V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v45
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

NOTES ON G. V. CHICHERIN’S LETTER TO COMRADE LENIN
March 10, 1922

Dear Vladimir Ilyich,
I earnestly request you to read the following proposals and give your instructions. We must come forward with a “broadest pacifist programme”; this is one of the most important elements of the forthcoming appearance, but we do not have it. There are only isolated fragmentary points in the first directives of the Central Committee. Here I am attempting for the first time to approach this task.
The main difficulty is that international political and economic forms at present serve as constant fig-leaves for the rapacity of the imperialists and, in particular, as a weapon against us.
The League of Nations is simply a tool of the Entente, which has already used it against us. You yourself pointed out that arbitration is impossible between bourgeois and Soviet states, yet arbitration is a necessary part of the pacifist arsenal. The internationalisation of the Chinese Eastern Railway is a euphemism for taking it away from us and from China and for its seizure by the Entente. A foreign bank of issue in our country and the introduction of the dollar here, as well as the general introduction everywhere of a single gold unit, would be the most effective instrument of complete economic enslavement by America.
We must introduce something new into the customary modern international forms in order to prevent these forms from being turned into an instrument of imperialism. This new element is provided both by our experience and creative work, and by the creative work of life itself in the process of growing disruption and destruction of the imperialist world. As a result of the world war the liberation movement of all oppressed and colonial peoples has grown stronger. The world states are beginning to split at the seams. Our international programme must introduce all oppressed colonial peoples into the international scheme. The right to secession or to home rule must be recognised for all peoples. The African Conference of 1885 resulted in the horrors of the Belgian Congo because at that conference the European powers engaged in philanthropy towards the Negroes, and this philanthropy proved to be a fig-leaf for the most barbarous exploitation. The novelty of our international scheme must consist in the Negro and other colonial peoples participating on an equal footing with European peoples in conferences and commissions and having the right to prevent interference in their internal life.
Correct. 2) Another innovation must consist in the obligatory participation of workers’ organisations. During the world war the demand for the participation of the trade unions in the future European congress was very popular in English working-class literature. We have actually carried this out by including three members of the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions in our delegation. It must be established that one-third of the votes in the international organisation we are to propose shall belong in each delegation to the workers’ organisations. These two innovations, however, are insufficient to protect the oppressed peoples and persecuted countries from the domination of imperialism, for the upper strata of the colonial peoples can easily

LETTER TO G. V. CHICHERIN
turn out to be marionettes, just as the treacherous labour leaders can. The participation of both opens a field for future struggle. The workers’ organisations will be set the task of fighting for the liberation of the colonial peoples, for aid to Soviet power and against imperialist rapacity. But the leaders will try to betray. So it is necessary also to establish the principle of non-interference by international conferences or congresses in the internal affairs of individual peoples. 3) Voluntary co-operation and assistance to the weak by the strong must be applied without subordinating the former to the will of the latter.
As a result we shall have a very bold and quite new proposal: A WORLD CONGRESS with the participation of all the peoples of the globe on the basis of complete equality, on the basis of the proclamation of the right to self-determination, the right to complete secession or to home rule for all oppressed peoples, and also with the participation, to the extent of one-third of the entire congress, of workers’ organisations. The congress will have as its aim not the coercion of the minority, but complete agreement. It will act by moral authority. Practically, it will set up technical commissions for the carrying out of our broadest economic programme of world restoration.
In all projects of the League of Nations or the Society of Nations there were only two types of proposals concerning the method of enforcing the decisions of the Society of Nations: either the formation of composite armies from contingents of all powers, or the imposition of a punitive mandate on a definite power or on several definite powers. In the first case something incapable of action results, for a composite army from contingents of numerous powers is good for nothing. In the second case the League of Nations or the Society of Nations is merely a pretext for justifying new seizures by the most influential powers. So it is necessary completely to eliminate the element of coercion or punitive expeditions and to leave the world congress only moral authority, allowing it to be an arena for appearances with the aim of agreement. The prevention of war is the task of arbitration. There are two types of arbitration: either the voluntary recourse of both sides to an arbitrator, for example, the Hague Tribunal, in which case the decision of the arbitrator is binding;

or another method, an example of which is the article on arbitration in the treaty between England and the United States, by virtue of which, in case of danger of war, special conciliation commissions are set up, recourse to which is obligatory for both sides, but whose decision is only optional, although for a definite period, for example, a year, the arbitration procedure continues; this second method aims at postponing the start of military operations in order to give the possibility, in the legalised interval, for the passions of both sides to cool and for conflicts to be weakened. Under the first method recourse to arbitration is not obligatory, but its decision is binding. Under the second method recourse to arbitration is obligatory, but its decision is not binding, and the sides remain bound only for the legalised period. At present it is impossible to get out of this alternative. The proposed world congress could take over the Hague Tribunal with its optional arbitration and its other services. For our part, we shall consider admissible between a capitalist state and a Soviet state only such a court of arbitration in which there will be an equal number of members appointed by both sides, so that half the members will be imperialists and half communists. Simultaneously we shall propose universal reduction of armaments, proceeding from those theses which we have established with the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic; developing further the tradition of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, we shall propose supplementing the rules of war with various prohibitions: the abolition of submarines, chemical gases, mortars, flame-throwers and armed aerial warfare.
The technical commissions set up by the world congress will direct the carrying out of the broadest programme of world restoration. This programme will not be imposed by force. It will be a voluntary proposal, appealing to the advantage of each participant. Assistance will be given to the weak. In this way it will be necessary to outline world railway, river and sea routes. The internationalisation of these routes will be a matter of gradual development, for the method of coercing those who resist will not be permitted. The international technical commissions must

LETTER TO G. V. CHICHERIN
offer to individual countries economic and technical assistance for the creation of super-highways, for the regulation of communications on international rivers, for the use of international harbours and for the technical improvement of world sea routes. We shall propose to the capital of the advanced countries to build a super-highway London—Moscow—Vladivostok (Peking), and we shall explain that by this the incalculable riches of Siberia will be opened for universal use. In general, assistance to the weak by the strong will be the basic principle of world restoration, which must be based on economic geography and on the planned distribution of resources. A world gold unit can appear only as a result of the raising of economically weak countries with the help of the strong, this raising being a universal interest, for world disruption hits the strong countries too, causing even in America unheard-of unemployment. The strong, by helping the weak, open up markets and sources of raw materials for themselves. Proceeding from these considerations, we shall propose the planned distribution of the gold now lying idle in the vaults of American banks. This planned distribution of gold among all countries must be combined with the planned distribution of orders, trade, supply of lacking materials, in general with all-round economic assistance to ruined countries. This assistance may have the character of a loan, for under a planned economy it will begin to be repaid after a few years. This also includes the plan of a Barter Institute (Keynes), or a Central Office, or national centres of commodity exchange. If Germany opposes to us, instead of individual merchants, a single Central Office, it will be bad for us, for this will be a way of forcing bad goods on us at a high price. But if these Central Offices are instruments of the planned world distribution of needed goods and a way of assisting weak countries by the strong, they will be a necessary link in the broadest programme of economic restoration. The grain sent to us by America is already the first beginning of international food distribution. During the war, within the Entente, there was already partly a planned distribution of fuel; one of the main elements of the broadest programme must

be the systematic distribution of oil and coal, but here too the element of coercion and repression must be eliminated. In the most general form, the international technical commissions will have to work out plans for the planned distribution of thermal and power energy. All this taken together will give a picture of what is theoretically possible under the bourgeois system, but which in historical reality will encounter national egoisms and the rapacity of capitalist oligarchies.
With communist greetings,
Georgy Chicherin