Written: Written between March 25 and 31, 1917
Published:
Sent from Zurich to Clarens (Switzerland).
Printed from the original.
Published for the first time in the Fourth (Russian) Edition of the Collected Works.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1976],
Moscow,
Volume 35,
pages 306-307.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
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Dear Friend,
You must be in an excessively nervous state. This is my explanation for a number of theoretical “oddities” in your letters.
We should not distinguish the first and the second revolution, or the first and the second stage??
That’s just what we have to do. Marxism requires that we should distinguish the classes which are in action. In Russia it is not the same class as before that is in power. Consequently, the revolution which lies ahead is quite, quite different.
My phrase about support of the workers by the Milyukovs has (it seemed to me) a clear sense; if the Milyukovs really wanted to finish off the monarchy, they should have supported the workers. Only that!
One must not make a “fetish” out of revolution. Kerensky is a revolutionary, but a chatterbox, a petty liar, a deceiver of the workers. It is almost certain that even in the Petrograd “Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies” the majority has been fooled by him (with the help of the wobbling and muddling Chkheidze). And what will happen to the countryside?
It is quite possible that for a time the majority both of the workers and of the peasants will really be for the imperialist war (which the Guchkovs + Milyukovs are representing as “defence of the Republic”).
It would be a good thing if someone with free time (better still a group, but if one doesn’t exist, then at least an individual) undertook to collect all the telegrams (and articles if possible) in all the foreign newspapers about the Russian revolution.
There are mountains of material. It is impossible to follow it all.
Probably we won’t manage to get to Russia!! Britain will not let us through. It can’t be done through Germany.
Lenin
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