V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v48;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

Krakow. 1 August 1912.

Krakau. Oesterreich.

Zwierzyniec. 218.

Wl. Uljanow.

Dear A. M.,

I have received your letter and the letter from the Siberians. My address is now not Paris but Krakow—see above.

I did not quite understand from which party you are proposing to expel me—not from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, surely?

No, joking apart, you have adopted a bad, philistine, bourgeois habit of brushing things aside with: “You are all squabblers.” Just look at the new Socialist-Revolutionary literature:

*Pochin* No. 96, *Izvestiya Zagranichnoi Oblastnoi Organizatsii* No. 97—compare them with *Revolyutsionnaya Mysl* No. 98, with *Revolyutsionnaya Rossiya* No. 99—and then there is Ropshin No. 100, etc.

Recall *Vekhi* No. 101 and the polemics (quasi-polemics) with them of Milyukov, Gredeskul (who has now discovered that a second revolution is not needed in Russia), and so on and so forth.

Compare all this as a whole, the entire sum of ideological trends of 1908–1912 among the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Trudoviks, Bez Zaglaviya supporters, and Cadets, with what existed and exists among the Social-Democrats (someone, sometime—a historian, probably—will inevitably do this work). You will see that all, literally all those outside Social-Democracy were deciding the very same,

TO THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF *PRAVDA*. AUGUST 2, 1912

literally the very same questions over which groups in our Party split off towards liquidationism and otzovism.

The bourgeoisie, liberals, and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who treat “painful questions” frivolously, trail behind others, indulge in diplomacy, and dabble in eclecticism, love to shout about “squabbling” among the Social-Democrats. The difference between the Social-Democrats and all of them is that among the Social-Democrats the squabbling clothes a struggle of groups with deep and clear ideological roots, whereas among them the squabbling is outwardly smoothed over, inwardly empty, petty, and trivial. I would never, for anything, exchange the sharp struggle of trends among the Social-Democrats for the slicked-down emptiness and poverty of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Co.

I firmly shake your hand.

Yours, Lenin

P.S. Greetings to M. F.!

P.S. And in Russia there is a revolutionary upsurge, not any other kind, but precisely a revolutionary one. And we have succeeded in establishing the daily *Pravda*—incidentally, thanks precisely to that (January) Conference* which the fools are barking at.