V. I.

Lenin

On the Appeal of the German Independents [3]

We seldom have a chance now of receiving foreign newspapers
in Russia: the blockade with which the “democratic capitalists” of the
Entente have surrounded us is apparently operating effectively. They are
afraid to acquaint the educated workers of America, Britain and France with
ignorant and uncivilised Bolshevism, they are afraid lest people in this
land of uncivilised Bolshevism get to know of its successes in the
West.

But despite the zealous efforts of the gendarmery of the new Holy
Alliance to suppress it, the truth will out!

The other day I happened to see several numbers of the Berlin newspaper
Die Freiheit , the organ of the so-called “independent” German
Social-Democrats. The front page of No. 74 (for 11.11.1919) carried a
lengthy appeal “To the Revolutionary Proletariat of Germany” signed by
the Central Committee of the party and its parliamentary group. The ideas,
or rather the lack of ideas, underlying this appeal are so characteristic
of not only the German, but of the world’s labour movement, that they
deserve to be dwelt upon.

But first I should like to make a digression connected with personal
reminiscences. Among the signatures of the parliamentary group of
Independents I came across the names of Seger and Laukant, and they
reminded me of what happened three years ago. I had occasion to meet
Laukant at a meeting of the Zimmerwaldists in

Berne. [4] This seemingly influential Berlin worker produced a dual
impression: on the one hand, serious revolutionary work among the masses,
on the other, an astonishing lack of theoretical [1] and appalling short-sightedness. Laukant did not like my sharp attacks on
Kautsky (the ideological “leader” of the Independents, or rather leader
of their non-ideology), but he did not refuse to help me when, doubtful of
my unreliable German, I showed him the text of a short speech in German I
had

written, [2] in which I quoted the statement of the “American Bebel”, Eugene Debs, to
the effect that he would rather be shot than agree to vote for imperialist
war loans, and that he would agree to fight only in a war of the workers
against the capitalists. On the other hand, when, with furious indignation,
I showed Laukant the passage from Kautsky’s article in which that gentleman
denounced the workers’ street demonstrations as adventurism [5] (and that under Wilhelm II) Laukant shrugged his
shoulders and answered with exasperating coolness: “Our workers don’t read
this as attentively as all that! I’m not obliged to agree with every line
of Kautsky’s, am I?”

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Notes:
[1]
Apparently the word “interests” or “knowledge” has been omitted in
the manuscript. — Lenin

[2]
See Volume 22 of this edition, pp. 125-26 . — Lenin