Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Nicolai Lenin, His Life and Work (1918).djvu/9



The present booklet is the shorthand report of a speech delivered by me on the 6th of September, 1918, at a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet. The comrades have persistently demanded from me the publication of this speech in a separate booklet in order that the widest possible circles of workers and peasants might have an opportunity of acquainting themselves with the biography of Comrade Lenin.

My speech naturally, gives only the most cursory sketch of the life and work of Comrade Lenin. It was my intention to revise and enlarge it but pressure of work, to my deep regret, has not even allowed me attentively to read through the shorthand notes. I feel that I have not said even the tenth part of that which I might and ought to have said of the life and work of Comrade Lenin.

The present booklet presents only a feeble beginning of a biography of Comrade Lenin, which is yet to be written. To more this booklet does not pretend.

The Petrograd Soviet decided to publish it simultaneously in French, German, and English.

Nothing now remains but to beg Comrade Lenin's forgiveness for having taken this decision to relate publicly some part of that which Comrade Lenin would certainly have preferred to remain unknown to the general public. The working class ought to know something of the biography of their acknowledged leader.

G. Z.