Written: Written October 25, 1912
Published:
First published in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXV.
Sent from Cracow to St. Petersburg.
Printed from a typewritten copy found in police records.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1977],
Moscow,
Volume 43,
pages 303b-304a.
Translated: Martin Parker and Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2005).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
• README
Dear Colleague,
I was very happy to receive one of your rare letters. Many, many thanks for the subscriptions to the journals. I can send you the book by Litvinov whenever you want it. I do not recall a book by Chistyakov. What is it about, what sort of a book is it?[1] Your hopes that I am sufficiently well informed are, alas, entirely unfounded. In fact, to me it sounds almost like mockery.... Of course I quite under stand your reference to the “hurry-scurry”, but a political hurry-scurry, you know, seldom takes the form of silence or reserve. As a contributor to Pravda on political questions I too experience the “hurry-scurry” and that is why I cannot remain silent even when the circumstances are not at all conducive to conversation (owing to the silence of the interlocutor). In my view it would be extremely important before the elections on October 17[2] to set forth still more clearly and resolutely the basic principles of the anti-liquidationist platform, to print our own list once more in full, to warn against vacillation à la Sudakov[3] (strange, very strange that you say nothing on this score). I am sending article after article about this. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.... Is this applicable to your newspaper? It would be advisable to put out an extra sheet on these questions on Wednesday. It would cost some 100–200 rubles—but even that sum would be repaid tenfold by the success of the election campaign, for what we need are re liable and lasting friends, do not forget that. Don’t stint 100–200 rubles at the decisive moment, you will economise far more in the long run.... As regards the technicalities, it is important to give some attention to curbing the chair man of the congress of representatives. I would advise consulting lawyers by telephone and writing an article about the rights of members of the congress of representatives vis-à-vis the chairman. I do not have the law at the moment (Legal Code, Vol. II, 1892 edition, articles 179–91, general gubernia institutions), in any case the lawyers ought to know and will give clear practical advice on how to file complaints against the chairman and secure one’s rights. Don’t grudge the expense of wiring me the election results.
N. L.
[1] A reference to V. P. Litvinov-Falinsky’s book New Workers’ Insurance Laws, St. Petersburg, 1912, and I. Chistyakov’s Workers’ Insurance in Russia. From the History of Workers’ Insurance in Connection with Some Other Welfare Measures, Moscow, 1912.
[2] On October 17 (30), 1912, the second congress of delegates from the worker curia of St. Petersburg was held to choose the electors from among whom the worker deputy to the Fourth Duma was to be elected.
[3] P. I. Sudakov, a worker, was elected at the first congress of delegates of the workers of St. Petersburg Gubernia held on October 5 (18), 1912, thanks to the vote of Pravda supporters. On October 6 (19) he wrote an item entitled “At the Meeting of Delegates” (Pravda No. 136) in which he declared himself a supporter of Pravda and Zvezda. On the following day, October 7 (20), Luch No. 19 carried a letter to the Editor from Sudakov in which he went back on the statement he had made in Pravda. For more about the Sudakov incident see Lenin’s “On Political Spinelessness (Letter to the Editor)”, Collected Works, Vol. 41, pp. 266–67.
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