Published:
First published in 1929 in Lenin Miscellany XI.
Sent from Berne to Geneva.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
page 316.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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Text
• README
January 3, 1915
Dear Friends,
Many thanks for your greetings, and from all of us also (from Nadezhda Konstantinovna and me in particular) best wishes for the new year!
A Paris compositor has offered to come to Geneva and set the C.O. for 35 francs an issue, if we find a printing press which will provide him with the type.[1]
Discuss this from all points of view (reduction of expenses is desirable, because we have decided to publish the C.O. weekly) and reply as soon as you can.
Furthermore, consider also when the material should be sent in, by what day everything should be ready and for what day publication should be timed in the interests of circulation. It would seem that the most convenient day for circulation is Saturday. If so, should it be published on Wednesday or Thursday? So that we should have it here on Friday, and the whole of Switzerland by Saturday.
All the best,
Yours,
Lenin
[1] The Central Committee Section Abroad did not have a printing shop of its own, and the Central Organ was set up at a private type-setting shop belonging to Lyakhotsky, an old Ukrainian émigré (well known among political émigrés as Kuzma), and printed in Geneva. Lyakhotsky’s type-setting shop was the only one in Switzerland which had Russian type, and so catered for various organisations. The setting of Sotsial-Demokrat became extremely difficult in early 1915, when Borotba, a newspaper of the Ukrainian nationalists, was also composed there. Kuzma and Kuzmikha (his wife), who had great influence on her husband, sympathised with Borotba. The problem was being constantly discussed and this is reflected in Lenin’s and N. K. Krupskaya s letters to V. A. Karpinsky and others. In early 1915, Russian type was found in Benteli’s printing shop in Bumplitz (near Berne) and a number of issues of Sotsial-Demokrat and other material were printed there.
The suggestion to send a compositor from Paris apparently came from G. Y. Belenky, but it was not implemented.
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