Written: Written later than December 12, 1904
Published:
First published in 1926.
Sent from Geneva.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1974,
Moscow,
Volume 34,
page 280.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
D. Moros
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
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• README
Dear Comrades,
We have just received the resolutions of your conference. [1]Send us without fail a more carefully made copy—there is a lot that is undecipherable. Without fail, too, carry out as soon as possible your splendid plan—to send your special delegate here. Otherwise it will really be extremely difficult, almost impossible, to reach agreement and remove mutual misunderstandings. This is an urgent necessity at the present time.
You still have little knowledge of all the documents and all the dirty tricks of the Council and the Central Committee. There is not the slightest doubt that they have already side-tracked the Third Congress and will now split all the committees. It is essential immediately i) to set up a Bureau of the Majority Committees, 2) to entrust it with all matters concerning the congress and all leadership of the committees, 3) to support our organ Vperyod, [2] 4) to publish your resolutions (do you authorise us to do this?) and an announcement about the Bureau.
Please reply quickly.
Yours,
Lenin
We do not understand what relationship your (Caucasian) Bureau bears to the All-Russia Bureau of the Majority Committees. Write speedily, and best of all send a delegate.
[1] This refers to the resolutions of the Regional Conference of the Caucasian Union Committee hold in Tiflis in November 1904. On the basis of the previous resolutions of the Caucasian committees giving support to the resolution of the “22” and to the idea of convening an emergency congress of the Party the Conference adopted a resolution calling for the organisation of broad agitation and struggle for the Third Congress, for which purpose it elected a special bureau with instructions to contact the Bolshevik group of “22”. In the postscript to this letter Lenin wishes to be informed as to what organisational forms of relationship existed between the Bureau of the Majority Committees and the bureau set up by the Conference of the Caucasian committees, and asks them to send a delegate.
[2] Vperyod (Forward)—an illegal Bolshevik newspaper published in Geneva from December 22, 1904 (January 4, 1905) to May 5 (18), 1905. Eighteen issues were put out. Lenin was the newspaper’s organiser, manager and ideological guide. Other members of the editorial board were V. V. Vorovsky, M. S. Olminsky, and A. V. Lunacharsky. The outstanding role which the newspaper played in combating Menshevism and highlighting the tactical issues posed by the revolutionary movement was acknowledged in a special resolution of the Third Party Congress (1905), which recorded a vote of thanks to the editorial board.
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