V. I.   Lenin

612

To:   A. M. HELLER^[2]

Published: First published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 51. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1975, Moscow, Volume 44, pages 387^b-388^a.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
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Comrade Heller,

I am sending you all the materials (in my possession).

Make up an accurate list of them at once.

I shall obtain Avanti! and send it.

Make a list of the most important documents and a translation of those that are extremely important, showing the deviation of the reformists (especially Turati and Co.) from the discipline and decisions.

(As applying to Serrati, Comunismo No. 10, 15–29.II.1920, p. 693:

“Simile opera di epurazione—di ‘purificazione’ ha scritto Francesco Misiano nello stesso ‘Soviet’—può essere veramente opportuna ed utile, sopratutto se si tratti di chi risolutamente si opponga alla propaganda per la realizzazione dei princip&iwhatthe; fissati a Bologna^[3] come met a del nostró movimento.”^[1] )

X ||
This is the thing
to find out, by name and exactly.

Yours,
Lenin

Notes

[1] Serrati, Comunismo No. 10, 15–29.II.1920, p. 693: “Such work of cleansing—of ‘purification’—wrote Francesco Misiano in that same ‘Soviet’—can be truly timely and useful, especially if the matter concerns those who resolutely oppose propaganda for realising the principles, established in Bologna as the aim of our movement” ( underlined by Lenin).—Ed.

[2] This note was written in connection with the preparations for the Second Congress of the Communist International. Heller, who was appointed a representative of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) in the Italian delegation, was directed by the Politbureau of the C.C. “to collect passages in the Italian press against Turati and other reformists, and in general to select all the necessary material” = for exposing reformism in the ranks of the Italian Socialist Party (Collected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 51, p. 431).

Avanti!—a daily newspaper, the central organ of the Italian Socialist Party, founded in Rome in December 1896. During the First World War, the newspaper adopted an inconsistent internationalist position, without breaking its ties with the reformists. In 1926 the paper was closed down by Mussolini’s fascist government, but continued to be published abroad; in 1943 its publication was resumed in Italy.

Comunismo—a fortnightly journal of the Italian Socialist Party; it was published in Milan from 1919 to 1922, edited by D. M. Serrati.

Il Soviet—a newspaper of the Italian Socialist Party, published in Naples from 1918 to 1922. From 1920 it was the organ   of the Communist-abstentionist faction of the Italian Socialist Party.

[3] This refers to the Bologna Congress of the Italian Socialist Party, held in October 1919. The Congress decided for affiliation of the Italian Socialist Party to the Communist International.