Showing the early connections the Socialist Propaganda League of America had with Lenin, this issue contains an article entitled ‘Lenin on the Russian Revolution’, referring to Lenin’s ‘Letters from Afar’ and his journey to revolutionary Russia from exile in Switzerland.

New International (Socialist Propaganda League). Vol. 1 No. 7. Jul 21, 1917.

Contents: Resist the Terror by Louis C. Fraina, The I.W.W. in Action by Charles Martel, New Party in Germany by S.J. Rutgers, Commodity Consequences by Austin Lewis, Lenin on the Russian Revolution, The International Movement, Russia Germany and America by Anton Pannekoek, Editorials, The Place of the Skull by Milutin Krunich,

New International was the paper of the Socialist Propaganda League of America begun in Boston as ‘The Internationalist’ at the start of January 1917 and first edited by John D. Williams. The SPLA was founded by Left Wing SPer C.W. Fitzgerald , who had contacted Lenin in the fall of 1915 over their shared opposition to the war and positions around the Zimmerwald Conference. Lenin and continued their correspondence. With publisher and editor John D Williams and Dutch revolutionary SJ Rutgers, Fitzgerald officially began the SPLA in November, 1916, the first po-Bolshevik organization in the US. In early 1917 Williams went to New York to tour for the SPLA. On January 16, 1917 a meeting in Brooklyn attended by Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Alexandra Kollontay, V. Volodarsky, and Grigory Chudnovsky representing the Russian revolutionary movement with Louis B. Boudin, Ludwig Lore, Louis Fraina, and John D Williams of the SPLA. Both the New International(ist) and Class Struggle journals were born at this meeting. In the spring of 1917 SPLA headquarters moved to New York where Louis Fraina took over as editor. The paper lasted only about a year before Fraina began publishing Revolutionary Age.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-international/v1n07-jul-21-1917-ni.pdf