Published:
First published in 1925.
Sent from Geneva to St. Petersburg.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1974,
Moscow,
Volume 34,
pages 308-309.
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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Text
• README
April 4, 1905
Dear friend,
You wrote yourself that you were now being shadowed. What’s more, I have gathered information fully confirming this fact from St. Petersburgers who have recently arrived from the scene of activities. There can be no doubt at all about it. I know from my own experience and from that of lots of comrades that one of the, most difficult things for a revolutionary is to leave a danger spot in good time. Whenever the time comes to drop work in a given locality, that work becomes particularly interesting and particularly needed; so it seems always to the person concerned. I consider it my duty, therefore, to demand of you most insistently that you abandon St. Petersburg for a time. This is absolutely essential. No excuses of any kind, no considerations for the work, should put off this step. The harm caused by an inevitable arrest will be enormous. The harm caused by going away will be insignificant, and merely apparent. Advance young assistants for a time, for a month or two, to fill the top posts, and rest assured that, with an extremely brief and temporary setback, the cause, on the whole, will gain by it tremendously. The young people will acquire more experience in key posts, and any mistakes they may make will be speedily corrected by us. An arrest, however, would ruin all our major opportunities for organising central work. Once more, I insistently advise going out immediately to the provinces for a month. There’s heaps of work to be done everywhere, and everywhere general guidance is needed. If there is a will to go (and a will there must be) the thing can always be arranged.
I’m not writing anything about the agreement of March 12, 1905.[1] Cursing will do no good. I suppose they could not act otherwise. The thing now is to prepare energetically for the congress and to increase the number of delegates. Don’t be too free with money, take care of it; it will be needed more than ever after the congress.
[1] This refers to the agreement between the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P. and the Bureau of the Majority Committees concluded on March 12 (25), 1905, on the question of setting up an Organising Committee for convening the Third Congress of the Party.
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