AN OPEN
LETTER TO LENIN.
From the inaugural meeting of the Finnish
Communist Party held in Moscow on September
3rd, 1918.
Comrade,—
With deep consternation and anger we have heard that the bullet of an assassin hired by the bourgeois has wounded you, the greatest soldier of the Soviet Republic, and leader of the International Revolutionary Labour movement.
We meet here, in the capital of the Socialist Soviet Republic, to organise a Finnish Communist Party, in place of the Social Democratic Party, that fell in the reyolutionary storms last spring. We hoped to see you amongst us, honoured comrade, and best adviser; we had already adopted a resolution asking you to come to our Conference. As our wish to see you here with us cannot be realised owing to the infamous attack on your life, we desire by this open letter to convey to you the thoughts in our hearts that we had hoped to express to you verbally.
A year ago you were an exile in our country; now we are visiting yours. You were exiled by the terrorism of the Russian Bourgeoisie, and afterwards by the Temporary Administration, which coerced and exiled Russia's struggling proletariat. Now it is we who have been chased to Russia by the violent terrorism of the united Finnish and German bourgeoisie, which by a bloody military dictatorship is now crushing the workers of Germany and Finland.
A year ago we could not believe that during the war Russia could achieve a real proletarian revolution. We thought: "First peace, then revolution." But you, comrade Lenin, declared with deep confidence, "First revolution, then peace."
You acted with decision and in harmony with that belief. You hurried from Helsingfors to Viborg, from Viborg to Petrograd. We sent you a special warning: "Take care, Kerensky is seeking your life." But you disregarded our warning because you thought that the time had come to lead the workers to revolution.
In October the Russian proletariat rose; it crushed both the bourgeois administrators and their Socialist hirelings, and took all power into its own hands.
We Finnish Social Democrats did not then realise the true meaning of this tremendous stroke; we could not believe that still, in September, 1918, the power wrested by the workers from the bourgeois state which they have destroyed would remain
