The pamphlet The Foundations of Leninism must be regarded as one of the basic components of the present collection. This pamphlet was first published nearly two years ago, in May 1924. It now appears in a second edition in the present collection. In these two years much water has flowed under the bridge: the Party has passed through two discussions, a number of pamphlets and manuals on Leninism have been published, new practical questions of socialist construction have come to the fore. Naturally, the new questions that have arisen during these two years, as well as the results of the discussions which have taken place since the pamphlet appeared, could not be taken into account in this pamphlet. Naturally, too, the concrete questions of our constructive work (NEP, state capitalism, the question of the middle peasantry, etc.) could not be fully treated in a small pamphlet which constitutes a “concise synopsis of the foundations of Leninism.” These and similar questions could be treated by the author only in subsequent pamphlets (The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists,7 The Results of the Work of the Fourteenth Conference of the R.C.P.(B.),8 Questions and Answers,9 etc.), which have been included in the present collection and which are organically linked with the basic theses expounded in the original pamphlet The Foundations of Leninism. This circumstance fully justifies the publication of the present collection, which thus constitutes a single and integral work on questions of Leninism.

The latest discussion, at the Fourteenth Party Congress, summed up the Party’s ideological and constructive activities in the recent period, from the Thirteenth to the Fourteenth Congress. It also served in a way as a test of the views advanced by the “New Opposition.” It is permissible to ask: What has this test shown? J. V. Stalin, Concerning Questions of Leninism, Moscow and Leningrad, 1926