond that, these letters also gave expression to aspects of Vladimir Ilyich’s activity which, for various reasons, were not reflected in his public statements.
More than from any other materials accessible to us so far, the letters to A. G. Shlyapnikov and A. M. Kollontai allow us to trace the breadth of Vladimir Ilyich’s international interests, his participation in the formation of “left-wing” groups in various countries, his connection with these groups, and his methods of influencing the processes of developing communist ideology in Europe and America.
Finally, these letters give us a precise picture of the external conditions of Vladimir Ilyich’s literary-political work in 1914–1917 and lift the veil on the harsh conditions of his material situation (see the meager, yet staggering, words of Vladimir Ilyich at the end of letter No. 40).
Standing apart from the entire series of letters from the pre-revolutionary era are the last two letters (Nos. 43 and 44)—Vladimir Ilyich’s first responses to the first revolution of 1917, written on March 16 and 17, New Style (March 3 and 4, Old Style). In them, those thoughts and that will which predetermined October are already cast onto the scales of history.
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The letters of Vladimir Ilyich to Comrades A. G. Shlyapnikov and A. M. Kollontai were provided to the Institute by the said comrades.
All of them were written in Vladimir Ilyich’s own hand.
Some of them contain postscripts by Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya. To these letters we have appended two surviving fragments of drafts of his letters to the Socialist Propaganda League in America and to Comrade H. Roland-Holst, found among Vladimir Ilyich’s papers.
These fragments will help to understand the corresponding passages in the letters to Shlyapnikov and Kollontai.
A group of letters (7 in total) among those handed over to the Institute by Comrades Shlyapnikov and Kollontai is entirely devoted to the conflict connected with the publication of the journal “Kommunist.” To date, this conflict has not yet received any reflection in the literature. The editors of the “Miscellany” are aware that a number of materials relating to this conflict are in the possession of certain comrades, primarily Comrade Zinoviev.
We have therefore decided to set aside this group of Vladimir Ilyich’s letters, with the intention of supplementing these letters with other materials in one of the subsequent “Miscellanies,” in order to give the reader a comprehensive picture of this rather important episode in intra-party relations.

L. B. KAMENEV.----PREFACE TO THE LETTERS.

All the letters being published have been prepared for publication and provided with notes by Comrade K. I. Shutko under the guidance of Comrade S. S. Krivtsov. For the commentaries, Comrade Shlyapnikov’s reply letters to Vladimir Ilyich were used, as well as his book “The Eve of 1917” (two parts) and A. M. Kollontai’s book “From My Life,” Odessa, 1921.
L. Kamenev.

1.
Dear friend!
I arrived home yesterday evening from a lecture tour and found your letter. A huge greeting to you, and through you to all Russian friends!
I gave Vandervelde’s reply 1) for translation yesterday and have not yet seen the text. I will write about it as soon as I see it.
In my view, what is most important now is a consistent and organized struggle against the chauvinism that has seized the entire bourgeoisie and the majority of opportunist (and those who tolerate opportunism—tel 2) Mr. Kautsky!) socialists. And to fulfill the tasks of this struggle, one must first of all fight against the chauvinism of one’s own country—concretely, in our case, against the Messrs. à la 3) Maslov 4) and Smirnov 5) (see “Russkiye Vedomosti” and “Russkoye Slovo”), whose “works” I have read, or Messrs. Sokolov 6), Meshkovsky 7), Nikitin 8), and others, whom you have seen or heard. Plekhanov, as it seems you have already been written, has become a French-style chauvinist. Among the liquidators, there is apparently disarray *). Aleksinsky, they say, is a Francophile. Kossovsky (a Bundist, right-wing, I heard his lecture) is a Germanophile **). It looks as though the middle line of the entire “Brussels bloc” of the Messrs. liquidators with Aleksinsky and Plekhanov will be an adaptation to Kautsky, who is now the most harmful of all 9).
His sophistry is so dangerous and vile—
*) Among our Parisian intellectuals (outvoted in the section by the workers), some have gone as volunteers (Nik[olai] Vas[ilyevich], Antonov, and others) 10) and, together with the S[ocialist]-R[evolutionaries], have issued a stupid non-party appeal.
It has been sent to you.
**) Martov is the most decent in “Golos” 11). But will Martov hold out? I do not believe it.
To A. Shlyapnikov.
17/X – 1914.