Published:
Printed from the original.
Published for the first time in the Fourth (Russian) Edition of the Collected Works.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1976],
Moscow,
Volume 35,
pages 544-545.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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Text
• README
January 28, 1922
G. M.,
I have read Gorev’s work[1] and return it.
I expected more. A former Bolshevik, who captivated you so, and who, in your opinion, had once again become a real Bolshevik, should have produced impressive, vivid, powerful, popular propaganda, a defence of communism for France, starting from her electrification.
But Gorev’s work has turned out “professorial”.
I offer the following plan for your consideration:
(1) send it to be set at once, in order to publish it soon in any case;
(2) suggest to Gorev—if you agree—that he should write in addition a preface or an afterword, in which he should in very clear and popular form and a little more freely ( prescribe for him to this end three grammes of extract of Larinism: they say it has appeared on sale in Moscow) attack French capitalism, and say to the French workers and peasants: you could become in three-five years three times as rich, and work not more than six hours a day (approximately) if there were a Soviet government in France putting electrification into effect;
(3) if in your (or Gorev’s) opinion, Gorev will do this badly or unwillingly, then think over whether someone should not be asked to do this work separately (a brief “Ballod”[2] for France);
(4) send me Gorev’s article, as soon as you can, once it is set up (to he published as a pamphlet or in some journal, whichever you choose). Perhaps I will write an introduction.[3]
Greetings,
Yours,
Lenin
[1] Reference is to A. Gorev’s pamphlet Elektrifikatsia Frantsii (The Electrification of France). It was published in 1922.
[2] Lenin refers to the book by Karl Ballod, Der Zukunftsstaat (The State of the Future), a Russian translation of which appeared in 1920. Lenin writes of Ballod’s book in his article “An Integrated Economic Plan” (see present edition, Vol. 32, p. 140).
[3] The introduction to A. Gorev’s pamphlet Elektrifikatsia Frantsii (The Electrification of France) was not written by Lenin.
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