Written: Written in November, prior to 10 (23), 1917
Published:
First published on January 26, 1960, in French (in facsimile) and Rumanian in the newspaper Sctnteia No. 4740, Bucharest.
First published in Russian on January 27, 1960, in the newspaper Pravda No 27.
Printed from the original.
Translated from the French.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1975,
Moscow,
Volume 44,
page 44b.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
D. Moros
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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Text
• README
I am ready to reply to your questions if you give me an absolutely formal and precise guarantee, first, that you will inform the entire labour press, i.e., also the press organs of an internationalist trend (Heywood, the S.L.P. in America, Tom Mann and the British Socialist Party in Britain, Loriot and his friends in France, etc.), and secondly, that my reply will be reproduced without any alterations, that is to say, you have the right not to publish my reply, but if you do publish it you have no right to change anything in my text.
Who is the responsible representative of your “ International Association” here, in London, New York and Paris?
[1] Lenin wrote this letter because the representative of the International Association for Information of the Labour Press of America, France, and Great Britain, the Rumanian journalist Nicolae Cocea, at that time in Petrograd, had requested him on behalf of the Association to reply to the following six questions: = “1) Will the Government of People’s Commissars continue with the same vigour its former home policy and its international efforts on behalf of peace? = 2) What great reforms are being planned by the present government for establishing a socialist system in Russia? = 3) After the Constituent Assembly is convened will the Government of People’s Commissars be responsible to it as in constitutional states, or not? = 4) Do you think that the peace Russia proposes will put an end to militarism throughout the world? = 5) When and how do you intend to begin demobilising the Russians? = 6) Do you think that with the present state of Europe the complete realisation of socialism is possible?”
In a letter in reply to Lenin, Nicolae Cocea assured him that his conditions in regard to the publication of his replies would be fully observed. Lenin wrote on Cocea’s letter: “Reply given 10/XI. 1917.” Lenin’s replies to the questions put to him have not been found.
The document published here was discovered in Rumania. In 1960 the Central Committee of the Rumanian Workers’ Party presented it to the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.
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