V. I.

Lenin

531

To:   INESSA ARMAND

Dear Friend, I have just received your postcard. I sent a postcard to you in Berne,
poste restante, a very short one containing a single request for your
response, as your silence began to worry me a bit.

I am very keen now on the idea of publishing leaflets on Swiss affairs.

Something in the nature of a circle of Left-wingers has formed
here. This term is inaccurate, though: so far just a number of meetings
(evoked by my theses). Attended by Nobs, Platten, Münzenberg and several
others of the Young. We discuss the war resolution in connection with the
tasks of the Lefts. These talks have brought home to me most clearly:
1) how devilishly weak (in all respects) the Swiss Lefts are;
2) how poor is the “system” of influence of Bronski and Radek, who have
been writing articles about the Lefts in other countries! The
whole point is that everyone is willingly Left when it comes to foreign countries : it’s cheap!! But when it comes to Switzerland... nothing
doing!

Abramovich promises to distribute 1,500 copies of pamphlets and
leaflets ( will you undertake to translate them ? Systematically and
regularly? Answer!), while Münzenberg, with whom I spoke yesterday, the
head of the organisation of the Young with 4,000!! German
members, undertakes to distribute a maximum of 1,500!!

Guilbeaux, to whom I sent the theses, [1] writes that he is very pleased with them and will use them as a
basis for his newly formed Committee of Internationalists. We
shall see!

I have read Humbert-Droz’s
Plaidoirie !! [2] My God, what muddle in his head! And this in
1916! A hopeless Tolstoyan, I’m afraid.

Grigory writes me that in No. 25 of Arbeiterpolitik there is a
paragraph on “Three Editors of
Kommunist ” [3] and that “Radek is taking the same line with
Y. B.+Bukharin as Tyszka with Lyova”.... At last Grigory too has come to
see it, although he still hangs back on the grounds that “despite this we
ought not to break with Radek”. Ha, ha!

I wonder how you are fixed up. It’s a cold flat, Maison Vincent, isn’t
it? Do you go skiing? I strongly recommend it—it’s very good for the
health. Go skiing in the mountains near Rocher de Naye.

My best regards, Lenin

P.S. What sort of person is Usiyevich’s wife? An energetic woman, I
believe? Will he make a Bolshevik of her or she make a neither-this-nor-that of him?