Lenin on the World Revolution

1922

February 1922

On the question of the struggle against war [ To Gen. Bukharin, Zinoviev and Molotov (For the members of the Politburo) ]

Received by telephone from L. A. Fotiyeva; first published on 20 January 1929 in "Pravda" No. 17

On the occasion of yesterday's news from Hanover that the International Metalworkers' Federation has put the question of the struggle against the war on the agenda and has adopted a resolution to respond to a war with a strike, I propose the following:

To publish several articles in "Pravda" and "Izvestia" recalling the fate of the Basel Manifesto and explaining in detail all the childishness or social treachery that the metalworkers are repeating.

To put the question of the struggle against the war on the agenda of the next enlarged meeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist International and to adopt detailed resolutions explaining that only a revolutionary party that has been prepared and tested at an early stage and has a good illegal apparatus can successfully wage the struggle against the war, the means of struggle being not strikes against the war but the formation of revolutionary cells in the fighting armies, their preparation for the realisation of the revolution. [ emphasised by the Comintern - SH ]

End of February 1922

Notes of a publicist

first published on 16 April 1924 in "Pravda", No. 87.

(Lenin, Volume 33, page 191)

We have created the soviet type of state and thus inaugurated a new epoch in world history, the epoch of the rule of the proletariat, which is destined to replace the epoch of the bourgeoisie. This too can no longer be reversed, although only through the practical experience of the working class of several countries will it be possible to "bring the Soviet type of state to an end" [emphasised by the Comintern - SH].

However, we have not completed the construction of even the foundations of the socialist economy. The forces of dying capitalism that are hostile to us can still undo this. We must be clearly aware of this and admit it openly, because there is nothing more dangerous than illusions (and vertigo, especially at great heights). And there is definitely nothing "terrible" about the admission of this bitter truth, nothing that would give even the slightest cause for despondency, because we have always proclaimed and repeated the ABC truth of Marxism, that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are necessary for the victory of socialism.

It so happened that the eagle's flight carried him lower than chickens fly, but chickens never fly on eagle's perches. Despite all (...) her mistakes, she (Rosa Luxemburg) was and remains an eagle. "After 4 August 1914, German Social Democracy is a stinking corpse" - with this statement by Rosa Luxemburg, her name will go down in the history of the labour movement throughout the world. But in the backyard of the labour movement, among the dung heaps, chickens like Paul Levi, Scheidemann, Kautsky and this whole clan will of course be particularly enraptured by the mistakes of the great communist. To each his own. (page 195)

March 1922

Speech at the opening of the XI Party Congress of the RCP (B)

published 1922, Moscow, Publishing Department of the Central Committee of the CPR.

( Lenin, Volume 33, page 248)

Throughout the world the communist movement is growing, though not nearly as rapidly as those of us who took the pace of the war and its end as a yardstick had expected, but in any case solidly and permanently, in breadth and depth. And if, in co-operation with the communist parties, which already exist in all the countries of the world, with vanishing exceptions, if we know how to judge our situation soberly and are not afraid to admit our mistakes, then we will emerge victorious from all these difficulties.