Lenin Collected Works:
Volume 16

Preface by Progress Publishers

Volume 16 contains works written by V. I. Lenin in the period from September 1909 to December 1910.

The volume consists mainly of articles and documents devoted to the struggle for the Party and its revolutionary principles, against the two kinds of opportunism in the Party: the liquidators, the “direct opponents of the Party”, and the otzovists, the “hidden enemies of the Party”, as well as against the conciliators, who served as a screen for both kinds of opportunists.

The articles “The Liquidators Exposed”, “Methods of the Liquidators and Party Tasks of the Bolsheviks”, “Golos Sotsial-Demokrata and Cherevanin”, and “Golos (Voice) of the Liquidators Against the Party" are devoted to the struggle against liquidationism —the agency of the liberal bourgeoisie in the Party.

The articles “The Faction of Supporters of Otzovism and God-building”, “A Word to the Bolsheviks of St. Petersburg”, “A Shameful Fiasco” and “The Vperyod Faction”, are directed against otzovism and ultimatumism.

The work “Notes of a Publicist” gives an appraisal of the decisions of the plenary session of the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P. in January 1910 and an account of the struggle at the plenary session against the liquidators, Trotskyists and conciliators.

The articles “The Eleventh Session of the International Socialist Bureau”, “The Question of Co-operative Societies at the International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen”, “Two Worlds”, and “Differences in the European Labour Movement” are directed against opportunism in the European labour movement, against the treacherous policy of the leaders of the Second International.

The articles “The Historical Meaning of the Inner-Party Struggle in Russia” and “Strike Statistics in Russia” are devoted to a study of the experience of the Revolution of 1905-07.

Included in this volume are eight documents published in the Collected Works for the first time: “To Pupils of the Capri School”, which reveals the anti-Party activity of the Capri school; “Ideological Decay and Disunity Among Russian Social-Democrats”; “The Vperyod Group”; “Announcement on the Publication of Rabochaya Gazeta”; “An Open Letter to All Pro-Party Social-Democrats” with an exposition of the inner-Party situation after the January plenum of the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P. in 1910; and two statements to the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. Like the majority of the works in this volume, these documents are devoted to the struggle for the Party, the struggle on two fronts.

Among the newly included articles is a large work of Lenin's, “The Capitalist System of Modern Agriculture”, written at the end of 1910. The manuscript of this work has not yet been found in its entirety. The end of the article with the signature V. Ilyin, as well as the end of Chapter I and the beginning of Chapter II, which were absent when the work was published in 1932, have now been found, and therefore Chapters I, II and VII are now published in full for the first time.