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were no enemies of ours, but merely friends with sectarian conceptions, who had not yet fully grasped many of the concrete conditions, we found a great number of enemies to the "right." You will recall that, at the time of the session of the Second Congress, the general situation in Europe and America was such that it was growing to be the fashion to belong to the Communist International. Every half-way clever centrist wanted to belong to the Communist International. America sent us a delegation of the Hillquit party, the tendency of which was just about the same as that of the right Independent Socialist Party or the Scheidemannists in Germany.
This delegation was quite surprised that we did not receive it any too hospitably. You remember that Dittmann and Crispien, who are now unofficially participating in the bourgeois government, were here and declared their desire of joining the Communist International. You also recall that the Italian reformists, d'Aragona among them, who have now proved to be open saboteurs of the proletarians, were here, too, and deemed it quite obvious that they belonged to the Third International.
On the other hand, the situation was so indefinite and our relations so insufficient that we here in Russia, on account of the blockade, were very badly informed. We were so naive as to receive such gentlemen as d'Aragona very fraternally in the beginning. And even now I feel ashamed when I recall that I am partly to blame for the fact that thousands of splendid Petrograd proletarians literally carried those persons on their shoulders through the revolutionary streets of Petrograd. We thought that real brothers had come to us.
It was during that very Second Congress that the situation began to grow rather clear. The Congress as you know had taken a sharp stand against the "right" elements. Our real enemies were to the "right." We were very well aware that these shrewd
