FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE WAR ERA
LETTERS OF V. I. LENIN
A. G. SHLYAPNIKOV II A. M. KOLLONTAI
BERN - ZURICH
Prepared for publication and commented on by
S. KRIVTSOV and K. I. SHUTKO
Foreword by L. KAMENEV

FOREWORD.
The letters of Vladimir Ilyich to comrades A. G. Shlyapnikov and A. M. Kollontai cover the period from the first days of the war in 1914 to the first days of the revolution in 1917. Taken together, they provide an indispensable, vivid, and passionately sketched chronicle of events characterizing the development of our party and the rudiments of the III International during the war period, with all the fervor inherent in Vladimir Ilyich. Vladimir Ilyich spent this entire period in Switzerland, in Zurich and Bern; Comrade Kollontai lived in Sweden, Norway, and America; Comrade Shlyapnikov traveled to Russia during this time, returned to Scandinavia, and went to Russia again. This explains the intensity of the correspondence, with the help of which Vladimir Ilyich tried to keep both comrades informed of the affairs of international socialism, through whom he maintained contact from Switzerland with the left groups in Sweden, Norway, America, and Russia.

It is necessary to recall the terrible detachment and isolation that befell Vladimir Ilyich from the beginning of the war. Vladimir Ilyich’s closest associates, members of the Central Committee of the party, members of the editorial board, members of the Bolshevik faction in the Duma (G. I. Petrovsky, A. E. Badayev, M. K. Muranov, F. I. Samoilov, N. R. Shagov, I. V. Stalin, Ya. M. Sverdlov, M. P. Tomsky, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Timofey Spandaryan, L. B. Kamenev, etc., etc.) were all either in penal servitude or in remote corners of Siberia. Under these conditions, it was natural that Vladimir Ilyich had to value and intensely "develop" any "connection" that gave at least a faint hope of transmitting his thoughts and directives to Russia or to foreign groups of the "left." Comrade Shlyapnikov, who left Petrograd at the very beginning of the war, and A. M. Kollontai, who was fluent in foreign languages, could serve as these necessary relay points for Vladimir Ilyich, and therefore Vladimir Ilyich systematically took care to keep them informed.

LENIN’S COLLECTION.
Thus, these letters are an essential commentary to the articles of Vladimir Ilyich, collected in Volume XIII of the Collected Works. But, moreover, these letters also express aspects of Vladimir Ilyich's activities that, for various reasons, were not reflected in his public speeches. More than any other materials available to us so far, the letters to A. G. Shlyapnikov and A. M. Kollontai allow us to trace the breadth of Vladimir Ilyich's international interests, his participation in the formation of "left" groups in various countries, his connection with these groups, and the ways he influenced the processes of developing communist ideology in Europe and America. Finally, these letters give us an accurate picture of the external conditions of Vladimir Ilyich's literary and political work in 1914-1917 and lift the veil on the difficult conditions of his material situation (see Vladimir Ilyich's terse, but shocking words at the end of letter No. 40).

Standing apart from the entire series of letters from the pre-revolutionary era are the last two letters (Nos. 43 and 44) - Vladimir Ilyich's first responses to the first revolution of 1917, written on March 16 and 17, New Style (March 3 and 4, Old Style). They already throw onto the scales of history the thoughts and the will that predetermined October.
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The letters of Vladimir Ilyich to Comrades A. G. Shlyapnikov and A. M. Kollontai were provided to the Institute by the named comrades. All of them were written by Vladimir Ilyich himself. Some of them have postscripts by Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya. To these letters, we have added two fragments of drafts of his letters to the League of Socialist Propaganda in America and to Comrade G. Roland-Holst, which were preserved in Vladimir Ilyich's papers. These fragments will help to understand the corresponding places in the letters to Shlyapnikov and Kollontai.

A group of letters (7 in total) among those transmitted to the Institute by Comrades Shlyapnikov and Kollontai is entirely devoted to the conflict associated with the publication of the journal "Communist." So far, this conflict has not yet received any reflection in the literature. The editors of the "Collection" are aware that a number of materials relating to this conflict are in the hands of some comrades, primarily Comrade Zinoviev. We have therefore decided to separate this group of Vladimir Ilyich's letters in order to give the reader a comprehensive picture of this significant episode in intra-party relations in one of the following "Collections", supplementing these letters with other materials.

L. B. KAMENEV.

FOREWORD TO THE LETTERS.
All printed letters have been prepared for publication and provided with notes by Comrade K. I. Shutko under the guidance of Comrade S. S. Krivtsov. For the commentary, the response letters of Comrade Shlyapnikov to Vladimir Ilyich were used, as well as his book "On the Eve of the Seventeenth Year" (two parts) and the book by A. M. Kollontai "From My Life", Odessa, 1921.
L. Kamenev.

1.
Dear friend!
I came home from a lecture trip yesterday evening and found your letter. A big greeting to you, and through you to all Russian friends! The reply to Vandervelde 1) was given to translation yesterday, and I have not yet seen the text. I will write about it as soon as I see it.

In my view, the most important thing now is a consistent and organized struggle against the chauvinism that has gripped the entire bourgeoisie and the majority of opportunistic (and reconciling with opportunism - tel 2) Mr. Kautsky!) socialists. And to accomplish the tasks of this struggle, first of all, one must fight against the chauvinism of one's own country - specifically, here, with Messrs. à la 3) Maslov 4) and Smirnov 5) (see "Russian News" and "Russian Word"), whose "works" I read, or Messrs. Sokolov 6), Meshkovsky 7), Nikitin 8) and others that you have seen or heard. Plekhanov, as you may have already been written, has become a chauvinist - a Frenchman. Among the liquidators, apparently, there is disarray *). Alexinsky, they say, is a Francophile. Kossovsky (Bundist, right-wing, I heard his report) is a Germanophile **). It seems that the middle line of the entire "Brussels bloc" of the liquidators with Alexinsky and Plekhanov will be adaptation to Kautsky, who is now more harmful than all 9). His sophistry is so dangerous and vile -

*) Our Parisian intellectuals (majorized in the section by workers) went as volunteers (Nikolai Vasilievich, Antonov, etc.) 10) and released a stupid non-party appeal together with the Socialist-Revolutionaries. You were sent it.

**) Martov is the most decent of all in "Golos" 11). But will Martov stand firm? I don't believe it.

To A. Shlyapnikov.
17/IX - 1914