Dear friend!

Your fears about "German captivity" and so forth are excessive and unfounded. There is no danger. We are staying here for the time being1. When choosing your place of residence, I ask you very much not to take into account the considerations of whether I will go there or not. It would be absurd, wild, ridiculous if I were to embarrass you in choosing a city by considering whether in the future it "might" happen that I would come there too!..!

I ordered the addresses of the youth organizations. They promised me.

So, about the publishing house's plan: move things forward. An abstract on pacifism? 2

About Engels. If you have come across the "Neueue Zeit" with Kautsky's account (and Engels' letters) of how Engels' preface to the "Klassenkampfe "3 was distorted, it would be good if you could write it down in a special notebook in more detail. If it is not possible, send me the exact No. "Neue Zeit", year, volume, page.

Your attacks on Engelssa are, in my opinion, the height of unreasonableness. Pardon my frankness: one should prepare oneself more seriously before writing like this! Otherwise it is easy to be disgraced - I warn you entre nous2*, in a friendly, face to face manner, in case you ever speak like this in print or at a meeting.

The Belgian] strike? 4By the 1st, it is possible that Engels was wrong about this question of fact, a private question. Of course, it's possible. It is necessary to collect everything he wrote about it. In 2-nd, about the general strike, the general event of the last time, 1905 finally, dalino, which Engels did not know. Engels had been accustomed for tens of years to hearing about the "general strike" only empty phrases of the anarchists, whom he legitimately hated and despised. But events then showed a new type of "mass communication", political, i.e., purely non-anarchist. Engels did not yet know this new type and could not have known it.

We must not forget it.

Was not the Belgian] strike a transition from the old to the new? Could Engels at that time (1891-2?? he was already 71-72 years old; dying) have seen that it was not the old Belgian (the Belgians had been Prudonists for a long time) belching, but a transition to the new? This is something to ponder.

About "defense of the fatherland" I think you are falling into abstraction and unhistoricism. I repeat what I said in the article against Yuri5: defense of the fatherland = justification of participation in the war. Nothing more. To generalize this, to make it a "general principle" is ridiculous, the height of unscientificness. (I will send you the American program Socialist Labour Pfarty]3* with this ridiculous generalization)6. Wars are an archipelagic, diverse, complex thing. One cannot approach it with a general template.

(I) Three main types: the relation of the oppressed nation to the oppressor (every war is a continuation of politics; politics is the relation between nations, classes, etc.). As a general rule, war is legitimate on the part of the oppressed (whether it is defensive or offensive in the military sense).

(II) The relation between the 2 oppressing nations. Struggle for colonies, markets, etc. (Rome and Carthage; England and Germany 1914-7). As a general rule, war of this kind is robbery; and the attitude of democracy (and socialism) to it falls under the rule: "2 thieves fight, let them both perish"....

(III) The third type is the system of equal nations. The question is much more complicated!!!! Especially if tsarism stands next to civilized, comparatively democratic nations. This was (approximately) the case in Europe from 1815 to 1905.

1891. The colial policy of France and Germany is annihilated. Italy, Japan, the United] States have no colonies at all (now they do). In Western Europe there is a system (this is NB!! think about it!!! don't forget it!!! we live not only in separate states, but also in a certain system of states; anarchists are allowed to ignore this; we are not anarchists), a system of gosudarsts, generally constitutional, national.Next to them is the mighty, unshakable, pre-revolutionary tsarism, which robbed and oppressed everyone for hundreds of years, which suppressed the revolutions of 1849 and 1863.

Germany (1891) is a country of advanced socialism. And this country is threatened by tsarism in alliance with boulangerie!

The situation is quite, quite different from 1914-7, when tsarism was undermined in 1905 and Germany waged war to dominate the world.

To equate, even to liken the international situations of 1891 and 1914 is superhistorical.

The fool Radek wrote in a Polish proclamation recently ("Wefreiung Polens"): "Staatenbau "4* is not the aim of the Social Democrats. This is arch-glupo! It is half-anarchism, half-idiotism! No, no, we are not at all indifferent to the Staatenbau, to the system of states, to their mutual relations.

Engels was the father of "passive radicalism"?? Wrong! No such thing. You will never prove it. (Bogdanov and K0 tried, only to be disgraced).

The imperialist war of 1914-7, between the 2 imperialist coalitions we must be against the "defense of the fatherland", for (1) imperialism is the eve of socialism; (2) imperialist war is a war of thieves for booty; (3) in both coalitions there is an advanced proletariat; (4) in both there is a socialist revolt.This is the only reason why we are against the "defense of the fatherland"!

Best greetings and wishes! 5*

P.S. Your last two letters were received both at once, but obviously only through my fault.

Published (without 1 and 2 paragraphs) - Lenin V.I. Complete Collected Works, vol. 49, с. 368-371.

Fund 2, op. 1, d. 4389 - autograph.

1* The letter has a note I.F.Armand: "January 19. 1917", on the basis of which the letter is dated

2* Between us (French).

3* Socialist Labor Party

4* ("Liberation of Poland"): "nation-building" (German).

5* Further Lenin's signature is a pen stroke

1This refers to the situation of Russian emigrants in Switzerland in the event of its entry into the war. In a letter to I.F.Armand on January 3 (16), 1917. Lenin reported: "I think that we will stay in Zurich, that the war is unbelievable" (Lenin V.I. Complete Collected Works, vol. 49, p. 367).

2I.F.Armand was preparing an essay on pacifism. V.I.Lenin helped her with advice, sending materials, criticizing some of the provisions of the abstract (see: Lenin V.I. Complete Collected Works, vol. 49, pp. 344-348, 351-355). On January 8 (21) her speech took place (see: ibid., p. 373).

3This refers to the introduction by F. Engels to a separate edition of K. Marx's work "The Class Struggle in France from 1848 to 1850". (Berlin, 1895) (see: Marx K., Engels F. Oeuvre, 2nd ed., vol. 22, pp. 529-548). At the request of the leadership of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, he had to exclude or soften some particularly revolutionary-sounding passages in the introduction, mainly concerning the experience of armed insurrection and barricade struggle. At the same time Engels protested against the leading article of the Vorwarts newspaper "How the Revolution is Made Nowadays" (in the issue of March 30, 1895), in which tendentiously selected extracts from Engels' introduction distorted his views and presented him as a supporter of exclusively peaceful means of struggle for power. On April 3, 1895 Engels wrote to P. Lafargue: "Liebknecht [editor of Vorwarts - Ed.] has just played a good joke on me. From my introduction ... he has taken everything that could serve him for the defense of the peaceful, by all means anti-violent tactics, which he has recently been pleased to preach". In a letter to K. Kautsky of April 1, 1895, Engels noted that the paper had printed an extract from the introduction, "invited in such a way" that he appeared "as a peace-loving admirer of legality by all means" (Ibid., vol. 39, p. 373, also pp. 376, 379). To counter the vulgarization and distortion of his position, Engels secured the publication of his text of the introduction in Die Neue Zeit before the book was published.

4This refers to the general strike of miners in Belgium in the early days of May 1891. The miners demanded universal suffrage, an 8-hour workday, and higher wages. The strike was not successful. However, the struggle for universal suffrage continued. It was introduced in April 1893.

F.Engels in a letter to P.Lafargue on May 19, 1891 wrote about the strike: "Look at the struggle of the Belgian miners: no or almost no organization, impatience not recognizing any obstacles, and therefore a sure defeat" (Marx K., Engels F. Essays, 2nd ed., 1965, vol. 38, p. 88).

5V.I.Lenin is talking about his article "On the Caricature of Marxism and on 'Imperialist Economism'" (see: Lenin V.I. Complete Collected Works, vol. 30, pp. 77-130).

6V.I. Lenin sent I.F. Armand the resolution of the Socialist Party of America "Basis and form of unity proposed to the Socialist party. Statement adopted by the Socialist labor party in Fourteenth National convention with regard to the question of unity with the Socialist party". Resolution adopted by the Socialist Labor Party at the Fourteenth National convention with regard to the question of unity with the Socialist Party"). Sending the resolution with his remarks, Lenin marked: "Return it" (Lenin's Collection XXXIX, pp. 175-176).