V. I.

Lenin

190

To:   J. A. BERZIN

15/X. 1918

Comrade Berzin

Dear Comrade, I have received from you odd copies, as always, of
foreign newspapers (can’t you have someone make cuttings of
(a) everything about Russia; (b) everything about the socialist parties of all countries).

I see from them, incidentally, that Graber and Grimm have stupidly and basely attacked Guilbeaux. How could
you see something bad in his taking the money? I don’t understand.

You can’t censure a valuable comrade without formally going into the matter!? Who of the Party members (
appointed by you) went into it? No one! Yet from Guilbeaux’s
information and from the decision of the Geneva
Commission it is as clear as clear can be that the case is in favour of Guilbeaux.

N.B. Send me: Longuet, La politique internationale du marxisme. Karl Marx et la France. Vandervelde,
L’Etat et le socialisme [1] and all similar pamphlets in
French, German, English and Italian, all, all , all!
Also: La Russie socialiste (socialistes-révolutionnaires de gauche ), see La Feuille = (Genève), [4]
3. X. 1918. [2]

Pierre
Loti, Quelques aspects du vertige mondial , Paris (
Flammarion). Leon Frapie, Les contes de la guerre (ibid.).

I have just received from Sverdlov a set of your publications (it would do no harm if you sent this set to me as
well).

Too little! Too little!! Too little!!!

Engage a group of translators and publish 10 times as much. Peluso can (and should)
write three small pamphlets a week (on all subjects, compilations from our newspapers—
you provide the themes and a list of the articles suitable
for compilation ). His article in Droit du Peuple [3] “(
Counter-Revolutionaries”) is good .
Pay him well and publish
10 times as much . (Translators must be engaged, in order
to publish in 4 languages: French, German, English and
Italian .
You have nothing in the last two. Scandalous!
Scandalous!!)

You have plenty of money. (Send without fail an account of the sums you have spent.) We shall give more and still more, in plenty . Write how much.

A 100 times more must he published, in 4 languages, pamphlets of 4–8--16–32 pages. Engage people for this.

N.B.

Collect a set of Spartakusbund (I have seen No. 11, IX.
1918) [5] and republish the entire set in 4 languages . Also
Junius and Liebknecht. Commission a history of the struggle against social-chauvinism in Britain, France, Germany, Italy. Form groups for this purpose (Gorter, Balabanova+?
+??, etc.).

Yours, Lenin

P.S. What is your optimism about revolutions in the countries de l’Entente based on? Facts? Considerations? If
necessary, send in code, but write more precisely.

N.B.

If you are ill, undergo treatment seriously and do not leave the sanatorium. Keep in touch by telephone, and send
your deputy for visits.

---
Notes:
[1]
Apparently this refers to E. Vandervelde’s pamphlet Le Socialisme centre l’Etat , Paris, 1918.— Ed .

[2]
I think the Left S.R.s have here lied terribly. It is necessary
at once to commission someone (Leiteisen even) to make a
compilation from Pravda and Izvestia against the lies of the Left S.R.s (and
also from Znamya Trudovoi Kommuny and from Volya Truda [6] ).
— Lenin

[3]
Droit du Peuple —a weekly, organ of the Social-Democratic
Party of Switzerland, and of the party branches in the canton
of Vaud and the city of Lausanne.— Ed .

[4]
On October 3, 1918, the newspaper La Feuille reported the
publication of the book La Russie socialiste , which had been compiled
by Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.

La Feuille —a daily newspaper published in Geneva from 1917
to 1920. While not formally the organ of any particular party,
its views were those of the Second International.

[6]
Znamya Trudovoi Kommuny (Banner of the Labour Commune)
—a newspaper, published originally, from July 26 to August 18, 1918, under the title Znamya Borby (Banner of Struggle) as the
organ of a group of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Later, from
August 21, it was the organ of the Party of Narodnik Communists,
a break-away from the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party. The
newspaper ceased publication in November 1918, when an extraordinary congress of the Party of Narodnik Communists passed
a resolution dissolving the party and merging it with the
R.C.P.(B.).

Volya Truda (The Will of Labour)—a newspaper, the organ
of the Party of Revolutionary Communism, which broke away
from the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party in September 1918.
It appeared from September 14 to December 4, 1918. From
December 29, 1918, the daily newspaper was replaced by a periodical with
the same title; it was published until October 1920, when the
Party of Revolutionary Communism merged with the R.C.P.(B.).

[5]
This refers to the illegally published “Letters” of the Spartacus
group; twelve such letters were issued between September 1916
and October 1918.