V. I.

Lenin

239

To:   THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF PRAVDA

Dear Colleague, I am sending you the article “Some Results of Six Months’
Work”. [1]

You will see from the contents why I have sent this huge article
to Pravda . You could run it in four successive feuilletons set up
in small type. Each of the four articles could have a separate heading (for
example:
I. Workers’ collections for the newspaper by months in 1912.
II. Workers’ collections for the newspaper by districts.
III. Workers’ collections for liquidationist and non-liquidationist newspapers.
IV. The worker’s kopek for the workers’ newspaper).

I would very much like these articles, which are writ ten exclusively
for Pravda and addressed to its readers, to be published in
Pravda . I don’t think there could be any censorship trouble. I
agree of course to make changes required by the censors, but not to omit Chapter III .

If by any chance you should reject the article for Pravda , and
if your colleagues reject it for Nevskaya Zvezda (for which it is
far less suited), I shall get it published in one of the journals, however
much I should dislike to. At any rate, please reply as soon as possible or
send the article back to me here.

Gylka sent me a letter the other day refusing to contribute to
Zvezda and Pravda in view of the “harmful”, if you please, tendencies he discerned in No. 6 of Nevsky Golos and
Plekhanov’s “withdrawal” This is not the first time that this Gylka is switching over. If he should take it into his head
to raise a fuss about the publication of his article (although I couldn’t
very well wire you his refusal!!), don’t bother to answer him.

Many thanks for the separate issues of “Right” news papers. It is
extremely important for us to get such separate packages of interesting
papers, which we are altogether unable to obtain except through you.

I was very glad to see in Pravda Y. K.’s item about
Sovremennik . [3] You ask for a greater variety of subjects. In
this respect Y. K. is valuable. The paper has no literary
criticism—reviews, essays or small paragraphs. In my opinion every
contributor should be valued for his own specific subject matter. Given a
slightly more attentive attitude on your part, Y. K. could no doubt
contribute a bigger variety of items which would greatly enliven the
workers’ newspaper.

Why did you kill my article on the Italian congress? [2]

In general it wouldn’t be a bad thing to inform authors about rejected
articles. This is not an excessive request. To write “for the waste-paper
basket”, i.e., articles to be thrown out, is not very pleasant. Unpublished articles should be returned. Any
contributor, even to a bourgeois newspaper, would demand this.

With comradely greetings,

V. Ulyanov

Please write Wiener “ Arbeiter-Zeitung ” [4] to send the exchange copy to
me (give them my address). You wouldn’t be allowed to get it
anyhow. Don’t forget to write!!

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Notes:
[1]
See V. I. Lenin, “The Results of Six Months’ Work” (present edition,
Vol. 15, pp. 187–202).— Ed .

[2]
See V. I. Lenin, “The Italian Socialist Congress” (present edition,
Vol. 18, pp. 170–72).— Ed .

[3]
Sovremennik (The Contemporary)—a literary and political
monthly published in St. Petersburg in 1911–15. It was a rallying centre
for Menshevik liquidators, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Popular Socialists
and Left liberals. In 1914 Lenin described the orientation of the journal
as a “mixture of Narodism and Marxism” (see present edition, Vol. 20,
p. 296).

[4]
Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung —a daily, the Central Organ of the
Austrian Social-Democrats, founded by Victor Adler in 1889 in Vienna. It
was closed down in 1934 and resumed publication in 1945 as the Central
Organ of the Socialist Party of Austria.