the border states, and during all the revolutionary plots set on foot by the Third Internationale.
In a speech (quoted in Pravda, November 30, 1920) Lenin explains:
We have found the right way to revolution, but this way is not a direct one; it runs in zig zags.
In the letter to the Italian communists already quoted Lenin advises them that in order to bring the country to revolution at the earliest possible moment—which he believes will be very soon in Italy—it is necessary to move first to the right and then to the left. The failure of the Italian revolutionary movement in October and of the German revolutionary movement in March led Lenin to propose one of his momentary zig zags or movements to the right. The date for the big revolutionary movements in Europe has been postponed for a year or two. As Trotzky is reported recently to have declared:
The proletarian revolution in America and Europe will be found if not in the approaching months then in the approaching years.
Touching upon the same subject at the International Communist Congress in July, 1920, Zinovieff truculently exclaimed:
