V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v47;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

Dear Comrade, I have just returned to our local capital and read your letter about affairs. As for the school, you are wrong in thinking that “our affairs are in a bad way”. They are not at all in a bad way. That workers, when they are given money, agree to go to the beautiful South is natural—there is no reason to complain about that. The only thing needed is to pass resolutions that on their way back these workers should stop over for a month here*,—that is the crux of the matter. Without a stopover here all the talk about “control”, “guidance”, etc., is sheer “blague”** or hypocrisy. Come here and you will learn not only the shrieking of Alexinsky and the “socialism” of Lunacharsky. And believe me, you will not get far along this path***—by knocking science into the heads of 20-50 workers. Oh no, that is good enough for making a noise, for boasting about Kautsky’s letter,203 for playing at foreign politics, but there is nothing serious in this whispering. You may be sure that this is not a “school” but a new foreign Yerogin hostel for whispering Otzovist nonsense into the ears of dozens of workers. Maximov and Co. will make a noise about it and disgrace themselves.

As for Trotsky, unfortunately, it is not working out. We offered him ideally advantageous terms, sincerely desiring a bloc with him: a salary for him, covering the deficit of *Pravda*, equality

* i.e., to Paris, where the Bolshevik Centre was located. *Ed.*

** From the French *blague*: idle talk. *Ed.*

*** The reference is to the factional, splitting activities of the organisers of the Capri school. *Ed.*

on the editorial board, moving here; he does not agree, demanding a majority on the editorial board (two Trotskyists and one Bolshevik!). It is clear that we cannot support a newspaper that is not a Party but a Trotskyist organ in another city. Trotsky does not want to build the Party together with the Bolsheviks, but to create his own faction. Well, let him try! With “his” faction he will win away some from the Mensheviks, a few from us, but in the end he will inevitably lead the workers to Bolshevism.204

As for the “light revision of the agrarian question”, as you ironically put it, if this refers to the role of the peasantry in the revolution, then we must be more cautious in this matter. We must begin with a discussion in the general Party or general Bolshevik press. I especially warn against hasty renunciations of Bolshevism and exaggerated faith in the success of Stolypin’s agrarian policy. There is no denying that it has posed new problems which must be studied and studied again, that it has opened up the possibility of a non-revolutionary outcome, but from that to its complete success is still as far as from the earth to the stars.

Lenin