I am replying with delay: due to lack of time I could not answer in time.

1) I think that you read the article [7] poorly, otherwise you would certainly have found there a quotation from Ilyich’s article speaking “of the victory of socialism in one country.”

2) If you read the article thoughtfully, you should understand that it is not about complete victory, but about the victory of socialism in general, i.e., about driving out the landlords and capitalists, taking power, repelling the attacks of imperialism and beginning to build a socialist economy – all this can fully succeed for the proletariat in one country, but a full guarantee against restoration can be ensured only as a result of “the joint efforts of the proletarians of several countries.”

It would have been foolish to start the October Revolution in Russia with the conviction that the victorious proletariat of Russia, with the obvious sympathy of the proletarians of other countries, but in the absence of victory in several countries, “cannot stand against conservative Europe.” This is not Marxism, but the most ordinary opportunism, Trotskyism and anything you like. If Trotsky’s theory were correct, then Ilyich would not be right in asserting that we will turn NEP Russia into a socialist one, that we have “everything necessary for building a complete socialist society” (see “On Cooperation” [8]).

3) You probably did not notice that the published article is part of the “Preface.” If you had paid attention to this, I think you would have complained that the “Preface” must be taken as a whole.

4) The most dangerous thing in our political practice is the attempt to view the victorious proletarian country as something passive, capable only of marking time until the moment help arrives from the victorious proletarians of other countries. Suppose that during five to ten years of the Soviet system’s existence in Russia there will still be no revolution in the West; suppose that during this period our Republic nonetheless continues to exist as a Soviet Republic, building a socialist economy under the conditions of NEP [9] – do you think that during these five to ten years our country will be engaged in pounding water, rather than organizing a socialist economy? One need only pose this question to understand the whole danger of the theory denying the victory of socialism in one country.

But does this mean that this victory will be complete, final? No, it does not (see my “Preface”), for as long as there is a capitalist encirclement, there will always be the danger of military intervention. But that this is nonetheless a victory of socialism, and not a defeat, is evident to everyone. And that this victory is at the same time a prerequisite for the victory of the revolution in other countries – there is hardly any reason to doubt this.

I see that some comrades have still not renounced the old Social-Democratic theory about the groundlessness of the proletarian revolution in countries less developed capitalistically than, say, England or America.

5) I advise rereading some of Ilyich’s articles in the collection “Against the Current” [10], his pamphlets on “The Proletarian Revolution” [11] and “The Infantile Disorder” [12], as well as his article “On Cooperation.”

With communist greetings, J. Stalin

January 25, 1925

Printed for the first time