Dear Comrade Radek!

I received your letter to Wynkoop and am sending it back by the first post. I am writing to him that work must begin immediately if we want to prepare a declaration (not to mention a new "Communist Manifesto").

We have given 1) a manifesto, 2) resolutions, 3) a draft declaration. Let us have corrections or counter-proposals as soon as possible. Hurry!! We will be late!!

I personally am against the participation of "Nashe Slovo," but I would not make an ultimatum out of this.

Why am I against it? 1) It is depravity, because "Nashe Slovo" itself has not declared itself an independent, third party or group (besides the Central Committee and the Organizational Committee) for work in Russia;

2) In "Nashe Slovo" there are okhrannik agents in an unknown number known to the public. Double representation!! (the Organizational Committee + "Nashe Slovo"), 3) "Nashe Slovo" is for the Tskheidze faction (it is for it, and so are the Organizational Committee, Plekhanov + Aleksinskii). Is this not depravity???

To accept "Lichtstrahlen" as a group and consider it more important than the Zetkin group is not comical.

This group includes Borchardt + Radek + contributors to "Lichtstrahlen." That is sufficient.

This group has a journal. (Whereas Zetkin and Co. do not.)

Borchardt was the first to declare publicly: Die Sozialdemokratie abgedankt.* This is not propaganda—it is the most important political act. This is an act, not a promise.

For us (i.e., for all the left), the most important thing is a clear, complete, precise statement of principles**. Without this all so-called "programs of action" are merely phrases, mere deception. What came of Zetkin's "resolution of action" in Bern? Nothing in the sense of action! Nothing in the sense of principles!

The Borchardt group, if it appears (together with us or separately) as an anonymous group ("Stern" or "Pfeil"*** or however you like) with a precise statement of principles + a call to revolutionary action, will play a world-historical role.

But Zetkin and Co., having in their hands everything (newspapers, journals, connections with "Berner Tagwacht," the possibility of traveling to Switzerland, etc.), have done nothing in ten months to unite the international left. This is a disgrace.

All the best! Your Lenin

P.S. I would not advise you to go into the army. It is absurd to help the enemy. You would be rendering a service to the Scheidemanns. Better to emigrate. Really, better. Left-wing workers are desperately needed now.

"The opposition in Germany is a product of ferment in the masses, while the Bolsheviks are the orientation of a small group of revolutionaries."

This is not Marxist.

This is Kautskyanism—either evasion.

What was the "Communist Manifesto" of 1847 and its group? A product of ferment in the masses? Or the orientation of a small group of revolutionaries? Or both?

And what of us, the Central Committee? Or has the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party Fraction not proven that it has connections with the masses? And the Petrograd

* — Social-democracy has abdicated from itself. Ed.

** — statement of principles, declaration of principles. Ed.

*** — "Star" or "Arrow." Ed.