Written: Written on February 14, 1913
Published:
Sent from Cracow to St. Petersburg.
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,
page 81.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
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Dear Colleagues,
I cannot but express my indignation at the printing by the editorial board of Mr. Bogdanov’s stupid and impudent letter in No. 24, and the senseless note from the editors.[1] It had been precisely and clearly laid down as a condition that such things should not be printed without consultation.
The editorial board is mocking us by infringing the conditions. It is not surprising that for the same reasons no confidence whatever is aroused by the letter of Mikhalchi, who contradicts himself a hundred times in it.
The enquiry from the Riga workers (No. 24) is dated January 19.[2] There was every possibility both of linking it up with the article on Narodism in No. 17 (January 22) and of sending it here in good time. I repeat that the editorial board is making a mockery of the conditions laid down. I insistently ask you, after those whom it concerns have read this letter, immediately to pass it on to the publisher of the newspaper, Deputy Badayev.
Yours faithfully,
V. Ilyin
[1] Lenin refers to Bogdanov’s letter to Pravda protesting at the refusal of Pravda supporters to co-operate with the liquidators in the nomination of a workers’ deputy to the Fourth Duma. In a note to the letter the editors confined themselves to stating that agreement had not been reached through the fault of the liquidators.
[2] The enquiry from the Riga workers of January 19, 1913 was printed in No. 24 of Pravda, January 30, 1913. The authors of the enquiry, who signed themselves “A group of Narodnik workers and Social-Democrat Readers of Pravda” asked the editors to state their opinion on the question of “uniting with the Left Narodniks”. Lenin’s article “On Narodism”, with which he wanted to link up this enquiry, had been published in Nos. 16 and 17 of Pravda on January 20 and 22, 1913 (see present edition, Vol. 18, pp. 524–28).
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