Written: 5 or 6 November, 1917
First Published: in 1927 in the
pamphlet The Party’s fight Against Zinoviev’s and
kamenev’s Strike-breaking Tactics in October of 1917.
Published according to the manuscript
Source: Lenin’s Collected
Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972,
pp. 302-303
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov and George
Hanna, Edited by George Hanna
Transcription & HTML Markup: Charles
Farrell and David Walters
Online Version: Lenin Internet Archive December,
2000
To Comrades Kamenev, Zinoviev, Ryazanov and Larin
Once before, the Central Committee delivered an ultima—turn to the leading exponents of your policy (Kamenev and Zinoviev), demanding complete subordination to the Central Committee’s line and decisions, and renunciation of efforts to sabotage its work and of all subversive activity. [See pp. Ultimatum to the Majority inthis volume. —Transcriber]
By leaving the Central Committee, but remaining in the Party, the exponents of your policy undertook to abide by Central Committee decisions. Actually, however, you have not confined yourselves to criticism within the Party, but have brought confusion into the ranks of the fighters- in an uprising which is still going on, and continue, in violation of Party discipline, to frustrate Central Committee decisions and hamper its work outside the Party, in the Soviets, the municipal bodies, the trade unions, etc.
In view of this, the Central Committee is forced to restate its ultimatum and to request that you immediately pledge yourselves in writing either to abide by Central Committee decisions and to conduct its policy in all your statements, or to withdraw from all Party activity in public and resign from all responsible posts in the working-class movement until the next Party congress.
Refusal to pledge yourselves to either course will make it imperative for the Central Committee to consider the question of your immediate expulsion from the Party.