V. I.

Lenin

455

To:   INESSA ARMAND

Dear Friend, I know that you are interested in science, and not in
politics. Nevertheless your sympathies, I have no doubt about it, are with
France. The split among the German socialists, as one French minister
expressed it, is not a matter of indifference to France. Therefore we must
help inform the Russians as well as the French about this. Otto Rühle,
M.P., plumped in Vorwärts for a split. But it should definitely
be added: not “only” Otto Rühle, but also the group of
International Socialists of Germany ( l’Humanité , too, wrote
about it). Please insert this when next writing to Petrograd. And also the
following: only Otto Rühle and the International Socialists of
Germany declared plainly for a split and against the “marsh”; as to the
Internationale group (the German group of whom also Homo
wrote in l’Humanité : a beauty of a newspaper!)—this group is wavering: the majority in it are clearly turning back to the marsh. This is
obvious from this group’s recent “theses” [1] and from the press statements of Ströbel in Neue Zeit and from the newspaper Die Gleichheit . [2] So don’t forget to add this! Science is everything
to you, but a little sympathy towards France, a lot of sympathy, I
should say, you undoubtedly have!

Salutations cordiales!

Lenin

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Notes:
[1]
The theses “On the Tasks of International Social-Democracy” were
drafted by Rosa Luxemburg and adopted at the conference of German Lefts
held in January 1916 in Berlin. See Lenin’s article “The Junius Pamphlet”
(present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 305–19).

[2]
Die Gleichheit —a Social-Democratic fortnightly journal,
mouth piece of the women workers’ movement in Germany, and eventually of
the international women’s movement; appeared in Stuttgart from 1890 to
1925. From 1892 to 1917 it was edited by Clara