First published in 1923.

Published: Pravda No. 30, April 25 (12), 1917. Signed: N. Lenin. Published according to the text in Pravda.

Published in Pravda No. 44, May 12 (April 29), 1917.

Written on March 26 (April 8), 1917.

This letter was written in mid-March as Lenin was preparing to travel to Russia. In it he appealed to Russian war prisoners in Germany and Austria to return to Russia in order to support the revolution agasint the ruling classes.

Lenin’s two-and-a-half-hour lecture consisted of two parts. In the first, Lenin surveyed the historical conditions which could, and did, produce such a “miracle” as the collapse of the tsarist monarchy in a matter of eight days. The most important of these was the “great rebellion” of 1905–07, so vilely denounced by the Guchkovs and Milyukovs, the present masters of the situation, who are moved to admiration by the “glorious revolution” of 1917. But had the really profound Revolution of 1905 not “ploughed up the ground”, had it not exposed to view all the parties and classes in action, had it not exposed the tsarist clique in all its barbarism and savagery, the swift victory of 1917

On 21 March 1917 (3 April according to the new calendar), the first of Lenin's Letters from afar was published in Pravda, which was at that time edited by Joseph Stalin and Lev Kamenev. In these letters Lenin outlined the main characteristics of the Russian revolution and laid the basis for the political reorientation of the Bolshevik party. This was the political basis for the coming to power of the Bolsheviks only 7 months later.

Comrade workers,

The prediction of the socialists who have remained faithful to socialism and have not succumbed to the savage and beastly war hysteria has proved correct. The first revolution, caused by the world-wide predatory war among the capitalists of various countries, has broken out. The imperialist war, that is, a war for the capitalist division of spoils, for the strangling of weak nations, has begun to turn into civil war, that is, a war of the workers against the capitalists, of the toilers and the oppressed against their oppressors, against tsars and kings, landowners and capitalists, a war for mankind’s complete liberation from wars, from poverty of the

Various German newspapers have published a distorted version of the telegram I sent on Monday, March 19, to certain members of our Party in Scandinavia who were leaving for Russia and who asked my advice about the tactics Social-Democrats should follow.

Our tactics: no trust in and no support of the new government; Kerensky is especially suspect; arming of the proletariat is the only guarantee; immediate elections to the Petrograd City Council; no rapprochement with other parties. Telegraph this to Petrograd.

Information reaching Zurich from Russia at this moment, March 17, 1917, is so scanty, and events in our country are developing so rapidly, that any judgement of the situation must of needs be very cautious.

First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVII. Written (in German) in late February 1917.

First published in Russian in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVII.Published in Volksrecht Nos. 26 and 27, January 31 and February 1, 1917. Written (in German) between January 13 and 17 (26 and 30), 1917. Translated from the German. Published according to the manuscript.

First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVII. Written (in German) in late January 1917.

First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVII. Written between January 27 and 29 (February 9 and 11), 1917.