500. To A. V. LUNACHARSKY

Written on November 15, 1921 · First published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 54. Printed from the original. · page 377

15/XI.

Comrade Lunacharsky:

I should very much like to fulfil Comrade Zinoviev’s request and scold Serrati.^[1]

Could you help me?

You could help in two ways:

1) let me have the manuscript of your pamphlet (16.XI, did you say? or later, retyped?),^[2]

2) let me have two or three original documents in Italian, the better to “brace” me up. Let’s have the most eloquent documents.

Incidentally, Serrati appeared to have asked Lazzari: “Have you been swindled?” “Who is the swindler?” Do you happen to have the original of this question?

P.S. Return the enclosure.

Regards,
Lenin

Notes

[1] G. Y. Zinoviev asked Lenin to write an article or a letter against the Italian reformists and Serrati’s double-dealing behaviour,   believing this to be of groat importance. See also this volume, Document 569.

[2] A reference to A. V. Lunacharsky’s pamphlet which he was then writing on Lenin’s proposal (see Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Edition, Vol. 53, Document 518). The pamphlet was published in Petrograd in 1922 under the title Citizen Giacinto Serrati, or a Revolutionary-Opportunist Amphibian.