Written: Written December 17, 1910, in Paris
Published:
First published In 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXV.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1977],
Moscow,
Volume 43,
page 262.
Translated: Martin Parker and Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2005).
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I propose:
1) printing in the Central Organ a translation of this letter at once (perhaps with some slight cuts);
2) approaching the trade unions (and also trade union committees in the different towns) of transport workers, shipbuilders, workers employed at factories making fire arms, ammunition, guns, military supplies, etc. (and where there are no trade unions, groups of workers), and asking them to send the Central Organ written contributions, information, descriptions of past strikes, etc.;
3) publishing at once in brief our opinion (α) that what is in question is not an isolated act of “preventing war” (averting), but revolutionary pressure by the masses of the proletariat in general, and (β) that with the present state of affairs in Russia we attach the greatest importance to studying the course and conditions of the strikes of 1905.
[1] On December 17, 1910, Lenin received a circular letter dated December 15, 1910, from the International Socialist Bureau to the parties affiliated with the Second International asking them to consider an amendment to the Copenhagen Congress (1910) resolution on arbitration and disarmament which the Congress had referred to the I.S.B. Since the amendment dealt with strikes of war industry workers as an expedient means of preventing the outbreak of war, the I.S.B. proposed that the parties approach the trade unions concerned and report back to the I.S.B. Lenin made marginal notes on the circular (see Lenin Miscellany XXV, pp. 260 and 261). He sent it to the Editorial Board of Sotsial Demokrat for publication, together with the present letter. Neither the circular nor Lenin’s letter were published in Sotsial-Demokrat.
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