Written: Written after March 19, 1917
Published:
First published in 1930 in Lenin Miscellany XIII.
Sent from Zurich to Geneva.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
page 420.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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.
• README
Martov’s plan is a good one[1]: it’s necessary to work for it, but we (and you) cannot do this directly. We shall be open to suspicion. It’s necessary that, in addition to Martov, non-Party Russians and patriotic Russians should approach Swiss Ministers (and influential people, lawyers, etc., something that can be done in Geneva as well) requesting them to have a talk about it with the German Government’s Ambassador at Berne. We cannot take part, either directly or indirectly; our participation will spoil it all. But the plan, in itself, is a very good one and is very right.
[1] At a conference of representatives of Russian political parties at Geneva on March 19, 1917, L. Martov proposed a plan to secure the passage of political émigrés via Germany in exchange for the same number of Germans and Austrians interned in Russia. All participants in the meeting recognised Martov’s plan as being the best and most acceptable.
The plan was discussed in émigré circles and was adopted by the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P. at the end of March (see present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 27–29; Lenin Miscellany II, 1924, pp. 385–94).
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