V. I.

Lenin

To:   ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI

Dear Comrade, Many thanks for all your trouble and assistance, about
which you write in your last letter.

Your articles in Nashe Slovo and for
Kommunist [1] on
Scandinavian affairs have raised the following question in
my mind:

Can one praise and find correct the position of the Left
Scandinavian Social-Democrats who reject the arming of the people? I argued about this with Höglund in 1910 and
tried to prove to him that this was not Leftism, nor revolutionism, but simply the philistinism of petty-bourgeois
provincials. [2] These Scandinavian petty-bourgeois have
lucked themselves away in their little countries, almost at the
North Pole, and are proud of the fact that you can’t get to
them in a month of Sundays! How can one allow that a revolutionary class on the eve of the social revolution
should be against the arming of the people? This is not
struggle against militarism, but a cowardly attempt to retire from the great questions of the capitalist world.
How can one “recognise” the class struggle, without understanding its inevitable transformation at certain moments
into civil war?

It seems to me that you ought to collect material on this, and come out resolutely against in Kommunist , and
then, for the instruction of the Scandinavians, print it
afterwards in Swedish, etc.

I should like to know your opinion about this in more detail.

Bruce Glasier, in my belief, is an unsuitable contributor:
although he has a proletarian strain in him, still he is an
unbearable opportunist. You will hardly be able to go along
with him: he will start crying after two days, and saying
that he was “trapped”, that he doesn’t want and doesn’t
recognise anything of the kind.

Have you seen the book by David, and his opinion about our
manifesto? [3]

Is there not in the Scandinavian countries any material
on the struggle of the two currents of opinion concerning
the attitude to the war? Could not one gather precise material (reactions, assessments, resolutions) with a precise
contrasting of facts regarding the tendencies of the two
currents? Do facts confirm (in my opinion, they do) that the
opportunists—taken as a current of opinion— are, on the
whole,>chauvinists than the revolutionary Social-
Democrats? What do you think, would it not be possible to gather
and work up such material for Kommunist ?

I shake your hand, and wish you all the best,

N. Lenin

P.S. Who is this Shaw Desmond who has been giving a lecture in the Scandinavian countries? Is the text of
his lecture available in English? Is he a conscious revolutionary, or à la Hervé?