V. I. LENIN — K. RADEK
In Leipzig.
To Comrade Karl Radek.
9/10. [Paris.]
Dear Comrade! I had intended to respond to Martoff’s and Trotsky’s articles with a substantial, thoroughly substantive piece in Neue Zeit. But things turned out differently. You have published an exceptionally well-reasoned statement, and Comrade Karsky had already, even before I wrote to Kautsky and Wurm about my plan to contribute an article to Neue Zeit against Martoff, prepared a piece for the journal on this very topic. Wurm forwarded Karsky’s article to me, and I agreed that we should limit ourselves to that one contribution.
Still, I cannot simply leave unanswered the most outrageous distortions and absurdities advanced by Martoff and Trotsky. I have already completed roughly a third—or perhaps half—of my essay. The subject is: “The Historical Significance of Internal Party Struggles in Russia.” I would be grateful if you could offer some advice on this matter.

LETTERS FROM THE SECOND EMIGRATION PERIOD

Is it feasible—and indeed advisable—to submit this article to Leipziger Volkszeitung?
If the answer to this question hinges on whether the editorial board will like my article or not, then, of course, I am more than willing to send you the piece without any conditions whatsoever.
If you are able to share your thoughts with me now, I would be extremely grateful. For example, I would like to know: could you publish several feuilletons in Leipziger Volkszeitung on this very topic? What, at most, should the length of the article be? And further: I am not capable of writing in German—I write in Russian. Could you arrange for translation in Leipzig—or might that prove too cumbersome, or even inconvenient for you, so that I would need to find a translator here (though, of course, I can probably manage that as well)? Or, finally, I could write in my own rather poor German (a sample of which you have in this very letter), and in Leipzig the rough draft in bad German would be polished into polished German. (Once, a friend told me that it is actually easier to translate from good Russian into German than from poor German into German.)
With best regards,
Yours, N. Lenin.

We are referring here to Martov’s article No. 10, “Ein Missverstandnis” (“A Misunderstanding”), published in No. 4 of Die Neue Zeit on October 28, 1910 (for a detailed account of Lenin’s response to Martov’s and Trotsky’s articles, see Lenin Collection III, pp. 453, notes 1 and 3).