Published:
First published in 1930 in Lenin Miscellany XIII.
Sent from Munich to Paris.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
pages 69-70.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
You may freely copy, distribute,
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Text
• README
February 21, 1901
Dear Comrades,
Your insistence on “defining relations” has surprised us but, to our deep regret, we cannot satisfy you in this respect. Our business is just being started, the wheels have only just been set in motion, and whether it will really get going depends on everyone vigorously co-operating —when suddenly, instead of doing the urgent work, we are asked to set about “defining relations” with some kind of particular exactness! We think that close and constant collaboration (which has already been expressed by your sending us two articles, and on which we were relying for the future) is a sufficiently definite relation, and that from it there clearly follows also the right of contributors to speak on behalf of the publication, enlist supporters, establish contacts, collect funds, order articles, etc. That this enlistment will naturally lead also to more intimate contacts between those enlisted and the editorial board, and that the establishment of final agreements (about any undertaking, or about the management of this or that section, or this or that function) will require direct contacts between the editorial board and those who have been enlisted, all this likewise follows, as a matter of course, from the very nature of relations between close contributors and the editorial board.
We hope that our relations could in the course of time develop from the form of simple collaboration to the kind of co-operation under which some departments would be allocated, and general editorial conferences would be held from time to time.
Furthermore, we do not deny of course that the business of organising things abroad will require (in 3 or 6 months’ time) the creation of new forms, organs and functions, and were relying on you in this respect, but we are unable-to set about all this immediately, when Zarya and Iskra have still to be consolidated.
We hope that you, too, will realise our position and will agree that any further “definition of relations” at the present time is impossible.
All the best.
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