V. I.   Lenin

173

To:   L. B. KAMENEV

Written: Written August 27, 1909
Published: First published in 1964 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 47. Sent from Bombon to Arcachon (France). Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [1977], Moscow, Volume 43, pages 215^b-216^a.
Translated: Martin Parker and Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
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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Dear L. B.,

I received both letters and the article. In my opinion the latter should be shortened. I shall try to make the cuts, though I don’t know how successful they will be.

I shall wait for the article on international solidarity of the proletariat (I have a circular letter of the International Socialist Bureau on the subject; I am not sending it, for it is already late). Let Grigory know about it.

What is this that the papers have been saying about Sokolov? It is of great interest to me, for I was going to write about the elections in St. Petersburg. I read in Rech^[1] that the Social-Democrats are nominating Sokolov. Write in detail what “fables” you have read about, and send the issues over.

I read the reviews in Vozrozhdeniye and Sovremenny Mir.^[2]

About returning to Paris Grigory writes that lie will arrive by September 4. I will not be back before September 15. As regards your question whether you should go, I can only say this: if you have had a proper rest, it would be good to go, start a Proletary club at once, deliver two lectures (popular ones) to workers on Potresov’s liquidationism and another about the “Lefts” to Bolsheviks, and then arrange for a lecture tour to groups abroad in late September (roughly). This you must do.

It will be interesting to discuss the Mensheviks and Prokopovich and Kuskova when we meet. It is necessary to hit as hard as possible at Potresov’s liquidationism both in articles and lectures. We are a bit late with this.

All the best.

P.S. People write from Russia that things are not so good there. Davydov has been arrested. It will be necessary to push on here with agitation abroad.

Notes

[1] Rech (Speech)—a daily, the Central Organ of the Constitutional-Democratic Party, founded in St. Petersburg on February 23 (March 8), 1906, and closed by the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet on October 26 (November 8), 1917. It continued publication until August 1918 as Nasha Rech (Our Speech), Svobodnaya Rech (Free Speech), Vek (The Age), Novaya Rech (New Speech), and Nash Vek (Our Age).

[2] A reference to reviews of Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism in the journal Vozrozhdeniye No. 7–8, May 1909, and Sovremenny Mir for July 1909, signed respectively “A.—ov” (A. I. Avraamov) and “Orthodox” (Lyubov Axelrod).

Vozrozhdeniye (Regeneration)—a journal published legally by the Menshevik liquidators from December 1908 to July 1910 in Moscow.