V. I.

Lenin

456

To:   G. Y. ZINOVIEV

I have sent
Self-Defence . [4]

I agree that No. 52 has to be issued, and I undertake to write an
article on the tasks of the conference of
23/IV [5] (or on the “peace programme”, etc.—generally on the
editorial subject of immediate tasks). [1]

Nadya has translated the
Manifesto. [6] I shall send it to you in a day or two, and you send me
the MSS. of the articles and paragraphs you are writing for No. 52. We
shall prepare everything in manuscript and then hand it all in to be set
up.

The article reporting the meeting of 5–8.II should be cut and a
paragraph inserted about Orn. in Nos. 51 and 52 of Nashe Slovo [7] and about Nashe Slovo generally (I am writing
this).

Send a cutting from
Dyen [2] about our victory in the insurance councils ( and ask Kasparov,
also Abram and others, to follow Novoye Vremya and other newspapers and collect everything there is about this).

It is very important to find out whether Chkheidze spoke about
Zimmerwald in the Duma. I read his speech only as reported in Leipziger Volkszeitung: there isn’t a word
there about Zimmerwald. Try, through Radek, to trace Chkheidze’s speech in
the Social-Democratic press of Germany as fully as possible
(Martov & Co. speculate on what Chkheidze said or is going to say
for Zimmerwald).

I am drawing up the theses for our “Antrag” for 23/IV on the “peace
programme”.

Should we enlist Radek’s co-operation for this job? I don’t think we
should. Radek is behaving so meanly!
I still [3] haven’t got many copies of the theses, and I find it
repugnant to write to Radek, seeing that he is out for squabbles.

Why didn’t you answer whether you sent my insertion to the theses to be
set up? You could have handed it in to the printing shop yourself
and get the proofs from there (and order many copies: oh,
to hell with him, that Dreckseele von Radek!). We have the right ,
as authors, to order the proofs of the theses.

We must get from Grimm Bulletin
No. 3, [8] as many copies as we can , both French and German,
and send them out everywhere , including all our groups
abroad. Here too .

You did not send me the issue of Berner Tagwacht carrying the resolution of the Bremen people, and you don’t send
the paper at all, and I don’t get it here. [9]

What does Abramovich write about the publication of the French Internationale Flugblätter No. 1 in La Chaux-de-Fonds? What
arrangements have been made?

Salut!
Lenin

P.S. Rybalka called on me in Geneva and said that all the Dzvin
people [10] have gone out for patriotism, which will be dealt with in
No. 6 of
Borotba [11] (Have you Nos. 1–5?) Levinsky, on the other hand,
says that Rybalka is simply lying!!??

Send the Lettish material. [12] What is to be done with it? Shall we publish it, and how?

---
Notes:
[1]
Lenin wrote the article “The Peace Programme” (see present edition,
Vol. 22, pp. 161–68).— Ed .

[2]
I have only the cutting from Rech . — Lenin

[3]
It was promised 10.II.1916!! The work is suffering terribly. It is
simply outrageous . — Lenin

[4]
A collection of articles by Vera Zasulich, A. Potresov, P. Maslov, An
(N. Jordania) and others, published in Petrograd in 1916.

[5]
This refers to a second international socialist conference planned at
the time.

[6]
Apparently this refers to the appeal “To All Affiliated Parties and
Groups” adopted at the meeting of the enlarged I.S.C. in Berne on February
5--9, 1916. The appeal was published in Sotsial-Demokrat No. 52
for March 25, 1916.

[7]
This refers to G. V. Chicherin’s article “Arguments over the Con
vocation of the International Socialist Bureau (A Letter from Britain)”
published over the signature Orn. (Ornatsky) in Nashe Slovo
Nos. 51 and 52 for March 1 and 2, 1916. The article is mentioned by Lenin
in his item “Split or Decay?” (see present edition, Vol. 22,
pp. 180–81).

[8]
The I.S.C. Bulletin No. 3 for February 29, 1916, carried the
appeal “To All Affiliated Parties and Groups”.

[9]
This refers to No. 49 of the newspaper Berner Tagwacht for
February 28, 1916, which published the resolution of a group of Bremen
Social-Democrats expressing, among others, a demand that the newspaper
Bremen Bürger-Zeitung consistently adhere to the Left radical
stand it had adopted before the war.

[10]
The Dzvin people—contributors to and followers of
Dzvin (Bell)—a legal nationalist journal of a Menshevik trend,
published in the Ukrainian language in Kiev from January 1913 to mid-1914.

[11]
Borotba (Struggle)—a monthly organ of the Ukrainian
S.D.L.P. organisation abroad, published in Geneva from February 3, 1915, to
December 1916. Under the flag of Marxism the journal stood for the
Ukrainian workers forming a separate S.D. party of their own and came out
against the Bolshevik slogan of the right of nations to self-determination.

[12]
Apparently this refers to the article by J. Ziemelis, “Activities of
the Social-Democrats of the Lettish Region During the War”, which was
published later in Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata No. 2.