Written: Written between January 22 and 30, 1917
Published:
First published in 1949 in Bolshevik No. 1.
Sent from Zurich to Clarens (Switzerland).
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1976],
Moscow,
Volume 35,
pages 277-278.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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• README
Dear Friend,
I send you the cuttings I have taken from Radek (only up to Saturday: return them (to me) immediately after the lecture).
Note the paragraph in the resolution of the Internationale which declares against pacifism (against “persuasion”).
The conference at The Hague and similar pacifist declarations and measures undertaken by the governments and the bourgeoisie are produced
(1) by hypocrisy
(2) by deception of the people
(3) by the trend of bourgeois pacifism, possessing “big” names and dreaming of peace without a social revolution. This trend has a vast literature (aristocratic, not for the people)
(4) by calculation: it is convenient sometimes for one, sometimes for another power to “show itself” peaceful, to gain time, etc.
This is in general. Concretely, one must study each particular case, and each power.
I haven’t got the figures you ask for.
(The addresses have been sent: Abramovich and his friends are the best people to give a recommendation, if required.)
The key to the question of pacifism (a question most important for Switzerland): the idea that war is not connected with capitalism, is not the continuation of the politics of peacetime. In this lies the theoretical falsity; the practical one is evasion of the social revolution.
In great haste. Greetings.
Yours, Lenin
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