The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 17, 1931, Page 7

ee we Vetena che | i i IN TWO SECTIONS — (SECTION TWO). (Section of the Communist International) LONG LIVE ’ LENINISM! NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 1931 LENIN’S LETTER TO THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS The following letter of Lenin | imperialism and the sympathy of |sopctamia. Shall we then hesitate |iat only was written by him in 1919, in! the class-consciotis workers of all|to act in the name of the libera- | the most trying days of the civil) countries give us assurance of the! tion war, intervention, at a time when! . r ' the very existence of the Soviet, Soviet Power. parations against the Soviet Un-| jon, in which American imperial-| | ism is taking a leading part, the| above letter is now more timely than | ever before. | Today, when capitalism is ad- mittedly on trial, when the growth of fascism destroys the last rem- nants of bourgeoise democratic il- | lusions, | letter remains ¢ masterpi of Marxian analysis. Today, w the U. S., the lead- ing — imperial country in world, is sh by the crisis of capitalism, when the toil- ing masses are facing misery starvation. comrade Lenin’s let reminds of the traditions of American history, of the glorious militant traditions of the American Labor His letter—in this period of grov assumes enin’s us movement. »,—Editor. Moscow, August 20, 1919. Comrades: A Russian Bolshevik who participated in the revolution of 1905 and for many years after- ward lived in your country has of- fered to transmit this letter to you. I have grasped this opportunity joy- fully, for the revolutionary proletar- fat of America—in so far as it is the enemy of American imperial- ism—is destined to perform an im- portant task at this time.... Had the Anglo-French and Am- erican bourgeoisie accepted the Soviet invitation to participate in peace negotiations at Brest-Litoysk, instead of leaving Russia to the mercy of brutal Germany, a just peace without annexations and in- demnities, a peace based upon art lete equality could have been Reon cae Germany, and millions of lives might have been saved. Be- cause they hoped to reestablish the Eastern front by once more draw- ing us into the whirlpool of war- fare, they refused to attend peace negotiations and gave Germany a free nand to cram its shameful terms down the throat of the Rus- sian people. It lay in the power of the Allicd countries to make the Litovsk negotiations the fore- runmer of a general peace. It well : es them to throw the blame for the Russo-German peace upon our shoulders!... The workers of the whole world, in whatever country they may live, rejoice with us and sympathize with us, applaud us for having burst the iron ring of imperialistic agree- ments and treaties, for having dreaded no sacrifice, however great to free ourselves, for having estab- lished ourselves as a socialist repub- lie, even so rent asunder and plun- dered by German imperialists, for having raised the banner of peace the banner of Socialism over the world. What wonder that. we are hated by the capitalist. class the world over.’ But this. hatred of revolutionary | righteousness of our cause. | He is no Socialist who cannot un- ; name of a general honorable peace; Union was in the balance. It there-| derstand that one cannot and must |shall we wait until we can find a fore reveals how deep Lenin’s con-| not hesitate ta bring even that | way that entails no sacrifice; st fidence was in the victory of the! greatest of sacrifices, the sacrifice | we be afraid to begin the fight! bro of territory, that one must be ready to accept even military defeat at the hands of imperialism, in the in- terests of victory over the bour- geoisie, in the interests of a trans- fer of power to the working class. For the sake of “their” cause, that is for the conquest of worid-power, the imperialists of Germany and angland have. not hesitated to-ruin 2. whole ‘row of nations, from Belg- ium to'Servia, to Palestine, to Me- from the yoke of capitalism, in the all In view of the actual war pre-| | until an easy victory is assured; shall we place the integrity and safety of this “fatherland” created by the bourgeoisie over the interests of the international socialist revo- lution?... . The great Russian. revolutionist; Tchernyc! once said: Political activity is not as smooth’ as the pavement of the: Newski Prospect. He is. no revoluttonist who -would have the revolution’of: the -proletat- of the workers of the world | under the “condition” that ed smoothly an ig proe ntries immediately go into at guarantees against de- yen beforehand, that the go forward along the free, straight path to vic- $$$ | tory, that there shall-not be here and there the heaviest’ sacrifices, that we shall not have to lie in wait in. besleged fortresses, shall not haye,to.climb up. along the narrowest _paths, sthe most» impas- sable, Winding, dangerous mountain ‘roads.- He is ‘no révolutionist, the has not yet freed himself from the pédantry of -bourgeois intellectual- ism; he will ‘fall back. pesin ane unner, that the proletarians | again, into the + in an or-| | Worse =position than in 1860, np of the counter They are litt?> more than imita- tors of the bour, >oisie, these gentle- men who deligiit in holding up to us the “chaos” of the revolution, the “ ion” of industry, the unemployment, the lack of food. Can there be anything more hypo- critical than such accusations from people who greeted and supported the war and made common cause with Kerensky when he continued the war? Is not thi imperialistic war the cause of our misfortune? The revolution that war born by the war mu sarliy go on 1rough th difficulties that this heritage of < imperialistic and “ter pedant ty of under ony” and the dence” of classes revolutionary times has ¢ evitably taken on the for war, and war is u kable without terror and limitations of the form of democracy in the in- terests of the war. Cne must be a sickly sentimentalist not to be able to see, to understand and ap- preciate this necessity. Only the Chekov type of the lifeless “Man ir the Box” can denounce the rev- olution for this reason instead of throwing himself into the fight with the whole vehemence and deéci- sion of his soul at a moment when history demands that the highest problems of humanity be solved by struggle and war. The bes8t representatives of the American proletariat—those repre- sentatives who have repeatedly given expression of their full soli- darity with us, the Bolsheviki—are the expression of this revolutionary tradition in the life of the Ameri-« can people. This tradition orig~ inated in the war of liberation against the English in the High- teen and the civil war in the Nine~ teenth Century. Industry and commerce in 1870 were in a much But where can you find an American so pedantic, so absolutely idiotic as to deny the revolutionary and prog- ressive significance of the Ameri- can civil war of 1860-1865? The representatives of the bour- geoisie’ understand. very well that the overthrow of slavery was well worth the three years of civil war, the depth of destruction, devasta- tion and: terror that were its ac- companiment. * But these same gentlemen and the reform socialists who have allowed themselves to be cowed. by the bourgeoisie and tremble at the thought:of a revolu- tion, cannot, nay, will not, see the necessity, and: righteousness of a (Continued av Panwa OV the th OTe in civil