Written: Written in the first half of March 1911
Published:
First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVIII.
Sent from Paris to Berlin.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1977],
Moscow,
Volume 43,
pages 273b-274a.
Translated: Martin Parker and Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2005).
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Dear Vlasov,
It is a strange thing you are suggesting! Such a telegram must not be sent, we cannot take the risk. If you want to chance it, you could send it from Leipzig, but we do not advise you to do so.
Can money really be the hitch? Could they not have borrowed enough for a ticket to Berlin??
The delay is obviously not because of money.
The Bundist scoundrel and liquidator (Lieber) goes around saying here that he knows of some sort of hitch and some sort of trip to the Caucasus(!!?).[1]
Some more news: Kostrov and Pyotr have been released. Both call themselves Plekhanovites.
But we know for certain from the plenary meeting that both are liquidators.
You made a colossal mistake by not getting a proxy from the Samovars and now are making things worse by not sending anybody to them. Don’t you see what’s happening? Time is running out (the Pravda crowd are already electing delegates in Moscow for the conference^^207—a split is imminent). You’re losing your patience. A sheer comedy.
Clearly, what we insisted on should have been done: somebody should have been sent at once to the Samovars. Do so without delay, otherwise an absurd situation will develop.
After all that has happened and after what you have said we too cannot trust the Samovars and wait, wait for months and months. We will be compelled by such procrastination to break off everything, to tell the Germans that there is no C.C. and demand the money back at once.
There is nothing else left to do, and your passivity (“may be the Samovar will budge”) is to blame for everything.
All the best,
Lenin
[1] A letter from Tyszka to Lenin and Zinoviev dated March 20, 1911, indicated that Nogin’s proposal to hold the meeting of the “Russian members” of the C.C. abroad, made at the end of February or the beginning of March 1911 on the insistence of the Bolshevik Centre Abroad, met with opposition from Yudin and Lindov. After a time Yudin went to the Caucasus to fetch the Menshevik Adrianov with a view to holding the meeting in Russia on their return. The meeting did not take place because Nogin, noticing that his movements were being watched, left Tula and went into hiding for a time.
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