Written: 17 October, 1919
Publishing history: Published In Italian in Avanti! (Rome) No. 332, December, 1919; First published in Russian in 1932; Published according to the manuscript
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 30, pages 91-92
Translated: George Hanna
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters & Robert Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
October 28, 1919
Dear Friend,
The news we get from Italy is extremely scanty. It is only from the foreign (non-communist) press that we have learned of your Party Congress at Bologna and of the splendid victory of communism. I send my heartfelt greetings to you and all the Italian Communists, arid wish you every success. The example of the Italian Party will be of enormous significance to the whole world. In particular, the resolution of your Congress on participating in elections to the bourgeois parliament is in my opinion perfectly correct, and I hope that it will help to achieve unity in the Communist Party of Germany, which has just split on this issue.
There is no doubt that the overt and the covert opportunists, who are so numerous among the parliamentarians in the Italian Party, will try to circumvent and nullify the Bologna resolutions. The struggle against these trends is by no means over, but the victory at Bologna will facilitate further victories.
Difficult tasks lie ahead for the Italian proletariat owing to Italy’s position in the international field. Britain and France, with the co-operation of the Italian bourgeoisie, may possibly try to provoke the Italian proletariat to a premature uprising in order the easier to crush it. But their provocation will fail. The brilliant work of the Italian Communists guarantees that they will he just as successful in winning the entire industrial and the entire rural proletariat plus the small peasants, and then, if the proper moment is chosen internationally, victory for the dictatorship of the proletariat in Italy will be enduring. That is also guaranteed by the successes of the Communists in France, Britain and throughout the world.
With communist greetings,
N. Lenin