V. I.   Lenin

312

To:   G. M. KRZHIZHANOVSKY


Published: Printed from the original. Published for the first time in the Fourth (Russian) Edition of the Collected Works.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [1976], Moscow, Volume 35, pages 544-545.
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


January 28, 1922

G. M.,

I have read Gorev’s work[1] and return it.

I expected more. A former Bolshevik, who captivated you so, and who, in your opinion, had once again become a real Bolshevik, should have produced impressive, vivid, powerful, popular propaganda, a defence of communism for France, starting from her electrification.

But Gorev’s work has turned out “professorial”.

I offer the following plan for your consideration:

(1) send it to be set at once, in order to publish it soon in any case;

(2) suggest to Gorev—if you agree—that he should write in addition a preface or an afterword, in which he should in very clear and popular form and a little more freely ( prescribe for him to this end three grammes of extract of Larinism: they say it has appeared on sale in Moscow) attack French capitalism, and say to the French workers and peasants: you could become in three-five years three times as rich, and work not more than six hours a day (approximately) if there were a Soviet government in France putting electrification into effect;

(3) if in your (or Gorev’s) opinion, Gorev will do this badly or unwillingly, then think over whether someone should not be asked to do this work separately (a brief “Ballod”[2] for France);

(4) send me Gorev’s article, as soon as you can, once it is set up (to he published as a pamphlet or in some journal, whichever you choose). Perhaps I will write an introduction.[3]

Greetings,
Yours,
Lenin


Notes

[1] Reference is to A. Gorev’s pamphlet Elektrifikatsia Frantsii (The Electrification of France). It was published in 1922.

[2] Lenin refers to the book by Karl Ballod, Der Zukunftsstaat (The State of the Future), a Russian translation of which appeared in 1920. Lenin writes of Ballod’s book in his article “An Integrated Economic Plan” (see present edition, Vol. 32, p. 140).

[3] The introduction to A. Gorev’s pamphlet Elektrifikatsia Frantsii (The Electrification of France) was not written by Lenin.


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