V. I.

Lenin

236

To:   THE PARTICIPANTS IN A SITTING OF THE COMMISSION ON TACTICS OF THE THIRD CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN

To Comrade Zinoviev, with a request to communicate the following to the members of yesterday’s Commission:

Dear Comrades:

I have been informed that what I said in the
Commission yesterday against—rather, against some—Hungarian
Communists has aroused dissatisfaction. [1] I hasten therefore to intern you in writing: when I was an émigré myself
(for more than 15 years), I took “too Leftist” a stand several times (as I now realise). In August 1917, I was also
an émigré and moved in our Party Central Committee a much too “Leftist” proposal which, happily, was
flatly rejected. [2] It is quite natural for émigrés frequently to
adopt attitudes which are “too Leftist”. It has never entered my mind, now or in the past, to impute this to such
fine, loyal, dedicated and worthy revolutionaries as the
Hungarian émigrés, who are so much respected by all of us, and by the whole Communist International.

With communist greetings, Lenin

7/VII.1921.

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Notes:
[1]
A reference to Lenin’s speech on the Czechoslovak question on

July 6, 1921, in the commission on tactics at the Third Congress of the Comintern.

[2]
It has been impossible to ascertain the subject.