Published:
First published in 1928 in Lenin Miscellany VIII.
Sent from Munich to London.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
pages 65-66.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
You may freely copy, distribute,
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Text
• README
January 24, 1901
Dear Comrade,
I have received your letter about the passports, have written to my friend here who might be expected to help me in this respect, and am now awaiting a reply. I think it will be possible to get a foreign (Bulgarian or German) passport (for entering Russia), but I’m not hopeful about a Russian passport, or at least a blank passport, not filled in. This may, of course, come off, but I should advise you to take steps right away to secure a foreign passport, at the risk of being left without any at all. But as regards a Russian passport, if we succeed in getting one, it will be more likely in Russia.
If there is to be no mention of Rabocheye Znamya in the footnote, would you suggest another way of putting it? For example, from (through) a member of the Rabocheye Znamya group who worked in St. Petersburg in 1897, or something like that. I think it would be better to say somehow through whom the article was received, but if you think otherwise, naturally we shall publish it without any indication of how we received it.
I have been told the name of the St. Petersburg man who made the proposal (in one of the provinces, and a fairly remote one) about publishing the translation of Kautsky. I am afraid to entrust the name to the post; however, I will let you have it in this form. Write down Alexei’s name, patronymic (in Russian style) and surname, and number all the 23 letters in their order. Then the surname of this St. Petersburg man will consist of the following letters: 6, 22, 11, 22 (for this substitute the next letter of the alphabet), 5, 10 and 13.[2]
As to the sale of Revolution and Counter-Revolution, we shall inquire from those organisations abroad with whom we have contacts.
Over here everything now depends on transport, which is eating up a lot of money because this is a new undertaking. I cannot therefore give you any definite reply as regards financial aid for fabricating passports, until it has become clear just how much money is needed for this, and what the chances are that all the other essentials (money apart) are available. Alexei paid out money to one influential organisation as long ago as last spring (sic!) for the purchase of blank passports (which they had promised), but so far has had nothing.
Would you agree to take on yourself in the immediate future a permanent function in transportation—i.e., to live near the frontier, travel around, communicate with the contrabandists, etc.? Do you know German, or any language other than Russian?[1]
Every good wish,
Yours,
Petrov
I enclose the paper[3]; please show it to no one except your friend, and let me know your opinion. No. 2 is at the press.
Write to me at the following address:
Herrn Georg Rittmeyer,
Kaiserstrasse 53 I.
München.
(Without any enclosure, if the letter is in Russian.)
[1] Do you know of any comrade suitable for this work and who knows Yiddish? And also do you happen to know an absolutely reliable comrade who is a compositor?—Lenin
[2] The full name of “Alexei” (Martov) is Yuli Osipovich Tsederbaum.
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