Written: Written not earlier than February 11, 1914
Published:
First published in 1930 in Lenin Miscellany XIII.
Sent from Cracow to Vienna.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
page 270.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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Dear Alexander Antonovich,
Many thanks for your news from Vienna: it’s very interesting. Trotsky’s venture is of great importance[1]; the break-up of the August bloc[2] is complete (the Letts have withdrawn from the Organising Committee!).[3]
Grigory says that you have continued
(1) the statistics of collections (by workers’ groups) after October 1, 1913 (up to January 1, 1914)[4];
(2) the statistics of voting for the Seven and for the Six (also at least up to January 1, 1914, or February 1, 1914).[5]
Please complete this work as soon as you can, and send it over immediately: it will go into the pamphlet we are sending out shortly.[6]
I have received No. 1 of Prosveshcheniye. Not bad. There was no point only in having the review of Levitsky with the silly word “factionalism”.[7]
And what is your opinion of the issue?
Greetings to Yelena Fyodorovna.
Also to Bukharin.
Yours,
Lenin
[1] Trotsky’s publication of his anti-Party, factional journal Borba.
[2] The anti-Party August bloc was set up by Trotsky in 1912 at a liquidators’ conference in Vienna, which was attended by Bundists, members of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee, the Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region and various groups of liquidators, Trotskyites, and otzovists abroad.
The bloc, made up of various anti-Party elements, soon fell apart under Bolshevik pressure for the illegal proletarian party.
[3] The question of the break between the Lettish Social-Democrats and the Menshevik Organising Committee was decided at the Fourth Congress of the Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region held from January 26 to February 8, 1914 (see present edition, Vol. 20, pp. 360–62).
[4] The statistical data on cash collections for Pravda and Luch, mentioned by Lenin, are given in his article “The Working Class and Its Press” (see present edition, Vol. 20, pp. 363–79).
[5] Workers’ votes cast for both Social-Democratic groups in the Duma: the Bolshevik Six and the Menshevik Seven (see table in Lenin’s article, “How the Workers Responded to the Formation of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Group in the Duma”, = present edition, Vol. 20, p. 538).
[6] The pamphlet, From the History of the Workers’ Press in Russia, was issued as No. 1 of the newspaper Rabochy on April 22, 1914. The whole issue was devoted to the history of the working-class press in Russia.
[7] A review by V. Yan-sky (S. S. Danilov) of V. Levitsky’s book August Bebel. His Life and Work, which said: “Levitsky tries to draw the reader’s attention specifically to Bebel’s attitude to ‘compromises’, and compacts with the liberals, in an effort to set Bebel up as a model for someone.... Levitsky’s exposition is not free from factionalism, and presents the great German leader and his views in the wrong light.”
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