V. I.

Lenin

To:   A. G. SHLYAPNIKOV

October 27, 1914

Dear Friend, I have just received your second letter, and sit down
to have a talk with you.

Many thanks for the letter about events in St.
Petersburg. [3] It will make an excellent report for the Central
Organ. An issue of the Central Organ will be published in a
few days, and we shall send it to you. Wait for it. Wait
also for the next issue. You must stay for the time being
in Stockholm until transport through Stockholm (1) of letters,
(2) of people and (3) of literature has been completely
organised. For this you should systematically train and
test a good transmitting agent in Stockholm. Is Comrade
Skovno suitable for this? What’s good about her is that
she is a Bolshevik. She won’t go over to the other side.
But is she business-like, is she alert, does she attend to
details?

I am delighted if Comrade
Kollontai [4] has taken up our position, and I am also glad at the excellent (on the
whole) management of Golos by Martov in Paris. But I am in deadly fear that Martov (and others akin to him) will
go over ... to the position taken up by Kautsky and Troelstra.
I hate and despise Kautsky now more than anyone, with his vile, dirty self-satisfied hypocrisy. Nothing has happened,
so he says, principles have not been abandoned, everyone was entitled to defend his fatherland. It is
internationalism, if you please, for the workers of all countries
to shoot one another “in order to defend their fatherland”.

Rosa Luxemburg was right when she wrote, long ago, that Kautsky has the “subservience of a theoretician”—
servility, in plainer language, servility to the majority of
the Party, to opportunism. Just now there is nothing in
the world more harmful and dangerous for the ideological
independence of the proletariat than this rotten self– satisfaction and disgusting hypocrisy of Kautsky, who wants to
smother and cover up everything, to tranquillise the awakened conscience of the workers by sophistries and
pseudo-scientific chatter. If Kautsky succeeds in this, he will
become the main representative of bourgeois corruption in
the working-class movement. And Troelstra will be for him
—oh, that Troelstra is a more skilful opportunist than the
“kind” little old man Kautsky! How that Troelstra manoeuvred in order to drive honest men and Marxists out of the
Dutch Party (Gorter, Pannekoek, Wijnkoop)!! I shall never forget how Roland-Hoist, when she once visited
me in Paris, said about Troelstra: “ ein hundsgemeiner Kerl ”
( gredin , in
French) [1]

....

I am sorry that you cast pearls before him.... [5] Troelstra+the opportunist scoundrels in
the
Vorstand [2] of the German Social-Democrats are carrying
on a dirty little intrigue in order to cover everything up.
Be on your guard, don’t become the unwilling victim of that intrigue!! Don’t accidentally give any help to these
worst enemies of the working-class movement, who in an epoch of crisis are defending chauvinism “theoretically”,
and carrying on a petty and revolting diplomacy. The only one who has told the workers the truth—although not
loudly enough, and sometimes not quite skilfully—is
Pannekoek, whose article we have sent to you (pass on a
translation to the
Russians). [6] His words, that if now the “ leaders” of the International that was murdered by the
opportunists and Kautsky come together and begin “papering
over” the cracks, this “will be of no significance whatever”—
these are the only socialist words.
They are the truth . Bitter, but the truth. And now the workers need the truth, the whole
truth, more than at any other time, not rotten diplomacy,
not playing at “papering over”, not smearing over the evil
with indiarubber resolutions.

It is clear to me that Kautsky, Troelstra plus
Vandervelde (it may be plus X+Y+Z or minus X, Y, Z—this is
not important) are now busy with an intrigue for that purpose. The transfer of the International Bureau to
Holland is a similar intrigue by the same scoundrels.

I shall keep away from them and from it—and will give the same advice to our representative in the International
Socialist Bureau (Litvinoff, 76. High Street. Hampstead,
London, N. W.)—and I advise you to do the same.

“ Don’t attend the counsels of the impious”, [7] don’t put any faith in Troelstra, and the like, etc., etc., just
present them with a brief ultimatum: here is the manifesto
(a revision of the theses; we shall send it to you in print
in a few days) of our C.C. on the war: do you want to publish it in your language?? No? Well, then adieu , our roads
diverge!

If Kollontai is on our side, let her help to “push” this
manifesto in the other languages. Make the acquaintance
of Höglund , a young Swedish Social-Democrat, leader of the
“opposition”, read him our manifesto (refer to me: we became acquainted at Copenhagen). Sound out whether he
Is ideologically close to us (he is only a naïve, sentimental
anti-militarist: these are the very people who should be
told—either the watchword of civil war, or remain with the
opportunists and the chauvinists).

The essence of the whole problem in Russia now is to organise an ideological rebuff to the opportunists of the
International and to Kautsky. This is the key question.
Won’t Martov go over at this point??... I fear so!...

All the best, Yours, Lenin

---
Notes:
[1]

“ A scoundrelly son of a bitch.”— Ed .

[2]
Executive or C.C.— Ed.

[3]
Die Neue Zeit (New Times)—theoretical journal of the German
Social-Democratic Party. It was published in Stuttgart from 1883 to
1923. Up to October 1917 it was edited by Karl Kautsky, and afterwards by
Heinrich Cunow. During the First World War the journal took up a Centrist
position and virtually supported the social-chauvinists.

[4]
Kollontai, Alexandra (1872–1952)—-member of the
Social-Democratic movement from the 1890s, took part in the revolution of
1905–07. Between 1906 and 1915 she was associated with the Mensheviks. In
1915 she became a member of the Bolshevik Party, having adopted a
revolutionary-internationalist stand at the out break of war. After the
October Socialist Revolution she held responsible posts.

[5]
At the end of October 1914 Shlyapnikov talked with Pieter Troelstra,
leader of the Dutch Social-Democratic movement, who had come to Stockholm
on behalf of the opportunist leaders of German Social-Democracy to get an
agreement on the transfer of the Inter national Socialist Bureau (I.S.B.)
to Amsterdam for the duration of the war, and to influence the Scandinavian
Social-Democrats towards justifying the treacherous position taken up by
the leaders of German Social-Democracy. During his meeting with Troelstra,
which took place in the presence of a representative of the Organising
Committee, Y. Larin, the Menshevik Dalin, Alexandra Kollontai and others,
Shlyapnikov handed him the manifesto of the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P., and the
reply of the Bolshevik group in the Duma to Emile Vandervelde, and later,
at his request, sent him letters explaining the Bolsheviks’ attitude to the
war.

[6]
Reference is to Anton Pannekoek’s article “Der Zusammenbruch der
Internationale” (“The Collapse of the International”), printed in
Berner Tagwacht , the organ of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party,
Nos. 245, 246 and 247, for October 20, 21 and 22, 1914.

[7]
Lenin refers to the conference of socialists of the neutral countries
proposed by Pieter Troelstra and Thorvald Stauning. The conference took
place in Copenhagen on January 17–18, 1915. It was attended by
representatives of the socialist parties of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and
Holland. The conference approved a resolution calling on the
Social-Democratic parties of the neutral countries to urge their
governments to mediate between the belligerent countries and thereby help
to restore peace. Some of the Social-Democratic parties placed before the
conference declarations on their attitude to the war. From the C.C. of the
R.S.D.L.P. the conference received No. 33 of Sotsial-Demokrat
containing the manifesto “The War and Russian Social-Democracy”, and an
official report of the arrest of the Bolshevik deputies to the Duma.