Published:
First published in 1934 in Lenin Miscellany XXVI.
Sent to Italy.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1977],
Moscow,
Volume 43,
pages 179-180a.
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
13.I. 08
Dear An. Vas.,
For several days now my wife and I have been in Geneva.... It is devilishly sad to have to return to this accursed Geneva again, but there’s no other way out! After the disaster in Finland there was no alternative but to transfer Proletary[2] abroad. That’s what the Editorial Board decided. The only question is whether to Geneva or some other place. So far we are making inquiries, but I person ally believe that Geneva and London are the only places that are free. But London is expensive.
I read your pamphlet about Stuttgart to the end; the third supplement came very late, I barely managed to read it before leaving. I think you made a good job of it, and all the comrades were very pleased with the pamphlet.[1] We all thought it unnecessary to “correct” it; it would have been a pity to mar your vivid and lively style. And there is no syndicalism in it; what it does contain, in my opinion, is a number of major indiscretions “for use by” Plekhanov and Co. Did you see his carping and base cavilling in Obrazovaniye or Sovremenny Mir?[3] We shall always have opponents of this kind and must be triply cautious. Moreover, you also forgot about the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who have for quite some time now been attacking the German Social-Democrats, making use of the criticism of the syndicalists and distorting this criticism into vituperation against Marxism.
I don’t know whether our people will now manage to put out your pamphlet. Publishing has become difficult.
Did you get my first volume?
How are you getting on? How’s the heir? I hear you had a good trip with Gorky.
Write and let us know what you are working on. We count on you both as a contributor to Proletary and as a lecturer. You will not let us down, will you?
Where is Gorky? I wrote to him in Capri (Villa Blaesus). I wonder whether it will reach him.
Best regards,
Yours,
Lenin
Address: Mr. Vl. Oulianoff.
17. Rue des deux Ponts. 17.
(chez Küpfer). Genève.
[1] See present edition, Vol. 34, pp. 370–71.—Ed.
[2] Proletary (The Proletarian)—a Bolshevik illegal newspaper published from August 21 (September 3), to November 28 (December 11), 1909, and edited by Lenin.
The first 20 issues were set up in type in Vyborg and printed from matrices in St. Petersburg. For reasons of secrecy, the place of publication was given as Moscow. Later, when it became extremely difficult to put out a clandestine publication in Russia, the editors, in conformity with a decision taken by the St. Petersburg and Moscow committees of the R.S.D.L.P., moved the paper first to Geneva and then to Paris.
[3] A reference to G. V. Plekhanov’s article “A Critique of the Theory and Practice of Syndicalism” published in Sovremenny Mir Nos. 11 and 12, 1907, claiming that the neutralist viewpoint on relations between political parties and the trade unions gained the upper hand at the Stuttgart Congress.
Sovremenny Mir (The Modern World)—a literary, scientific and political monthly published in St. Petersburg from October 1906 to 1918. The Mensheviks were closely associated with it. During the bloc between the Bolsheviks and the pro-Party Mensheviks, Bolsheviks also contributed to the journal. In 1914 it became the organ of the social-chauvinists.
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