V. I.   Lenin

243

To:   L. B. KAMENEV

Written: Written prior to September 6, 1912
Published: First published in 1964 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 48. Sent from Cracow to Paris. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [1977], Moscow, Volume 43, pages 297-298^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.
Other Formats:   Text • README

Dear L. B.,

Can you get Neue Zeit, the latest issues, with the Pannekoek and Kautsky articles? If not, write, and we’ll send them over. It is necessary to read them before going to Chemnitz and there to look up Pannekoek and make closer contact with him: Kautsky replied to him on some cardinal issues in an extremely opportunist way. It is very desirable to make closer contact with the Left (especially Pannekoek, who now lends a hand in the cheap “game” played by Tyszka) and to carry on agitation among them for a principled rebuff to Kautsky. It’ll be disgraceful if they do not revolt against such opportunism! Unfortunately they are short of people: Radek is practically a luminary among them....^[1]

You ought to write popular articles (in the tone of Rabochaya Gazeta), literary criticism, for Pravda. If you write in the Rabochaya Gazeta tone ... they’ll print them. Otherwise ... a bad job! Dnevnitsky has left and we are now without a literary criticism section in Zvezda!! and Pravda also needs one.

Have you got Zavety?^[5] Can you send me Ropshin for a time? I should like to write about him for the C.O.

Are you writing for Prosveshcheniye? Make haste!

(I read in a German paper that there is a housing shortage in Chemnitz and that one has to apply in advance to the Wohnungsausschu&Bwhatthe;^[2] —(Faites attention!^[3] ).)

All the best,
Yours,
Lenin

P.S. And so, after Chemnitz, you must come to us. C’est entendu,^[4] unless... circumstances compel us to invite   you here before Chemnitz. Let us know in advance whether you are going to Switzerland, when, where, and for how long.

P.P.S. I am sending Gorky’s letter, part of which is of general interest. Return it.

Notes

[1] Manuscript partly damaged. Here and further several words illegible.—Ed.

[2] Housing hoard.—Ed.

[3] Take notice!—Ed.

[4] It is decided.—Ed.

[5] A reference to Lenin’s pamphlet The Present Situation in the R.S.D.L.P. (see present edition, Vol. 18, pp. 203–20). The pamphlet was sent to the delegates to the Congress of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany held September 15–21, 1912, in Chemnitz.