LENIN. ---- LETTERS TO A. SHLYAPNIKOV.

matization with opportunism and on the creation of a "German" International] Socialist] Bureau! Now it is necessary to conduct a principled line.
The workers of Petersburg have the best feelings—hostility towards the traitors of German social-democracy. We must, with all our strength, support and consolidate this feeling and awareness into a firm determination to fight international opportunism.
Until now, German social-democracy was an authority—now it is an example of what not to do!
You are needed in Stockholm.
Improve correspondence with Russia. Forward my letters to the one who gave you the note in pencil (is this possible?), we need to coordinate with him in more detail 2\
This is extremely important. We are starting the publication of the Central Organ 3\
Write more often!
Yours, Len\i\n
L
J
1) The Institute does not have at its disposal the appendices to this letter, which apparently contained an analysis of Vandervelde's reply.
2) Here, Vladimir Ilyich speaks in a conspiratorial manner about L. B. Kamenev. When Comrade Shlyapnikov left Petersburg for abroad in the first days of the war, Comrade Kamenev passed a note in pencil through him to Vladimir Ilyich, describing the situation in Petersburg at that moment.
3) This refers to the publication of the next, 33rd issue of the party's central organ "Social-Democrat," which was published in Geneva on November 1, 1914.
Lenin Collection.

3.
Dear friend!
I have just received your second letter and am sitting down to chat with you.
Thank you very much for the letter about the SPB events *). Excellent correspondence will come from here to the C.O.
The C.O. issue will come out in a few days, and we will send it to you. Wait. Wait for the next issue.
You need to sit in Stockholm until the transport of letters (1) and people (2) and literature (3) through Stockholm is fully established. For this, it is necessary to systematically prepare and test a good transfer person in Stockholm. Is Comrade Skovno suitable for this? She is good because she is a Bolshevik. She won't change sides. But is she businesslike, quick-witted, accurate?
I am sincerely glad if Comrade Kollontai 2) stands on our position, as I am glad of the excellent (in general) conduct of "Golos" by Martov in Paris. But I am deathly afraid that Martov (and those like him) will defect to the position of Kautsky—Troelstra 3).
I hate and despise Kautsky more than anyone now: petty, shabby, and self-satisfied hypocrisy. Nothing happened, the principles were not violated, everyone was entitled to defend the fatherland. Internationalism—if you please—consists in the fact that the workers of all countries shoot at each other "in the name of the defense of the fatherland."
R. Luxemburg was right, having long realized that Kautsky has "the servitude of a theoretician"—lackeyism, to put it simply, lackeyism before the majority of the party, before opportunism. There is now nothing more harmful and dangerous for the ideological independence of the proletariat than this vile self-satisfaction and disgusting hypocrisy of Kautsky, who wants to obscure and conceal everything, to calm the awakened conscience of the workers with sophisms and allegedly learned verbosity. If Kautsky succeeds in this, he will become the main representative of bourgeois rot in the labor movement. And Troelstra will be for him—oh, that Troelstra—an opportunist more adroit than the "kindly" old man Kautsky!
How this Troelstra maneuvered to drive honest people and Marxists (Gorter, Pannekoek, Wijnkoop) 4) out of the Dutch party!!
I will never forget how Roland-Holst 5), who once visited me in Paris, said about Troelstra:
«ein hundsgemeiner Kerl» (gredin, in French) 6)... I regret that you cast pearls before him 7)...
Troelstra + the rabble of opportunists in the Yorstand’c 8) of the German S.-D. are now conducting a nasty intrigue to cover everything up. Watch out, don't become an involuntary victim of this intrigue!! Don't accidentally help these worst enemies of the labor movement, who in an era of crisis are defending chauvinism "theoretically" and engaging in petty, disgusting diplomacy. The only one who told the workers the truth—although not in a full voice, and sometimes not very skillfully—was Pannekoek, whose article we sent you (forward the translation to the Russians). His words, that if now the "leaders" of the International killed by the opportunists and Kautsky gather and begin to "glue" the cracks, then it "will be of no significance," these words are the only socialist words.
It is true. Bitter, but true.
And the workers now need more than ever the truth, the whole truth, not vile diplomacy, not playing at "gluing," not covering up evil with rubber resolutions.
It is clear to me that Kautsky, Troelstra plus Vandervelde m. b. plus x —[— v —f- or minus x, y, it doesn't matter] are now engaged in an intrigue for such purposes.
The transfer of the International Bureau to Holland is the same intrigue of all the same scoundrels.
I will stay away from them and from it,—I will advise our representative in the International] Socialist] Bureau (Litvinoff. 76 High Street. Hamstead *). London. N. W. S.) 9) to do this—and I advise you to do the same.
"Do not go to the council of the unrighteous," do not believe Troelstra**).
and so on, and so on, and so forth, and so forth, and put to them a short ulti-
* The word "Hamstead" is written in N. K. Krupskaya's hand.
— Ed.
** In the manuscript, (Kautsky is crossed out in ink. — Ed.
14*