ARCHIVAL NOTE. «Letter to the Austrian Communists» was written in V.I. Lenin's own hand with black ink on 4 sheets, on one side of each half-sheet of ordinary lined writing paper.
V.I. Lenin.
2.
LETTER TO THE AUSTRIAN COMMUNISTS.
The Austrian Communist Party has decided to boycott the elections to the bourgeois-democratic parliament. The recently concluded Second Congress of the Communist International1) recognized participation of communists in elections to bourgeois parliaments and in these parliaments themselves as correct tactics.
I have no doubt, based on reports from the delegates of the Austrian Communist Party, that the decision of the Communist International will be placed by it above the decision of one of the parties. It is also hardly subject to doubt that the Austrian Social Democrats, these traitors to socialism who have gone over to the side of the bourgeoisie, will gloat over the decision of the Communist International, which differed with the boycott decision of the Austrian Communist Party. But conscious workers will, of course, pay no attention to the gloating of such gentlemen as the Austrian Social Democrats, comrades of Scheidemanns and Noskes, Albert Thomases, and Gompers. The servility of the Messrs. Renner to the bourgeoisie has sufficiently revealed itself, and in all countries the indignation of the workers against the heroes of the 2 1/2 or yellow International is growing and spreading more and more.
The Austrian Social Democratic gentlemen in the bourgeois parliament, as in all fields of their "work," right up to their own press, behave like petty-bourgeois democrats, capable only of characterless vacillations with their complete factual dependence on the class of capitalists. We, the communists, go into the bourgeois parliament in order, from this platform of a completely

LETTER TO THE AUSTRIAN COMMUNISTS
rotten capitalist institution, in which the workers and toilers are deceived, to expose the deception.
One argument of the Austrian communists against participation in the bourgeois parliament deserves somewhat more careful consideration. This argument is as follows:
"Parliament is of significance for communists only as a platform for agitation. We in Austria have a Soviet of workers' deputies as a platform for agitation. Therefore, we refuse to participate in elections to the bourgeois parliament. In Germany, there is no Soviet of workers' deputies that could be taken seriously. Therefore, the German communists adhere to a different tactic."
I consider this argument incorrect. As long as we are not yet in a position to dissolve the bourgeois parliament, we must work against it both from the outside and from the inside. As long as any significant number of toilers—not only proletarians, but also semi-proletarians and small peasants—still trust the bourgeois-democratic instruments of the bourgeoisie's deception of the workers, we must explain the deception precisely from the "tribune" that the backward strata of the workers and especially the non-proletarian toiling masses consider the most essential, the most authoritative.
As long as we, the communists, are not yet in a position to seize state power and conduct elections only by the toilers and for Soviets against the bourgeoisie, as long as the bourgeoisie still disposes of state power, calling for elections from different classes of the population, we are obliged to participate in the elections for agitation among all toilers, not only proletarians. As long as the workers are deceived in the bourgeois parliament, covering up financial frauds and all sorts of bribery with phrases about "democracy" (nowhere is bribery of a particularly "subtle" kind in relation to writers, deputies, lawyers, etc., carried out by the bourgeoisie so widely as in the bourgeois parliament), then we, the communists, are obliged precisely in this institution, which supposedly expresses the will of the people, but in reality covers up the deception of the people by the rich, to relentlessly expose the deception, to expose each and every case of Renners and Co. going over to the side of the capitalists against the workers. The relationships between the bourgeois parties and factions most often reveal themselves precisely in parliament and reflect the relationships between all classes of bourgeois society. Therefore, precisely in the bourgeois parliament, from within it, we, the communists, must explain to the people the truth about the relationship of classes to parties, about the relationship of landlords to farmhands, of rich peasants to the poorest peasantry, of big capital to employees and small proprietors, etc.
All this the proletariat must know in order to learn to understand all the vile and subtle tricks of capital, in order to learn to influence the petty-bourgeois masses, the non-proletarian toiling masses. Without this "science," the proletariat cannot successfully cope with the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for even then the bourgeoisie, from its new position (the position of the overthrown class), will continue its policy of fooling the peasants, bribing and intimidating employees, covering up its selfish and dirty aspirations with phrases about "democracy" in different forms, in different fields.
No. The Austrian communists will not be frightened by the gloating of the Renners and similar lackeys of the bourgeoisie. The Austrian communists will not be afraid to come forward openly and directly with a recognition of international proletarian discipline. We are proud of the fact that we decide the great questions of the struggle of the workers for their liberation, submitting to the international discipline of the revolutionary proletariat, taking into account the experience of the workers of different countries, reckoning with their knowledge, with their will, thereby implementing in deed (and not in word, like the Renners, Fritz Adlers, and Otto Bauers) the unity of the class struggle of the workers for communism throughout the world.
August 15, 1920
V. I. Lenin.

*) The Second Congress of the Comintern took place from July 19 to August 6, 1920.