Published:
First published in 1929 in German in Illustrierte Geschichte der Deutschen Revolution No. 6, Berlin.
First published in Russian in Pravda No. 308, November 7, 1930.
Sent to Berlin.
Printed from a photo-copy of the original.
Translated from the German.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1976],
Moscow,
Volume 35,
page 369.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
• README
October 18, 1918
Dear Comrades,
We have had news today that the Spartacus group, together with the Bremen Left Radicals,[2] has taken the most energetic steps to promote the setting up of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils throughout Germany. I take this opportunity to send our best wishes to the German revolutionary internationalist Social-Democrats. The work of the German Spartacus group, which has carried on systematic revolutionary propaganda in the most difficult conditions, has really saved the honour of German socialism and the German proletariat. Now the decisive hour is at hand: the rapidly maturing German revolution calls on the Spartacus group to play the most important role, and we all firmly hope that before long the German socialist proletarian republic will inflict a decisive blow on world imperialism.
I hope that the book by the renegade Kautsky against the dictatorship of the proletariat will also bring certain benefits. It will prove the correctness of what the Spartacus group always said against the Kautskians, and the masses will the more quickly be freed from the corrupting influence of Mr. Kautsky and Co.
With best greetings and firm hopes that in the very near future it will be possible to hail the victory of the proletarian revolution in Germany.
Yours,
N. Lenin
[2] Reference is to the Bremen group of German Left Social-Democrats; in 1919 the group joined the Communist Party of Germany.
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