Written: Written on October 17, 1912
Published:
First published in 1924 in Lenin Miscellany I.
Sent to Capri.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1976],
Moscow,
Volume 35,
pages 59-60.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
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Dear A. M.,
The other day I had a letter from the editorial board of Pravda in Petersburg, in which they ask me to write to you that they would be extremely glad of your regular contributions. “We would like to offer Gorky 25 kopeks a line, but we are afraid of offending him.” That’s what they write to me.
To my mind, there is nothing at all to be offended at. Nobody could even dream of your contributions depending on considerations of payment. In the same way, everybody knows that the workers’ Pravda, which usually pays 2 kopeks a line, and still more frequently pays nothing, cannot attract anyone by its fees.
But there is nothing bad about contributors’ to a workers’ paper receiving regular payment, however small it may be. In fact, it’s all to the good. The circulation is now 20–25 thousand. It’s time it began thinking of a proper arrangement about payment for contributions. What is bad about everybody working on a workers’ paper beginning to earn a little? And how can there be anything offensive in this proposal?
I am sure that the fears of the Petersburg editors of Pravda are quite without foundation, and that you will not treat their proposal otherwise than in comradely fashion. Write a couple of words, either to them direct at the office, or to me.
Tomorrow is the election of electors in Petersburg (for the worker curia). The struggle with the liquidators has developed. In Moscow and Kharkov the Party people have won.
Have you seen Luch, and do you get it at all? There are people who have fiddled the cards and pretend to be “ kindhearted”!
I have seen an advertisement for Krugozor.[1] Is this your undertaking, or are you there by invitation?
Every good wish, and above all for your health. Greetings to M. F.
Yours,
Lenin
47. Ulica Lubomirskiego. Krakau.
[1] Krugozor (Horizon)—literary-political monthly with a bourgeois-liberal orientation. Two numbers were published in St. Petersburg in January and February 1913. Maxim Gorky was listed among the contributors but actually did not take part.
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