Lev Kamenev
Source: The Communist International, No. 1
Published: 16 King Street, Covent Garden, London, W.C.2 — Communist Party of Great Britain
Transcription/Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2006). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
IT is the year 1893. Alexander the Third rules over Russia. In the provincial depths of Samara, the banished student Vladimir Ilyitch buries himself in local statistics, and in the study of the economic life of the peasantry seeks an answer to the problem of the fate of the Russian Revolution. From the mass of dry figures of the local statisticians that answer stands out ever more clearly. The countryside is becoming stratified. That old support of the Czar’s monarchy—the uniform poverty and destitution of the village—is failing. The factory is appearing on the scene and with it the proletariat, the grave diggers of Czarism and the bourgeoisie. Vladimir Ilyitch sets forth his conclusions in an article entitled “New Economic Movements among the Peasantry,” which he sends to the Moscow journal Yuridichesky Vestnik. At the head of the Yuridichesky Vestnik are the recognised stars of Russian liberalism, the pillars of the Moscow University, professors Kablukov and Muromtsev. They, of course, are for the “people” and “freedom of the press.” But they reject Lenin’s article. After a few weeks the manuscript is “turned down” and disappears into the “archives” of the secret police. There it lies for exactly thirty years. After thirty years, Lenin’s first scientific work written for the press and dedicated to the peasantry, becomes available to the reader.
1894. The voices of the heretic-Marxists are becoming more and more audible. Not a single article of theirs has yet been printed in Russia, but their views are gaining more and more partisans among the youth. The generals of literature, the honourable guardians of the liberal and popular traditions, hold complete sway over the newspapers, journals, and publications, but the voices of the underground Marxists grow ever more disturbing. Throughout the whole press a campaign is started against the obscure, nameless “Disciples of Marx,” who have no press of their own. The “Friends of the People,” overwhelm their readers with books, brochures, journals and newspaper articles, filled with lies and slander directed against the revolutionary Marxists. These attacks demand an answer. A full explanation is needed of the views of those who advocate the organisation of a workers’ party on the basis of scientific Socialism, and a complete expose of the hypocritical “Friends of the People,” who are obstructing the organisation of a workers’ party in Russia. Ilyitch takes up his pen and writes his pamphlet: “The Friends of the People—Who They are and How They Make War on the Social Democrats.” Neither publisher nor printer can be found for the pamphlet. And so this booklet of 150 pages, the only exposition of the revolutionary views of the workers’ party, is copied by hand, and 250 copies are hectographed. These copies fall into the hands of a few fortunate people here and there. The widely distributed literature of the liberals and populists—who, of course, are in favour of the freedom of the press—fails to mention the booklet. In the arrests that shortly afterwards take place practically all of the copies of the booklet are seized by the police. The booklet disappears. Only two of the three parts of the pamphlet are discovered, after 28 years, in the Berlin archives, and become available to the reader.
1895. The advance skirmishers of bourgeois ideology, the defenders of capitalism, the future banner-bearers of the Cadet Party, are clamouring loudly in all the journals, newspapers, books and societies. The revolutionary teaching of Marx is being distorted and adapted to the needs of Russian capitalism. Ilyitch throws himself into the struggle with an article which exposes the counterfeiters of Marxism. The Czar’s censors burn the book which contains Ilyitch’s article. The counterfeiters continue to sell their wares. The press of the liberals and populists pretends that nothing has happened. Only after twelve years does Ilyitch’s article see the light.
1907. The revolution of 1905 is crushed. For ever? How can the defeat be explained? What did the peasantry say of the revolution? Is the peasant problem solved? Safe from the Petersburg spies, Ilyitch studies the peasant movewent of the years 1905-06, in the little Finnish village of Kuokall, two hours distant from Petersburg. He reads over the peasant decrees, and the speeches of the peasant deputies, examines figures, compares data, searches for the answer to the fundamental question of the future of Russia. The answer is found. The peasants are not satisfied, they cannot be appeased. The peasants demand all of the land, and the revolution will go on until this, demand is granted. Ilyitch expounds the. results of his studies in a dispassionate, legal manner in his book, “The Agrarian Question and the First Russian Revolution.” No publisher is found for the book. The huge manuscript, the fruits of long and persistent labour, the result of a work attempted by no one else, lies for ten years, until 1917, in the bottom of Ilyitch’s trunk. It travels with him from Finland to Geneva, from Paris to Krakow, and after ten years, is borne back to Petersburg on the waves of the victorious revolution, and so, at last, finds a printer.
1908. Under the protection of advancing reaction a campaign is opened against the very fundamentals of Marxism, and against its philosophical conception. Huge tomes and little booklets proving the bankruptcy of Marxism and materialism pour forth by the dozen. Yushkevitch, Valentine and Bogdanov and their like gain possession of the platforms and the legal press in order to preach the philosophy of reaction. Ilyitch applies himself to Berkeley and Hume, Kant and Hegel, Mach and Avenarious. The result is his book “Marxism and Empirical Criticism.” Quite unexpectedly a publisher is found for the book. But not, to be sure, a publisher whose plant is at the service of the “masters of the minds” of the counter-revolutionaries, who publish the obscenity of Artzibasheff, the servile prose of Miliukoff, the “Lumieres” of Isgoeff, and Berdiaeff’s “investigations” into the orthodoxy of Homiakoff. The publisher of the pholosophical workers of Ilyitch becomes at once a candidate for prison. Within a few weeks after the printing of the book he is in jail. Of the 3,000 copies that are printed only three or four hundred find their way into the bookshops, and the remainder are left to rot in the warehouses of the arrested publisher. Not until 12 years after its writing does Ilyitch’s book become available to those readers for whom it was intended.
1909. Reaction is developing. The liberals celebrate their victory over the revolution. The manifesto of counter-revolutionary liberalism, praising the work of Stolypin and throwing mud on that of the workers and peasants is distributed in tens of thousands of copies (See the magazine, Vekh). The renegades of all colours, firmly established in the newspaper offices, journals and publishing houses, keep on a constant snarling at the revolution, corrupting. the consciousness of the masses with lies and calumnies, pouring, out the poison of their contempt on the fighters of 1905. At. their disposal are the million sheets of the daily papers, supported at the expense of the big capitalists, at their service are the publishing companies, with a turnover of hundreds of thousands of roubles: Ilyitch, abroad, defends the interests of theworkers and peasants. At his disposal are the four small pages of a workers’ paper, appearing once a month. And sometimes there is not enough money even for that, and then the paper comes out only once in two months. The doors to legal literature are closed. There is no one to print the articles and books of this irreconcilable “sectarian” who summons the people to prepare for a new revolution, and who excludes himself from the “decent” society of counterrevolution by his “indecent” attacks on all the stars of Russian public life, beginning with Miliukoff and ending with Martov.
1917. The June days. Pravda is destroyed by Kerensky’s officers and closed down by order of the republican government. They are hunting for Ilyitch in order to kill him. But in Ilyitch’s travelling bag lies a manuscript of researches which is soon to become world famous, which will be translated into all foreign tongues, and without reference to which no historian of Socialism nor theoretician of the nature of the State will be able to get along—“The State and the Revolution.” Fleeing from his republican murderers, Lenin writes me:—
“Entre nous, Comrade Kamenev, should they do away with me, I beg of you to publish my little pamphlet “Marxism Ion the State,” (it got stuck in Stockholm). It is bound and has got a dark blue cover. It contains all the quotations from Marx and Engels and also from Kautsky against Pannekoek. It also contains a number of notes and remarks. All this should be formulated. I think that it should not take longer than a week to get the material ready for publication. I think it of the greatest importance, as it is not only Plekhanov and Kautsky who have made blunders. This, of course, must remain entirely entre nous.” (The latter refers to the “July events” in 1917. The pamphlet in question is V. Lenin’s work published subsequently under the title “State and Revolution.”)
Here are some random. facts which depict, the conditions of the political and literary work of Ilyitch. It must be remembered that right up to the October Revolution, this born leader, organiser and educator of millions had at his disposal only one means of action—the pen and the word of a free lance publicist. His pen was backed by nothing but inner conviction. Behind him was no bourgeois machine ready to distribute in millions of copes any vulgarities, that might fall from the lips of a Bismarck, a Stolypin or a Lloyd George, nor had he the official seat of a deputy, or the chair of a professor from which to attract the attention of the bourgeois crowd. On the contrary, all the forces of the world were ranged against his utterances. Against him were both the conscious interests of the ruling groups, trying either by money or brute force to break every thread stretched between the proletarian publicist and the proletarian masses, and also the elemental hatred of those people who instinctively tried to close the mouth of this indefatigable and fearless man, who dared at each turn of history to have “his own opinion,” which fact, in itself was to the complacent bourgeoisie like a red rag to a bull. Thus was formed the “conspiracy of silence” against the greatest man of our time. Right up to 1917, with the exception of a few months in 1905 and 1906, Lenin exists neither for the world press nor for the Russian press. Faced with the “historical” figures of Rodzianki, Guchkov, Count Bobrinsky and Prince Trubetskoy, how could the editors of Rech and Russkii Vedomstvo discern the figure of the editor of an underground sheet and the author of brochures for workers and peasants—Ulianov?
Twice the workers and peasant masses rose; twice they shook the foundations of the ruling regime, and so won freedom of speech for their own publicists, their own teacher, their own tribune. The uprising of 1905 was needed to give Ilyitch the chance of talking for a few weeks with the workers of Russia; the October victory of the proletariat was needed to set free the words of Ilyitch so that the villages and factory towns of all the world might hear them. The history of the publicist activities of Ilyitch should become a striking example for our Soviet party schools and universities, of what the bourgeois States and “freedom of the press” within the bourgeois State really mean. Better than any theoretical consideration of the question, a study of the conditions of the publicist work of Ilyitch reveals the existence of those methods with which the bourgeoisie—under the most democratic covering—attempts to hold the workers in mental slavery.
We shall never know what an amount of mental energy ready to be poured into articles, books and investigations, has not been availed of for the education of the masses, and only very rarely do we meet with an outburst of indignation from Ilyitch against the wall of lies, hypocrisy and repression which stood for decades between him and his readers. Nine-tenths of all that Ilyitch wrote (up to 1917) was written for illegal publication. There were years when even this possibility of talking with the party and the working class was not within his reach. And when such opportunity did present itself, it was, of necessity, extremely limited. During the three years (1900-1903) of Ilyitch’s closest associations with Iskra (Geneva), altogether 52 numbers were issued, that is, about three numbers in two months. During the period of the war, from August, 1914, to February, 1917, that is, throughout two-and-a-half years of unprecedented deception practiced on the working class, Ilyitch—the great, the only unmasker of those lies, he who was to save the name and honour of Socialism—was able to issue only twenty numbers. of his own paper. This “newspaper,” by the way, consisted of only one sheet, comprising less than one-tenth of the daily text of one bourgeois paper, The Times. With this weapon of propaganda, Ilyitch took up the fight against the poison which, the world press carried to all sections of humanity, having entered the service of the Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs, Romanoffs, Clemenceau and Lloyd George from, conscience, not from fear.
These are only examples of the weakness of that weapon which the bourgeoisie left in the hands of Ilyitch for the spreading of his ideas. But the possibility of utilising the illegal,press was limited still further by the very conditions governing its distribution. How many of the articles and works of Ilyitch, printed on the underground presses of Petersburg and Moscow, Geneva or Paris, actually reached the workers and peasants? How many were destroyed in arrests and raids? And even those which reached the masses could not be preserved, could not serve as a constant source for research, reference and study. Once read, the article passed out of reach of the readers. A reader would often obtain the first part of an article, but not its conclusion. In the end, the working masses received the thoughts of Ilyitch as passed on by local workers, propagandists, agitators and organisers—the fortunate few to whom was given the opportunity to read the original numbers of the underground, illegal and foreign papers or brochures. As a rule, the underground literature was anonymous. It was a collective and not an individual production. Lenin’s articles in Iskra and Proletaria were unsigned. Not only for the masses, but even for those responsible workers who were in close reach of the centre, the personality of their leader, Ilyitch, was concealed in the group, in the collective editorship and the collective authorship of the resolutions. To this it is necessary to add that Ilyitch’s articles in the illegal periodical journals were not once reprinted until 1920, when his articles from the Iskra were printed in the Fourth Volume of his “Collected Works.” They were to be found only in files of old illegal newspapers, which were kept, of course, not in public libraries, but in the Police Department.
Summing up: as a result of the united efforts of the liberal supporters of the “freedom of the press” and the zealous guardians of the existing order, the overwhelming majority of the political works of Ilyitch, even those already printed, are in fact novelties for any wide circle of readers.
Only during the last year or two have hundreds and thousands of pages of Lenin’s political writings of the period 1900-1907, come within the reach of the wide circles of the party and the masses for whom they were intended. Thus did the bourgeoisie do their work; and if, notwithstanding all their efforts, the ideas of Ilyitch (if not his original work) became accessible to the wide masses of the workers even prior to October, it was only because the bourgeois conspiracy came up against the indomitable will of the party, which in actuality was a mass apparatus for broadcasting Ilyitch’s ideas among the workers.
To talk with the. workers—that was the fundamental purpose of all the literary activity of Ilyitch. In 1897, during his Siberian exile, he wrote abroad, to the place where his brochure “Penalties” (intended for the rank and file work) was published: “I would wish for nothing so much, I have dreamed of nothing so much as the possibility of writing for the workers. But how can that be done from here? It is very, very difficult, but, in my opinion not impossible.”
Everybody knows now that Ilyitch, better than anybody else knew how to write and speak for the wide masses. He could not endure superficial elegance of phrase, he scorned any attempt to adorn a thought, and was very fond of quoting the words of Bazarov, “My dear friend, Arkady Nikolayevitch, do not talk so beautifully,” he regarded confused style as an indication of confused thought, which he was organically incapable of enduring.[1]
With all his strength of will, therefore, Ilyitch sought opportunities for talking openly to the masses, and that is why he prized so highly every possibility of acting directly upon the people by, means of the printed word. After ten years of underground publicist activity, the first opportunity that came to Ilyitch of working openly was in November, 1905. But the workers’ movement was comparatively still so weak at that time that Lenin was able to address his articles, openly to the masses only during one month in 1905 (Novy Zhizn, November-December, 1905) and for a month and a half in. 1906 (the period of the First Duma). During the period of the Second Duma (1907) the Bolshevik press enjoyed literally, only a few days of open existence. Then the door was forcibly shut, and for a long period. The rise of the workers’ movement after the Lena massacre gave the weapon of the legal press once more into the hands of Lenin. The uninterrupted development of the workers’ movement from that moment. (April, 1912,) right up to the catastrophic war of August, 1914, guaranteed almost continuous existence to the Bolshevik Pravda newspaper. But in what form! Confiscations, fines, arrests of the editors and suppressions poured down upon Lenin’s paper in a constant stream, as if from the horn of plenty. So highly did Lenin value the opportunity of open intercourse with the workers through the open press, that he perused with the utmost strictness every expression and every phrase that might implicate the paper. [2]
It is only necessary to compare the style, tone and content of Ilyitch’s articles in the Social Democrat with those in Pravda of 1912-1914 in order to feel that before us in Pravda stands a giant with bound hands. Collaboration with the: editors of Pravda from abroad, was, indeed, the greatest joy for Ilyitch, but it was torment at the same time. Every comment on this or that event was inevitably delayed for a week at, the very least. The choice of theme was extraordinarily difficult. The paper came out irregularly. The articles very often did not reach the editors, were lost in the post, fell into the hands of the police. To this must be added the fact that the Petersburg editorship, thanks to suppressions, arrests, etc., was often under the control of comrades whose ideas did not harmonise with those of Ilyitch’s group. “We haven’t enough capable people,” writes Ilyitch in September, 1913, “It was only with the greatest difficulty that a year after the starting of the paper we were able to find even a tolerable editorial staff in Petersburg.” One of the best editors of Pravda during that period, Comrade M. Olminsky, writes of those days: “Lenin’s articles were cut to pieces not only by the censor, but also as a result of an incorrect attitude toward the authors on the part of the editors—‘Any article,’ said they, ‘which falls into my hands, becomes my very own—I shall do with it whatever I wish.’” (Italics mine.)
Such were the conditions under which Ilyitch had to work even in his own legal, Bolshevik press, in those short moments when this press was allowed to exist at all. Under such conditions special importance attaches to Ilyitch’s correspondence during the entire period of his activities. Ilyitch carried on a voluminous correspondence with the comrades scattered all over Russia and Europe. No comrade ever addressed himself to Ilyitch with a request for the elucidation of some problem or other who did not receive a letter in reply or, more often, a small tract on the subject, which interested him. During certain periods—when the opportunities of appearing in print were especially restricted, his letters grew into whole notebooks. During the first period of Ilyitch’s work—up to 1901—these “notebooks” were circulated throughout Russia, awakening the mind of the party, and forcing it to define its position on the basic questions of the world conceptions and tactics of Marxism. This correspondence, these “notebooks” of the nineties, played the same role in the whole future course of the revolution as the correspondence of Belinsky, Bakunin and Gertzen played in the Russian Liberation movement of the forties. A mass of these “notebooks” were lost in the depths of the Secret Police archives, but some of them were preserved, and will serve for a long time as objects of study. Savants and historians will still write their disserations about them for many decades to come.
All that concerned Lenin is important. And of extreme importance is the form in which Lenin’s works will be given to the world proletariat.
When, by the will of the workers’ revolution, Ilyitch was transformed from the leader of the party and a Communist publicist into the leader and organiser of a new state, the great majority of his writings from 1893 to 1916, in their original form, were unknown not only to the wide masses of the people, but even to more or less wide circles of the younger members of the party. It was simply impossible to obtain them.
When, in connection with his 50th birthday, at the beginning of 1920, I told Vladimir Ilyitch that I was about to begin collecting his works, and introducing a proposal to that effect at the Party Congress, Ilyitch protested, “What for? It’s of no use—why bother with all that I’ve written for thirty years. It isn’t worth it.” I was only able to make him budge from his position by referring to the fact that the youth must learn, and that it was better that they should learn, from his works than from the works of the Martovs and Tugan-Baranovsky’s. This first attempt to give Ilyitch’s when this press was allowed to exist at all. Under such conditions special importance attaches to Ilyitch’s correspondence during the entire period of his activities. Ilyitch carried on a voluminous correspondence with the comrades scattered all over Russia and Europe. No comrade ever addressed himself to Ilyitch with a request for the elucidation of some problem or other who did not receive a letter in reply or, more often, a small tract on the subject which interested him. During certain periods—when the opportunities of appearing in print were especially restricted, his letters grew into whole notebooks. During the first period of Ilyitch’s work—up to 1901—these “notebooks” were circulated throughout Russia, awakening the mind of the party, and forcing it to define its position on the basic questions of the world conceptions and tactics of Marxism. This correspondence, these “notebooks” of the nineties, played the same role in the whole future course of the revolution as the correspondence of Belinsky, Bakunin and Gertzen played in the Russian Liberation movement of the forties. A mass of these “notebooks” were lost in the depths of the Secret Police archives, but some of them were preserved, and will serve for a long time as objects of study. Savants and historians will still write their disserations about them for many decades to come.
All that concerned Lenin is important. And of extreme importance is the form in which Lenin’s works will be given to the world proletariat.
When, by the will of the workers’ revolution, Ilyitch was transformed from the leader of the party and a Communist publicist into the leader and organiser of a new state, the great majority of his writings from 1893 to 1916, in their original form, were unknown not only to the wide masses of the people, but even to more or less wide circles of the younger members of the party. It was simply impossible to obtain them.
When, in connection with his 50th birthday, at the beginning of 1920, I told Vladimir Ilyitch that I was about to begin collecting his works, and introducing a proposal to that effect at the Party Congress, Ilyitch protested, “What for? It’s of no use—why bother with all that I’ve written for thirty years. It isn’t worth it.” I was only able to make him budge from his position by referring to the fact that the youth must learn, and that it was better that they should learn, from his works than from the works of the Martovs and Tugan-Barauovsky’s. This first attempt to give Ilyitch’s writings into the hands of the party and the working class is completed. The works of Lenin comprise 24 books.
These 24 books contain about 725 printed folios, out of which about 50 are taken up with commentaries, documents from the history of the party, references, etc., and the remainder (675 folios) are filled with the writings of Ilyitch himself. From the above-mentioned facts, it is clear what a tremendous amount of preliminary work was necessary in order to collect for the first time all of Lenin’s printed works. First of all, it was necessary to go through those hundreds of legally and illegally printed organs (newspapers, journals, magazines, reports, etc.) in which Lenin’s articles were printed. The second and most difficult problem was to sort out the articles written by Ilyitch from many others. No less than one-third of all of Ilyitch’s articles appeared in the press without any signature whatever. Another third was signed, but signed with a number of the most unexpected pseudonyms, which he never used more than once. In the great majority of cases, the manuscripts of these articles have been destroyed. The editorial archives of Pravda, Sozial-democratia, Proletaria, Iskra and dozens of other publications have not been preserved, or are still inaccessible. The compilation of an exact list of the articles of Ilyitch is, therefore, a most difficult and complicated task, and is still far from being finally established. It will demand much protracted research and investigation.
Finally, a matter no less complicated is the dating of Ilyitch’s articles, and the elucidation of those passages in, them (mostly of a polemical nature), which, while preserving all their interest and value for the party and the reader, are often associated with episodes of party life which have escaped the memory of even the oldest members of the party. Lenin’s writings are filled with references to resolutions, decisions, decrees and literary works, the tracing out of which in itself presents tremendous difficulties.
It is natural that under such conditions the first collection of Lenin’s works should be considered as only the first attempt to assemble his literary legacy. It was only as an attempt that the project was originally considered. If we had decided at the very beginning to explain and establish the whole literary heritage of Ilyitch, to verify all his articles according to the original manuscript, not permitting a single mistake to pass—it would have taken many years longer to complete the collecting of his works. And indeed, it must be regarded as a crime against the party and the working class that even an incomplete collection of Ilyitch’s works has not been made available to them until 1924—the seventh year of the proletarian revolution.
The nineteen volumes of Lenin’s collected works contain everything printed by Lenin between 1893 and 1923, that is at all essential, and for the first time sets free for circulation among thousands of readers hundreds of pages of Lenin’s writings which until this time have only been available to a very few. This, to be sure, is no small thing, but, I repeat, it is only the first step. We must go further.
The first collection of Lenin’s works was planned at the collection of all his printed works. The problem set before the Lenin Institute is much broader. The party, the working class, and the government, (represented by the Congress of Soviets) demand the publication of a complete collection of Lenin’s works, which should be a strictly scientific publication. This demand cannot be interpreted otherwise than in the sense of publishing everything that was ever said or written by Ilyitch, which lends itself to publication.
It must be said here, that the strict fulfilment of this demand—if the second edition of Lenin’s works is not put aside for years, but started at once as the Institute wished to do, and should do—is hardly possible in full measure. It is probable that for many years to come the letters and notes of Ilyitch will continue to pour in to the Institute, and for years the archives and “black cabinets” of the Russian and foreign police bureaux will give us more and more new material. In any case, we must try to make the work as exhaustive as possible. Every writing of Ilyitch’s must have a place in this “Complete Collected Works.” The difficulty in the distribution of this great mass of material is not only in its exhaustiveness and scientific handling, but to make of this collection of Lenin’s works what it must be, that is, a weapon and a text-book of struggle in the hands of the proletarian masses.
All the material which must be included in this new collection, may be divided into the following categories, according to its character.
(1) The works of Lenin (articles, books, brochures) which he himself intended for publication. These works, independent of the fact as to whether or not they actually were published, and independent of the reason for their not having been published, (the absence of suitable vehicle, disagreements of the editors, losses through censorships, etc.)—must make up the basis of the collection. They compose its core.
(2) The works of Lenin, which at the time of writing he did not intend for publication, having as their aim the exchange of opinion with comrades, or affecting a definite group of comrades. First among these come the notebooks of whch we have spoken above. To a similar category belong such works as the writings of 1900 on the discussions with Plekhanov, “How the Iskra was almost Extinguished,” as the “Project for a Party Programme,” of 1902 (still unpublished), or the also unpublished “Story of the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.” Here also belong three “notebooks” of replies to A. Bogdanov, entitled “Notes of a Rank and File Marxist on Philosophy,” unpublished, and alas, still not found. A considerable amount of such material must be published together with the works indicated in paragraph 1, and in the same chronological sequence.
(3) Projects of resolutions and decrees of party congresses, conferences, etc., all kinds of information on party events, announcements by the Central Committee, “editorial statements,” etc. All of this must be included in the ordinary way if the personal authorship of Ilyitch can be established. If this work represents the fruit of the collective work with the participation of Vladimir Ilyitch, it should be, placed as supplementary material in other volumes.
(4) The letters of Ilyitch. The Institute has already collected about 500 original letters. [3]
All of these are political documents. They are all to be printed. It is thought best, however, not to print them among the articles, (with rare exceptions dictated by the contents, of the letters themselves). The letters will probably be divided among two or three supplementary volumes to the collected works.
(5) Manuscripts of preliminary work. In the Institute there are dozens of Ilyitch’s notebooks containing extracts from the most diverse Russian, English, French and German works; on the agrarian question, on the history of the Commune (Notebook of VI. II., 1895—evidently the result of his first journey abroad, and his work in the National Library in Paris) on philosophy, etc. In such notebooks, it is possible, for instance, to follow all of Ilyitch’s work on the protocol of the Second Party Congress, which he worked out for the booklet “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.” These manuscripts may often be utilised in commentaries and in supplementing other works of Ilyitch, for which end they should be printed in the form of supplementary volumes.
(6) The speeches and reports of Ilyitch. Ilyitch’s speeches up to 1917 have been lost for us. His numerous reports at foreign meetings are also lost. The Party was too poor and too badly equipped to have stenographic reports made. Although his hearers have retained the strongest and deepest impressions of the innumerable speeches of Vladimir Ilyitch, right up to the October Revolution, they were only actually preserved in extracts and the transmission of the secretaries of the Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Congresses, and the Congress of Liège (1903). Of all the remaining utterances of Lenin not a single word has been preserved. There were not even stenographic reports of the speeches at the Second Congress of Soviets. Since 1918, Ilyitch’s speeches at the most important meetings have been taken down (although, according to his own personal declaration, very badly), and thus have been preserved.
These, of course, must be included in the ordinary way in the collected works.
(7) Decrees, regulations, orders, resolutions, telegrams, etc., written by Lenin in his capacity as the head of the government. This material is still absolutely untouched. It needs special working over, special commentaries, and must comprise special volumes, “The State Papers of Lenin,” supplementary to his collected writings.
All of the above-mentioned material which will take up in all probability not less than 40 volumes, must be arranged in chronological order and supplied with commentaries not so much of a bibliographical, as, what is more important, of a historical character. The commentaries must make it possible for the readers to orientate themselves on those questions and those movements of the class struggle treated of by Ilyitch, without turning to other sources.
The collected works must be supplemented by one or two volumes in the form of “Guides to Lenin,” containing bibliographies, names, topical chronological tables of events, etc.
We must turn our attention to the working masses, and make available for them those works of Lenin which for years and decades have been hidden from them by the bourgeoisie and the Czarist government with the active support of the whole apparatus of the bourgeois press and bourgeois “public opinion.”[4] To give to the working masses the writings of Lenin means to hasten their victory. To this end all, our strength must be directed.
In the collected writings of Lenin are reflected not only the revolutionary struggle of the Russian workers, but the whole course of world history during its most decisive decades. These writings are the best and most profound commentary on the events of world importance which have taken place during the last thirty years it is the only commentary dealing with them from the revolutionary point of view.
Furthermore, the works of Lenin must become the core of the new science the science of the liberation of humanity. Here the question naturally arises as to whether the science expounded in the collected works of Lenin is actually a new science. Is it not rather simply an exposition or popularisation of the science of Karl Marx?
This is certainly true, but only in the sense that the teachings of Lenin as a whole and in all their aspects and ramifications are based on the scientific Socialism of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. That is the iron foundation on which stands the whole structure of Leninism. Tear Leninism away from this foundation and we completely fail to understand Leninism. But, nevertheless, we undoubtedly have in the works of Lenin a new science. The new element in this science consists in the adaptation of the basic principles and methods of Marxism to a historical setting and period entirely unknown to Marx.
In the first period of his activities (1890-1914) Lenin, with the help of the methods of Karl Marx, had to solve the problems arising out of the peculiar conditions of a bourgeois-democratic revolution taking place in a backward agrarian country with a proletariat, developed, and unified out of all proportion to the general backwardness of the country. This unique situation directed Lenin’s attention to that aspect of the teaching of Karl Marx in which the theoretical and practical Marxians of Europe, in that period were least interested, and which they studied and understood least of all. Already the “Marxism” of Lenin differed strikingly from the Marxian shiboleths voiced during the eighties and nineties by the German pupils of Marx.
During the second period of his activities, (1914-1917), and in the midst of the increasing contradictions of the imperialistic epoch, Lenin had to apply the methods of Karl Marx to the formulation of the tactics of the working class. During that time the teachings of Lenin in its very fundamentals, and built on the basic principles of Marx, for all time, diverged from the teaching of those who considered themselves the internationally recognised expounders of Karl Marx (Kautsky, Plekhanov, and the others) to the adaptation of the teachings of Karl Marx to an epoch of developing imperialism, the deduction from the basic principles of Marxism of conclusions applicable to an essentially new epoch in the history of humanity, and the elaboration of a new tactic for the working class from these conclusions, here indeed one may discern the element of a new science.
But Lenin was destined to introduce further still new elements into the teaching of Marx when he—foremost of the pupils of Marx—became the organiser of the first government of the victorious proletariat. Here, in the realm of theory, he was turning over ground hitherto untouched and undeveloped; new processes were being revealed; the manner in which revolution is prepared and ripened in the depths of capitalist society; the reasons for the inevitability of revolution; and finally the realisation that although the first steps could be learned from Marx, beyond that the virgin soil of theory began. “The way to make a proletarian revolution is not told in any book,” Vladimir Ilyitch was fond of saying. And here began that work for which Lenin had no predecessors nor teachers. Each position, not only of policy, but also of theory, had to be won in the heat of battle. Most dangerous of all were the established formulas, the natural tendency to apply to the entirely new, conditions created by the first victory of the proletariat, the principles and formulas developed in another epoch and for different ends. In the decrees, orders, telegrams, and resolutions, which Lenin wrote in those years, he completed in action that part of the theory of scientific Socialism which had not been written by his teacher.
The teaching of Lenin was created in the course of the struggle. Lenin did not write and could not have written a text book of Leninism. I am even afraid that every attempt to expound the teaching of Lenin in paragraphs, divisions and sub-divisions, to create any kind of a “Handbook” of Leninism, a collection of formulæ applicable to all questions at any time—will certainly fail. Nothing would be more foreign to Lenin in his work than any tendency to catechism. The general of a fighting army, he experienced defeats and gave battle under constantly changing conditions and therefore had no time to expound academically (or, if preferred, systematically) his general theory of war. He always considered that it was “pleasanter and more useful to make revolution than to write about revolution.”
There it is that his teaching, the science of proletarian revolution which he created, is to be found only in that long series of works, each one of which is permeated through and through with the anxieties and lessons of a particular historical situation. Even the most “academic” of his books “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” “Marxism and Empirical Criticism,” productions of a strongly polemical nature, were written under great pressure and were concerned with a given situation. This is why we can only approach the real science of Lenin through a consideration of his complete works in the light of contemporary events.
In addition to its active, vital character, this science is also remarkable for its comprehensiveness. There is probably not a single question which Lenin has not touched upon in his works. Everything from the basic questions of philosophy to the detailed questions of co-operative or financial policy under Socialism engaged the attention of this master mind, and found therein a clear and exact solution, having its place in a unified system. Lenin, a scholar, publicist, and statesman of unprecedented capacity, propounded in his teachings all the questions which must inevitably face the world proletariat, that most active part of humanity. The collected works of Lenin can be called satisfactory only if they help the proletariat to master Leninism, the magnitude of his idea, and all the concreteness of his policy in the most simple, orderly and thorough manner.
It is possible for the proletariat to fulfil its historic mission, break the chains in which the workers are bound and “conquer the whole world” only if it is armed with a clear and well-ordered theory of its emancipation. In the works of Lenin this theory, created by Karl Marx, found its most complete and revolutionary expression. In this period, the beginning of the world proletarian revolution, the proletariat will attain their final victory only if they hold in their hands the lantern of Leninism.
L. B. KAMENEV.
1. Because of this, in Russian artistic literature he preferred Tolstoy, Pushkin, Nekrassov and Tchekhov to all others and kept the “classics” in his permanent library. Of the publicists he had the greatest admiration and respect for Chernishevsky, whom he knew very well, and was fond of quoting.
2. For this reason Ilyitch changed the signature to his articles almost every day. In Pravda his articles were signed with the most diversified combinations of letters, having nothing in common with his usual literary signature, such as P.P., F.L.-ko., V.F., R.S., etc., etc. This necessity of constantly changing his signature was still another obstacle between the words of Ilyitch and his readers—the working masses.
3. Chiefly belong to the period before the October Revolution. The letters are addressed to Plekhanov, Axelrod, Martov, Smidovitch, Matron, Noskov (Boris) Krijhanovsky (Clare), A. M. Gorky, A. M. Kollontay, A. G. Shliapnikoff, etc., etc.
4. Within what period shall we be able to complete the work we have set ourselves? I hope, that, thanks to the preparatory work that has been done in connection with the first edition of collected works, we may be able to finish the new edition by January 21, 1925. It is necessary, how his duty, and place at the disposal of the Lenin lever, for everyone to do all material which will help us make the edition of Lenin’s works complete, exact and worthy of our leader and teacher.