V. I.

Lenin

91

To:   ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI

Dear A. M., We are sending you the money tomorrow. Many thanks
for the news from Russia. In principle we have nothing against an agreement; we hope that you will be extra careful.

As regards armament of the people versus disarmament, it seems to me all the same that we cannot alter the
programme. [4] If the words about the class struggle are not an
empty phrase in the liberal sense (as they have become with the opportunists, Kautsky and Plekhanov), how can
one object to a fact of history—the transformation of this
struggle, under certain conditions, into civil war? How
moreover can an oppressed class in general be against the
armament of the people?

To reject this means to fall into a semi-anarchist attitude
to imperialism—in my belief, this can be seen in certain
Left-wingers even among ourselves. Once there is imperialism, they say, then we don’t need either self-determination
of nations or the armament of the people! That is a crying
error. It is precisely for the socialist revolution against
imperialism that we need both one and the other.

Is it “realisable”? Such a criterion is incorrect. Without
revolution almost the entire minimum programme is unrealisable. Put in that way, realisability declines into
Philistinism.

It seems to me that this question (like all questions of
Social-Democratic tactics today) can be put only in connection with the evaluation of (and reckoning with) opportunism.
And it is clear that “disarmament”, as a tactical watchword, is opportunism. Moreover it is a provincial one, it stinks of
a little state, detachment from the struggle, poverty of
ideas: “it’s no business of mine”....

We are sending you the draft (individual) of a declaration
of the international
Left. [1]

We urge you to translate it and to pass it on to the Left in Sweden and Norway, in order
to make a business-like advance to a
Verständigung [2] with them. Send us your observations, resp. your counterdraft,
if you wish, and secure the same from the Left in
Scandinavia.

Beste Grüsse. [3]

Yours, Lenin