Written: Written August 27, 1909
Published:
First published in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXV.
Sent from Bombon to Arcachon.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1977],
Moscow,
Volume 43,
pages 216b-217.
Translated: Martin Parker and Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2005).
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Dear Gr.,
I am sending you Vorwärts[2] and Kamenev’s article. I believe it must be printed and without delay, for we are terribly late as it is with this article which is in all respects absolutely necessary for Proletary. It will have to be divided into two feuilletons. The first (pp. 1–33) I have marked off and edited. Perhaps you will be able to shorten it a little more? I will try to cut it some more in the proofs; send it immediately to the printers and have them send me the proofs at once. The article is an important one and we should go over it as carefully as possible.
It is a pity that Kamenev works carelessly. The subject is a most rewarding one, but he rambles on and on, beating about the bush, unable to get to the heart of the matter properly.
Perhaps we should send the second half hack to him for rewriting from this angle? I think it would be a good thing. Write him on behalf of us both and ask him to write the second part over again (saving the first variant as well), to revise it along the lines indicated—tell him that this would make it an excellent article, etc.—and send him the second part. I have no great hopes that he will redo it, but we must keep insisting.
He also promised an editorial for Proletary shortly. We shall see.
I shall write the articles for Proletary and send them straight to the printers[1] since you want to be in Paris on September 4.
I do not intend to return before September 15.
There is no point in your keeping Kamenev in Arcachon. If he has had a rest, let him return, and under all circumstances he must be sent out to lecture.
All the best,
N. Lenin
I shall not undertake to write about the Bund people. But it is necessary to hit at their No. 2. You should do it. We’ll put out a big, fighting issue. Write an article against No. 2.[3]
[1] A reference to Lenin’s articles for Proletary No. 47–48 entitled: “The Liquidators Exposed”, “On the Open Letter of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Regional Committee”, “The Election in St. Petersburg”, and an article in the supplement to the issue, “The Faction of Supporters of Otzovism and God-Building” (see present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 15–61.—Ed.
[2] Vorwärts, the Central Organ of the German Social-Democrats, carried daily in late July and in August 1909 articles and detailed reports on they Barcelona uprising (beginning with No. 174, July 29) and the general strike in Sweden (beginning with No. 178, August 2). Lenin sent the issues to Zinoviev to be used as source material for articles in Proletary.
The article by L. B. Kamenev referred to was his “The Liquidation of the Hegemony of the Proletariat in the Menshevik History of the Russian Revolution (How A. Potresov Liquidated G. Plekhanov and Iskra)” reviewing the five-volume The Social Movement in Russia at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century put out by the Mensheviks, edited by L. Martov, P. Maslov and A. Potresov. The article was printed in Proletary Nos. 47–48 and 49, September 5 (18) and October 3 (16), 1909.
[3] Probably a reference to the September 1909 issue (No. 2) of Golos Bunda (Voice of the Bund), organ of the C.C. of the Bund, published illegally in Russia. Proletary carried nothing on the subject. A news item about Golos Bunda No. 2 appeared in Sotsial-Demokrat No. 9, November 13 (October 31).
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