V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v47; en:CW/CW34;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

2. VIII. 05.

Dear An. Vas. Yesterday I sent you a “business” letter and asked you to send Iskra, No. 105* and Plekhanov’s L. Feuerbach. Today I feel like having a chat outside current trivialities.

Our people in Geneva are in low spirits. I am often surprised how little it takes for people who are not fully independent and not accustomed to independent political work to lose heart and turn sour. And our Geneva Bolsheviks are turning sour desperately. The struggle is serious, the Third Congress by no means ended it, of course, but only opened a new phase of it; the Iskra people are mobile and fussy, shamelessly hucksterish, schooled by long experience in demagogy—while among our people there prevails a sort of “honest stupidity” or “stupid honesty”. They do not know how to fight themselves, they are awkward, immobile, clumsy, timid... Nice fellows, but politicians fit for nothing. They have no tenacity,

* They say the leading article is desperate nonsense! Won’t you write quickly against it? If so, telegraph.

no fighting spirit, no adroitness, no quickness. Vas. Vas. is extremely typical in this respect: a most amiable person, a most devoted worker, a most honest man, he is, I fear, never capable of becoming a politician. He is too good-natured—it is even hard to believe that the “Galerka” pamphlets were written by him. He brings no fighting spirit either into the organ (he is always sorry that I do not let him write good articles about the Bund!) or into the colony. A sort of whining spirit prevails, and everyone reproaches me (I have been at the dacha only three weeks and go to town for 4-5 hours three, sometimes even four times a week!) that things are not going well with them, that the Mensheviks are more lively, etc., etc.!! And our Central Committee, firstly, is also not much of a “politician”, is also too good-natured, also suffers from a lack of tenacity, resourcefulness, sensitivity, an inability to make political use of every trifle in the party struggle. And, secondly, it loftily despises abroad and stubbornly refuses to let the best people come here or takes them away from here. And we find ourselves here, abroad, lagging behind. There is a lack of ferment, of stimuli, of impulses. People do not know how to act and fight themselves. There is a lack of speakers at our own meetings. There is no one to infuse a cheerful spirit, to pose the question on principle, to be able to rise above the Geneva swamp to a higher level, into the sphere of more serious interests and questions. And the whole cause suffers. In political struggle, a halt means death. The demands are enormous and they are growing all the time. The New Iskra people are not asleep (now they have also “snapped up” the sailors who arrived in Geneva*, luring them, probably, with their characteristic hucksterish advertising in politics and vigorously marktschreien,** “utilising” the Odessa events retroactively in favour of their coterie). We have impossibly few forces. I don’t know when Vas. Vas. will write, and as a speaker and political centre he is beneath all criticism; he rather spreads whining himself than shakes people up and gives them a pedagogical dressing-down. Shvarts is absent: he writes from there diligently and well, even seemingly better than here, but he only writes. And he is rarely able to exert personal influence on

* Referring to participants in the uprising on the battleship Potemkin. Ed.
** - shouting their wares. Ed.

people and to know how to direct the public and meetings, even when he is in Geneva. The centre here is large and serious. A mass of Russians. A multitude of travellers. Summer is even a particularly lively moment, for among the countless Russian tourists who flock to Geneva there is a certain percentage of people who can and should be used, shaken up, attracted, directed.

Think all this over and drop me a line in more detail (better to my personal address: 3, Rue David Dufour). Remember, you wrote: there will be no harm from my absence from Geneva, because I write a lot and from a distance. That is true, that you write a lot, and the newspaper can be run somehow (but no more than somehow, and we damn well need more). But the harm is not only there, but enormous harm, which is felt more clearly every day. Personal influence and appearances at meetings mean terribly much in politics. Without them there is no political activity, and even writing itself becomes less political. And with an opponent who has large forces abroad, we lose so much every week that we probably cannot make up in a month. The struggle for the party is not over, and it cannot be brought to real victory without straining all forces...

I press your hand. Yours, N. Lenin