Written: Written July 28 or 29, 1912
Published:
First published in part in 1930 in Collected Works, Second and Third (Russian) Ed., Vol. XVI.
Published in full in 1964 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 48.
Sent from Salvator (near Cracow) to St. Petersburg.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1977],
Moscow,
Volume 43,
pages 292b-293.
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
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Text
• README
Dear Colleague,
I am sending you the article “Some Results of Six Months’ Work”.[1] You will see from the contents why I have sent this huge article to Pravda. You could run it in four successive feuilletons set up in small type. Each of the four articles could have a separate heading (for example: I. Workers’ collections for the newspaper by months in 1912. II. Workers’ collections for the newspaper by districts. III. Workers’ collections for liquidationist and non-liquidationist newspapers. IV. The worker’s kopek for the workers’ newspaper).
I would very much like these articles, which are writ ten exclusively for Pravda and addressed to its readers, to be published in Pravda. I don’t think there could be any censorship trouble. I agree of course to make changes required by the censors, but not to omit Chapter III.
If by any chance you should reject the article for Pravda, and if your colleagues reject it for Nevskaya Zvezda (for which it is far less suited), I shall get it published in one of the journals, however much I should dislike to. At any rate, please reply as soon as possible or send the article back to me here.
Gylka sent me a letter the other day refusing to contribute to Zvezda and Pravda in view of the “harmful”, if you please, tendencies he discerned in No. 6 of Nevsky Golos and Plekhanov’s “withdrawal” This is not the first time that this Gylka is switching over. If he should take it into his head to raise a fuss about the publication of his article (although I couldn’t very well wire you his refusal!!), don’t bother to answer him.
Many thanks for the separate issues of “Right” news papers. It is extremely important for us to get such separate packages of interesting papers, which we are altogether unable to obtain except through you.
I was very glad to see in Pravda Y. K.’s item about Sovremennik.[3] You ask for a greater variety of subjects. In this respect Y. K. is valuable. The paper has no literary criticism—reviews, essays or small paragraphs. In my opinion every contributor should be valued for his own specific subject matter. Given a slightly more attentive attitude on your part, Y. K. could no doubt contribute a bigger variety of items which would greatly enliven the workers’ newspaper.
Why did you kill my article on the Italian congress?[2] In general it wouldn’t be a bad thing to inform authors about rejected articles. This is not an excessive request. To write “for the waste-paper basket”, i.e., articles to be thrown out, is not very pleasant. Unpublished articles should be returned. Any contributor, even to a bourgeois newspaper, would demand this.
With comradely greetings,
V. Ulyanov
Please write Wiener “Arbeiter-Zeitung”[4] to send the exchange copy to me (give them my address). You wouldn’t be allowed to get it anyhow. Don’t forget to write!!
[1] See V. I. Lenin, “The Results of Six Months’ Work” (present edition, Vol. 15, pp. 187–202).—Ed.
[2] See V. I. Lenin, “The Italian Socialist Congress” (present edition, Vol. 18, pp. 170–72).—Ed.
[3] Sovremennik (The Contemporary)—a literary and political monthly published in St. Petersburg in 1911–15. It was a rallying centre for Menshevik liquidators, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Popular Socialists and Left liberals. In 1914 Lenin described the orientation of the journal as a “mixture of Narodism and Marxism” (see present edition, Vol. 20, p. 296).
[4] Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung—a daily, the Central Organ of the Austrian Social-Democrats, founded by Victor Adler in 1889 in Vienna. It was closed down in 1934 and resumed publication in 1945 as the Central Organ of the Socialist Party of Austria.
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