V. I.   Lenin

75

To:   KARL KAUTSKY

Published: First published in 1964 in German in the journal International Review of Social History, Vol. IX, Part 2. First published in Russian in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 54. Sent to Berlin. Printed from the original. Translated from the German.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [1977], Moscow, Volume 43, page 114^a.
Translated: Martin Parker and Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
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Dear Comrade,

I am enclosing a copy of the Russian translation of your pamphlet (The Social Revolution). I have made only one remark on pages 129–30, where on the basis of Russian industrial statistics I have shown how much Russia too could economise by organising bigger enterprises (100 and more workers) working two or three shifts, and by closing down small ones.

The Russian translation of the pamphlet has been printed in 5,000 copies.^[1]

With best regards,
Lenin

Wl. Ulianoff
Chemin du Foyer. 10.
Sécheron—Genéve

Notes

[1] Kautsky’s pamphlet Die soziale Revolution was published in Geneva in 1903 in the Russian translation by N. Karpov, edited by Lenin. The editors’ note on pages 129–30 reads: “To show the reader how great is the concentration of industry in contemporary Russia we shall give two examples. In 1894–95 the number of factories and workshops (i.e., enterprises using mechanical power or employing no less than 16 workers) in European Russia was estimated at 14,578, with 885,555 workers and output totalling 1,345 million rubles. Of these the big factories, i.e., with 100 or more workers, numbered only 1,468, i.e., one-tenth, but they employed 656,009 workers, near y three-fourths of the total, and the value of their output amounted to 955 million rubles, i.e., seven-tenths of the total sum. From this one can judge how radically we could raise productivity of labour, increase wages and reduce working hours if we expropriated all the manufacturers, closed down the small enterprises, and left only one and a half thousand big factories working two eight-hour shifts or three five-hour shifts! Another example. In 1890 there were about nine and a half thousand handicraft tanneries in European Russia   with 21,000 workers and output totalling 12 million rubles. At the same time 66 steam-powered tanneries with 5 1/2 thousand workers also produced 12 million rubles’ worth of output!”