V. I.

Lenin

177

To:   THE MEMBERS OF THE SPARTACUS GROUP [1]

October 18, 1918

Dear Comrades, We have had news today that the Spartacus group,
together with the Bremen Left
Radicals, [2] has taken the most energetic steps to promote the setting up of Workers’
and Soldiers’ Councils throughout Germany. I take this opportunity to send our best wishes to the German
revolutionary internationalist Social-Democrats. The work of the
German Spartacus group, which has carried on systematic
revolutionary propaganda in the most difficult conditions,
has really saved the honour of German socialism and the
German proletariat. Now the decisive hour is at hand: the
rapidly maturing German revolution calls on the Spartacus
group to play the most important role, and we all firmly
hope that before long the German socialist proletarian republic will inflict a decisive blow on world imperialism.

I hope that the book by the renegade Kautsky against the dictatorship of the proletariat will also bring certain
benefits. It will prove the correctness of what the Spartacus
group always said against the Kautskians, and the masses
will the more quickly be freed from the corrupting influence of Mr. Kautsky and Co.

With best greetings and firm hopes that in the very near future it will be possible to hail the victory of the
proletarian revolution in Germany.

Yours,
N. Lenin