Published:
First published in 1924.
Sent from Geneva to the Isle of Capri (Italy).
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1974,
Moscow,
Volume 34,
pages 383-384.
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
Archive” as your source.
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Text
• README
February 13, 1908
Dear An. Vas.,
Yesterday I sent you a short note about Bringmann. I hasten to reply to your letter of February 11.
I don’t quite understand why you should feel hurt by my letter. Not on account of philosophy, surely!
Your plan for a section of belles-lettres in Proletary and for having A. M. run it is an excellent one, and pleases me exceedingly. I have in fact been dreaming of making the literature and criticism section a permanent feature in Proletary and having A. M. to run it. But I was afraid, terribly afraid of making the proposal outright, as I do not know the nature of A. M.’s work (and his work-bent). If a man is busy with an important work, and if this work would suffer from him being torn away for minor things, such as a newspaper, and journalism, then it would be foolish and criminal to disturb and interrupt him! That is something I very well understand and feel.
Being on the spot, you will know best, dear An. Vas. If you consider that A. M.’s work will not suffer by his being harnessed to regular Party work (and the Party work will gain a great deal from this!), then try to arrange it.
Proletary No. 21 will come out on February 13(26). So there is still time. It is desirable to have the manuscripts by Friday, which will give us plenty of time to put them in the issue which comes out on Wednesday. If it’s some thing urgent we could manage it even if the copy arrives on Sunday (to avoid delay, write and send it directly to my address), or even (in an extreme case!) on Monday.
You, too, must write without fail. Won’t you send us for No. 21 either a political article on Russian affairs (10,000-16,000 characters) or an article on Fern’s resignation[1] (8,000-10,000 characters)? Better still, not “either...or”, but “both...and”.
I send you my best regards and ask you to reply whether A. M.’s contribution to Protetary is being arranged. If it is, let him begin at once, without waiting for the “meeting” and an agreement.[2]
[1] This refers to the refusal of E. Ferri, leader of the centrist majority of the Italian Socialist Party, to edit the Party’s Central Organ Avanti!. Lunacharsky’s article “The Crisis in the Italian Workers Party” was published in Proletary No. 23, for March 11 (February 27), 1908.
[2] The reference is to a meeting on Capri, sponsored by Gorky, which was to have been attended by Lenin, Bogdanov, Bazarov, Lunacharsky and Skvortsov-Stepanov to discuss questions of publishing activities and theoretical questions. The meeting took place in April 1908 (Skvortsov-Stepanov did not attend; he came to Geneva for a week to meet Lenin). Lenin mentions it in his “A Letter to Students at the Capri Party School” dated August 30, 1909^^(see Vol. 15 of this edition)^^.
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