Published:
First published in 1930 in the second and third editions of Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol. XXVII.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1976],
Moscow,
Volume 35,
pages 526-527.
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
October 13, 1921
Comrade Hillman,
I thank you with all my heart for your help. Thanks to you an agreement was rapidly achieved on organisation of help for Soviet Russia by the American workers. Particularly important is the fact that the organisation of this aid has now been arranged in respect also of (hose workers who are not Communists. Throughout the world, and particularly in the most advanced capitalist countries, millions of workers do not at the present lime share the views of the Communists, but nonetheless are ready to help Soviet, Russia, to help and feed the starving, if only some of them, and to help the cause of restoring the economy of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. Such workers repeal with complete conviction the words—and what is more important not only repeat the words but give them practical expression in life—of the leaders of the Amsterdam Trade Union International (unquestionably hostile to communism), namely, that any victory of the international bourgeoisie over Soviet Russia would mean the greatest possible victory of world reaction over the working class in general.
Soviet Russia is exerting all her strength to overcome starvation, ruin and dislocation. The financial aid of the workers of the whole world is infinitely important for us in this respect, side by side with moral help and political help. America, naturally, is at the head of the states where the workers can help us, are already helping us and will help—I am profoundly convinced—on a far greater scale.
Devoted to the cause, the energetic advanced workers of America will be taking the lead of all the workers of a number of industrial countries who arc bringing Soviet Russia I heir technical knowledge, and their determination to make sacrifices in order to help the Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic to restore its economy. Among the peaceful means of struggle against the yoke of international finance capital, against international reaction, there is no other means with such rapid and certain promise of victory as aid in the restoration of the economy of Soviet Russia.
With best greetings to all workers who are bringing aid, in one form or another, to Soviet Russia.
N. Lenin
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