Letter to Members of the Politburo of the CC of the VKP(b), V.I. Adoratsky, V.G. Knorin, A.I. Stetsky, G.E. Zinoviev, P.N. Pospelov, August 5, 1934

To Members of the POLITBURO,
Comrades Adoratsky, Knorin, Stetsky, Zinoviev, Pospelov.

In issue No. 13–14 of Bolshevik, an editorial note "From the Editors" (pages 86–90) was published, commenting on a letter by F. Engels to Ioan Nadezhde from January 1888, in which Engels's views on the coming war are manifestly falsified.

Incorrectly and fraudulently using Engels's letter to the Romanian Ioan Nadezhde (1888), the editors of Bolshevik assert in their note that:

a) Engels "stands entirely on a defeatist position," a position of the defeat "of his own bourgeois fatherland as well";

b) "Lenin upheld an analogous position in the war of 1914";

c) Lenin, consequently, contributed nothing essentially new to the question of defining the character of war and the policy of Marxists in connection with war.

Thus:

1. The editors of Bolshevik concealed from readers the fact that Engels did not understand the imperialist character of the coming war, as is evident from Engels's letter to Ioan Nadezhde (1888), from his article "The Foreign Policy of Russian Tsarism" (1890), and from his well-known letters to Bebel (1891). It suffices to compare these works of Engels with Lenin's tables "An Attempt at a Summary of the Main Data of World History After 1870," published in the same issue of Bolshevik, in which Lenin notes the imperialist struggle of the powers (including Germany) for colonies and spheres of influence as early as the beginning of the 1880s as the cause of war, to understand the entire difference between the views of Lenin and Engels on the character of war.

2. The editors of Bolshevik concealed from readers the fact that Engels, two or three years after his letter to Ioan Nadezhde, when the Franco-Russian alliance began to take shape as a counterweight to the alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, changed his attitude toward war and began to speak not for the defeat but for the victory of Germany (see especially Engels's letters to Bebel from 1891), and that this position remained with Engels, as is well known, to the end of his life.

3. The editors of Bolshevik concealed from readers the fact that between Engels's passive defeatism ("to wish that they all be defeated"), which he subsequently renounced in favor of defensism, and Lenin's active defeatism ("transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war"), one cannot draw an equal sign.

4. The editors of Bolshevik concealed from readers the indisputable fact that Lenin and only Lenin provided a fundamentally new and the only correct position both on the question of the character of war and on the question of the policy of Marxists in connection with war.

Such is the state of affairs with the tricks of the editors of Bolshevik.

That Engels was and remains our teacher — only idiots can doubt this. But from this it in no way follows that we should paper over Engels's errors, that we should conceal them, and — still less — present them as unquestionable truths. Such a policy would be a policy of lying and deception. Nothing is so contrary to the spirit of Marxism and to the legacy of Marx and Engels as such a policy, unworthy of Marxists. Marx and Engels themselves said that Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action. This explains why Marx and Engels themselves repeatedly amended and supplemented various propositions of their works. This means that Marx and Engels considered the fundamental thing in their teaching to be not the letter, not individual propositions, but the spirit of this teaching, its method. Nor could it be otherwise, since with any other approach, the further development of Marxism would be unthinkable, for Marxism would turn into a mummy. Nor could it be otherwise, for in the opposite case, Lenin would not have been the man who not only restored Marxism but also developed it further. And if Lenin developed Marxism further, is it not clear that we should not be afraid to record in Lenin's credit that which is new about war, that which rightfully belongs to him and was given by him as something new, in the interests of the further development of Marxism?

There can be no doubt that only disrespect for Marxism and its founders could have dictated to the editors of Bolshevik the policy of papering over and concealing facts, the policy of diminishing Lenin's role in the development of a new position of Marxism on the questions of the character of war and the policy of Marxists in connection with war.

I think that in its note the editors of Bolshevik tacitly proceed from a certain Trotskyist-Menshevik position, according to which Engels supposedly said everything that needed to be said about war, its character, and the policy of Marxists in connection with war, that Marxists need only restore what Engels said and apply it to practice, that Lenin supposedly acted precisely in this way, assuming "an analogous position in the war of 1914," and that whoever disagrees with this is revising Marxism, is not a real Marxist.

As is well known, the Trotskyist-Menshevik gentlemen proceeded from the same position when they denied the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country, citing the fact that Engels in the "Principles of Communism" (1846) denies such a possibility, that Engels had supposedly already said everything that needed to be said, and whoever continues to insist on the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country is revising Marxism.

It hardly needs proving that such a position is thoroughly rotten and anti-Marxist, for it condemns Marxism, its method, to stagnation, to vegetating, surrendering it to the letter.

I think that in this incorrect position lies the root of the editors' error in Bolshevik.

It seems to me that the journal Bolshevik has fallen (or has already fallen) into unreliable hands. The very fact that the editors attempted to publish in Bolshevik Engels's article "On the Foreign Policy of Russian Tsarism" as a guiding article — this fact alone does not speak in favor of the editors. The CC of the VKP(b), as is known, intervened in the matter in time and put a stop to such an attempt. But this circumstance evidently did not serve the editors well. On the contrary, the editors, as if to spite the CC's instructions, published, already after the CC's warning, a note that cannot be qualified as anything other than an attempt to mislead readers about the CC's actual position. And yet Bolshevik is an organ of the CC.

I think the time has come to put an end to such a state of affairs.

I. Stalin.
August 5, 1934.

RGASPI. F. 558. Op. 11. D. 1074. L. 113.