| Summary: | The book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism was written between January and June 1916. Lenin began to study world literature on imperialism while still in Berne in 1915 and then to write the book in January 1916. In the first half ofFebruary of that year Lenin went to live in Zurich and continued his work on the book in the Zurich Cantonal Library. The excerpts, summaries, notes and tables that Lenin copied out from hundreds of foreign books, magazines, newspapers and books of statistics amount to about fifty printer's signatures. On June 19 (July 2), 1916, Lenin finished the book and sent the manuscript to Paris Publishers. The Menshevik elements in the management of this publishing house deleted from the book the sharp criticism of the opportunist theories of Kautsky and the Russian Mensheviks (Martov and others) and made corrections in the manuscript which not only obliterated characteristic features of Lenin's style but even distorted his ideas. For Lenin's word "growth" (of capitalism into imperialism) they substituted the word "transformation", for "reactionary character" (of the theory of "ultra-imperialism") they substituted "backward character", etc. In the middle of 1917, the book was published under the title Of "Imperialism, the Latest Stage of Capitalism. Popular Outline", with a preface by Lenin dated April 26, 1917. This translation is taken from Volume 22 of the English edition Of V.I. Lenin's Collected Works prepared by Progress Publishers, Moscow• Changes have been made in accordance with the 5th Russian edition Of the Collected Works. This edition follows Lenin's original version.--
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