VoLUME V of Selected W orks covers the period from the outbreak of the World War of 1914-18 to the February Revolution in Russia in 1917. In the Collected Works of Lenin this period is covered by Vols. XVII and XIX which are also available in English. All the works of Lenin in this period of the first round of imperialist wars and revolutions are so important for the study of Lenin's theory of proletarian revolution and for solving the problems of the international proletarian movement that it is very dificult to make a selection of these works, however well that may be done, without feeling conscious that many things of importance have been left out. However, this volume contains sufficient material to enable the reader to grasp the main ideas advanced by Lenin in this great turning point in the history of capitalist society and in the international class struggle of the proletariat.
The period opened with the imperialist war which completely revealed all the specific features of the epoch of imperialism and intensified its contradictions to the utmost degree. This confronted the international proletariat with the task of achieving the prole-tarian revolution, which in Russia had first to pass through the stage of the overthrow of tsarism and the bourgeois-democratic revolution. One of the most serious obstacles that stood in the path of fulilling this task both in Russia and in the West was the victory of opportunism in the parties affiliated to the Second International, the transformation of opportunism into social-chauvinism, into the betrayal by the majority of these parties of eocialism and into servility towards and defence of the imperialist bourgeoisie.