V. I.

Lenin

14

To:   THE EDITOR OF PRAVDA

Dear Colleague, I have your letter, and the letter from Vitimsky. I was
very glad to get a word from him. But the contents of his
letter gave me great concern.

You write, and as secretary, [1] evidently, on behalf of
the editorial board, that “the editorial board in principle
considers my article fully acceptable including the attitude to the liquidators ”.
If that is so, why then does Pravda stubbornly and systematically cut out any mention of the
liquidators, both in my articles and in the articles of other
colleagues?? Don’t you really know that they already have
their candidates? We know this for certain . We have had
official communications about this from a city in the south, [2] where there is a deputy from the worker curia. Undoubtedly
the same applies to other places.

The silence of Pravda is more than strange. You write:
“The editorial board considers it an obvious misunderstanding” that it is being “suspected of striving to legalise the
demands contained in the platform”. But surely you will
agree that this is a fundamental question, one which determines the whole spirit of the publication, and moreover
one which is inseparably bound up with the question of the
liquidators. I have not the slightest inclination for “
suspecting”; you know from experience that I show tremendous
patience with your corrections for reasons of censorship as
well. But a fundamental question requires a straight answer .

One must not leave a contributor uninformed as to whether
the editorial board intends to direct the section of the paper
dealing with the elections against the liquidators, naming
them clearly and precisely, or not against them. There is
not and cannot be any middle course.

If the article “must be printed anyway” (as the secretary
to the editorial board writes), then how am I to understand
Vitimsky’s “the angry tone is harmful”? Since when has an angry tone against what is bad, harmful, untrue (and
the editorial board is “in principle” in agreement!) harmed
a daily newspaper?? On the contrary, colleagues, really and
truly on the contrary. To write without “anger” of what
is harmful means to write boringly. And you yourselves refer, and justly so, to monotony!

Furthermore, I have not had any reply for a long time concerning the article about November 9 (the reply of a
correspondent). [4] I repeat my request: return what cannot
pass the censorship or what you unquestionably reject.

We receive Pravda irregularly (yesterday we didn’t get it at all !!).
We have not seen Zvezda , either No. 14 or No. 17, at all . A scandal! Can’t you send us the page proofs by
wrapper, rather than throw them away? That costs two kopeks. It would save time. To send proofs to a contributor
is perfectly legitimate. When leaving at night, the night
editor would put the wrapper into a post-box—that would
be all. (But the wrappers often tear, they should be made
larger, the same size as the newspapers. It would be best
of all to use long narrow envelopes: in such envelopes—
un sealed—press material is more likely to arrive, and the
envelopes don’t cost much.) It is particularly essential
to have Zvezda No. 17.
Today is Thursday: two days’ delay!!

Finally, please let me know whether it would not be possible to publish in one form or another (like Nevsky Golos , which has more than once printed information about
the Social-Democrats abroad) the following news. The
German
Vorstand [3] has made an appeal to the 11 (sic!)
Social-Democratic groups, factions and centres, suggesting a joint
conference on the subject of “unity”. The so-called “Lenin
trend” has replied with the most categorical refusal: what can be more ridiculous and unworthy than this playing
at an agreement abroad with “centres and factions” which
have demonstrated their absolute impotence in Russia? No
negotiations with them, no agreements with the liquidators—such was the reply of the so-called “Lenin trend”.
Whether anything has come of this arch-stupid idea of
Trotsky’s, and whether anything will come of it, is not
known.

And so I ask you to reply: can a report describing these
“Paris novelties”, and giving an assessment of them, be
published, in one form or another, in the newspaper you
edit? Do censorship conditions make this possible, or is
it quite impossible? [5] (I ask only about the censorship
aspect of the case, since in principle—I venture to think on
the basis of the previous letter—the editorial board is not
in favour of unity with the liquidators, isn’t that so?)

With comradely greetings,
V. Ulyanov