Published:
Proletary No. 50, November 28 (December 11), 1909.
Published according to the text in Proletary.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1974],
Moscow,
Volume 16,
page 106.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Copyleft:
V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
© 2004
Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
For several days now the bourgeois newspapers of France (L’Eclair, Le Radical), Germany (Berliner Tageblatt) and Russia (Utro Rossii, Rech, Russkoye Slovo, Novoye Vremya) have been smacking their lips over a most sensational piece of news: the expulsion of Gorky from the Social-Democratic Party. Vorwärts has already published a refutation of this nonsensical report. The editorial board of Proletary has also sent a denial to several newspapers, but the bourgeois press ignores it and continues to boost the libel.
It is easy to see how it originated: some penny-a-liner over heard a whisper of the dissensions about otzovism and god-building (a question which has been discussed openly for almost a year in the Party in general and in Proletary in particular), made an unholy mess in weaving together his fragments of information and “earned a pretty penny” out of imaginary “interviews”, etc.
The aim of this slanderous campaign is no less clear. The bourgeois parties would like Gorky to leave the Social-Democratic Party. The bourgeois newspapers are sparing no effort to fan the dissensions in the Social-Democratic Party and to give a distorted picture of them.
Their labour is in vain. Comrade Gorky by his great works of art has bound himself too closely to the workers’ movement in Russia and throughout the world to reply with anything but contempt.
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