Published:
First published in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXIV.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1976],
Moscow,
Volume 35,
pages 427-428.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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October 24, 1919
Comrade V. V. Vorovsky
State Publishing House
Having looked through the pamphlet Third International, March 6–7, 1919, brought out by the State Publishing House, Moscow, 1919 (price 8 rubles), 99 pages, I impose a severe reprimand for such a publication, and demand that all members of the collegium of the State Publishing House should read my present letter, and should work out serious measures to guarantee that such an outrage is not repeated.
The pamphlet is a horrible piece of work. A slovenly mess. No table of contents. Some idiot or sloven, evidently an illiterate, has lumped together, as though he were drunk, all the “material”, little articles, speeches, and printed them out of sequence.
No preface, no minutes, no exact text of the decisions, no separation of decisions from speeches, articles, notes, nothing at all! An unheard-of disgrace!
A great historic event has been disgraced by such a pamphlet.
I demand:
(1) Correction by pasting in. (The guilty persons to be sent to prison and obliged to paste in the additions in every copy.)
That I should be informed:
(2a) How many copies were printed?
(2b) How many have been sold?
(3) Reprinting in a decent form. Proofs to be shown to me.
(4) Establishment of a rule that one definite person should be responsible for each publication (a register of responsible persons to be started).
(5) Other measures for introducing order; they are to be worked out and sent to me.
V. Ulyanov (Lenin)
Chairman, Council of People’s Commissars
[1] Reference is to Levi’s report “The Political Situation and the Elections to Parliament” at the Congress of the Communist Party of Germany, which took place in Berlin, April 14–15, 1920.
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