Published:
First published in 1924 in Lenin Miscellany II.
Sent from Munich to Zurich.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
pages 108-109.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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
March 27, 1902
Dear P. B.,
I have just received your letter, and hasten to reply. I very much like your idea of printing the article in Zarya, instead of as a pamphlet (a supplement to Iskra), both in general and in particular, on account of our plans for moving to London (Yevgeny is writing to you about it).[2] About half of your article is already copied, and I shall send it to you directly it is finished: the work of copying is going ahead quickly now. It will be a fine thing to have a magazine-type article in Zarya. As for the changes that may be required on account of the letter being addressed “to Iskra”, they will be insignificant.
No one, so far as I am aware, has begun or intends to write any review on Kanun revolutsii.[3] Therefore please do write it: what we are short of in Zarya is reviews.
As for the programme, I will send you my comments on G. V.’s draft in a few days (my sick friend now has them)[4]; I showed them to my friends here, and they persuaded me not to send them to G. V., in view of the proposals which had been made for an “arbitration or conciliation” committee. But I would be very happy to send them to you personally to show you my Bedenken[1] set forth therein systematically. As regards our meeting,[5] however, I don’t think it could bring matters to a satisfactory conclusion just at present. I don’t know what the whole board will decide (we shall be acquainting it with your plan this very day), but I personally very much fear that in the absence of an already prepared third draft, in the absence of a new make-up of those voting, in the absence of any firm agreement on how to vote, who is to vote and what significance is to be attached to the voting, our Zurich meeting would once again be inconclusive. And you are a thousand times right about the importance of issuing a programme.
Have you seen Borba’s Kalendar[6]? How did you like it?
No. 4 of Revolutsionnaya Rossiya[7] has appeared. That’s hard work!
Forgive me for the brevity and hastiness of this letter. I am in a great hurry.
[2] The departure of the Munich section of Iskra’s Editorial Board (Lenin, V. I. Zasulich and Y. O. Martov; A. N. Potresov was unwell and stayed in Switzerland) for London was discussed in March 1902 when it was informed that the Russian and German police had got wind of the publication of Iskra in Germany. In late March, the question was settled and Lenin and N. K. Krupskaya left Munich for London on April 12. Martov and Zasulich arrived later.
[3] Kanun revolutsii (Eve of Revolution)—a non-periodical publication of the Svoboda (Freedom) group, edited by Y. 0. Zelensky (L. Nadezhdin). No review of its No. 1 appeared in Zarya.
[4] A reference to Lenin’s notes on G. V. Plekhanov’s second draft programme (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 37–57) the MS. of which was kept by A. N. Potresov until April 2. For Potresov’s opinion of Lenin’s notes, see Lenin Miscellany II, pp. 105–07.
[5] A “Congress” or meeting of Iskra’s editorial board was proposed in P. B. Axelrod’s letter to Lenin of March 25, 1902 (see Lenin Miscellany II, pp. 99–101). Lenin refused to attend. The meeting between G. V. Plekhanov, V. I. Zasulich, P. B. Axelrod and Y. O. Martov was held in Zurich on April 14, 1902, where they discussed and adopted a draft programme worked out by a commission, which had adopted Plekhanov’s draft as a basis but with amendments suggested in Lenin’s counter-draft and remarks.
[6] Sotsial-Demokratichesky Kalendar na 1902 god (Social-Democratic Calendar for 1902) was issued by the Borba group in Geneva in 1902.
[7] Revolutsionnaya Rossiya (Revolutionary Russia)—an illegal paper of the League of Socialist-Revolutionaries published in Russia from late 1900 (No. 1 dated 1900 actually appeared in January 1901). It was published in Geneva from January 1902 to December 1905 as an organ of the S.R. Party.
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