Dictated: Dictated over the telephone February 4, 1922
Published:
First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI.
Printed from the secretary’s notes (typewritten copy).
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 42,
pages 394b-395a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala and D. Walters
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2004).
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To Comrade Molotov (for the members of the Politbureau)
I draw attention to the article “The Genoa Conference” by Y. Klyuchnikov in No. 13 of Smena Vekh,[1] and propose:
1. That the question of enlisting Klyuchnikov’s services as an expert be discussed jointly with the members of the delegation.
2. That it be made incumbent upon the whole delegation to see to it that several articles on the same subject as that dealt with in Klyuchnikov’s article are published in our press, only at greater length and in fuller detail so as to cover the ground thoroughly.
3. That every person who wishes to go as an expert from Russia or who has been nominated for this post be made within 10 days to prepare an article dealing in detail with Russia’s relations with foreign countries in his selected field. Those articles (or such parts of them) which contain no confidential matter should immediately be published in our press.
4. That Chicherin and Litvinov be made responsible for reporting the distribution of subjects for the articles and the names of the writers under Points I and 2 to the Politbureau within one, week.
Lenin
[1] Smena Vekh (Change of Landmarks) a weekly journal published in Paris from October 1921 to March 1922 by a group of White \’emigr\’e intellectuals. The same group published a collection of articles under this title in Prague in July 1921. A socio political trend formed around this journal and the collection, which became known as Smenovekhism (its ideologists were N. V. Ustryalov, Y. V. Klyuchnikov, S. S. Lukyanov, A.V.Bobrishchev Pushkin, S. S. Chakhotin, Y. N. Potekhin and others).
A slight revival of capitalist elements in Soviet Russia following the introduction of the New Economic Policy served as the social foundation for this trend. The Smena Vekhists regarded the N.E.P. as an evolution of Soviet rule towards the restoration of capitalism. They stood for co-operation with the Soviet government in the hope of the Soviet state evolving back into a bourgeois state. Some of them were prepared loyally to co-operate with the Soviet government and contribute to the country’s economic revival. The Twelfth All-Russia Conference of the R.C.P.(B.) (August 4-7, 1922), in its Resolution on Anti-Soviet Parties and Trends, pointed out: “The so-called Smena Vekh trend has so far played and may still play an objectively progressive role. It is rallying those groups of \’emigr\’es and Russian intellectuals who have “reconciled” themselves to the Soviet government and are prepared to work with it for reviving the country. To this extent the Smena Vekh trend merits a favourable attitude towards it. At the same time it should never for a moment be forgotten that there are strong tendencies towards bourgeois restoration among its adherents, who share with the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries the hope that economic concessions will be followed by political concessions towards a bourgeois democracy, etc.” (The C.P.S.U. in the Resolutions and Decisions of Its Congresses, Conferences and Plenary Meetings of the Central Committee, Part 1, 1954, p. 671). Eventually, most of the Smena Vekh people sided openly with the counter-revolution. A comment on this trend is given by Lenin in his report to the Eleventh Congress of the R.C.P. (see present edition, Vol. 33, p. 285- 86).
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