Comrade Zinoviev admitted that our visit to Stockholm would be the last one, and that we would only be there for the purpose of information.[1]
When Grimm invited us to the conference, I refused to go, because I realised that it would be useless to talk to people who stood for social-chauvinism. We say: “No participation with social-chauvinists.” We come and address ourselves to the Zimmerwald Left. Grimm had a moral and formal right to draw up today’s resolution. His right was based on Kautsky in Germany, on Longuet in France. This is how the matter stands officially: Grimm has announced, “We will disband our bureau, as soon as Huysmans organises a bureau.” When we said that such a solution was not acceptable to Zimmerwald, he agreed, but said “this is the opinion of the majority”—and that was true.
As to our visit. “We shall get information, we shall get in touch with the Zimmerwald Left,” it is claimed. There is very little hope of our winning over anybody else. Let us have no illusions; first, the visit will not take place; second, if it does, it will be our last; third, we cannot, for technical reasons, win over the elements that wish to break with the social-chauvinists. But let Comrade Nogin make the first and Comrade Zinoviev the last visit to Stockholm. As for me, I express the very legitimate wish that this “last-visit” attempt should be made as quickly and successfully as possible.
| A brief report published May 13 (2), 1917 in Pravda No. 46 | Published according to the typewritten copy of the Minutes |
| First published in full in 1925 in the book The Petrograd City and the All-Russia Conferences of the R.S.D.L.P.(B), April 1917 |
[1] This refers to participation in the proposed third conference of the internationalist socialists due to beheld in Stockholm on May 18, 1917. It was held in August 1917. By decision of the April Conference, the Bolsheviks attended it. Lenin disagreed with this decision and voted against the resolution on the situation in the International and the tasks of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.). Lenin considered attendance of the Bolsheviks at this conference possible only for purposes of information. He wrote about this in his pamphlet The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (see p. 82 of this volume). In the postscript to the pamphlet, written in May 1917, Lenin calls this decision of the conference a mistake (see pp. 89–90 of this volume).
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