Note: From 16 XI 1900

15.
V. I. LENIN — P. B. AXELROD.
16/XI (1900, München.)
I have just received, dear P. B., your notes on the article
"Pressing Tasks" 1).
Thank you very much for them.
How do you think about the non-popularity of this article?
Will it not be a dissonanz?
I am sending you the preface to the pamphlet "May Days in Kharkov" 2) (in manuscript, in which you* had some,
but very small* corrections made).
Please cast your vote on the question of it and make your remarks, without hesitation, with pen
or pencil right there.
I am also sending a document received from Russia about the
merging of the SPB Workers' Organization with the "Union of Struggle"
3). They say the Petersburgers are terribly busy with this, and Kiev supposedly has already adopted
this program.
It is necessary to write about it.
Wouldn't you be willing to do it?
(After reading this "document" - "Fruit", as brother [Potresov] puts it,
please forward it to Georgy V[alentinovich Plekhanov], if you do not
need it.)
We have finally found a responsible person:
Ettinger 4) has undertaken to sign two books in any case, renouncing all
claims about "tone" etc. and reserving the right, after 2
books, to state in print her disagreement with the content, etc.
We must hope that she fulfills this condition (she earnestly asks
only for now, until the book is released, not to tell anyone about it),—
and during this time we will either find another person or
arrange things differently.
I conducted negotiations with Ettinger personally through Buchholz, who withdrew from the Union in order to take some steps in a conciliatory spirit.
I will write more about these steps later, especially since there is little interesting in them.
Now in the next few days I hope to start typesetting.
I shake your hand firmly.
Your Pctroff.
1) "Pressing Tasks of Our Movement" - the leading article of the first
issue of "Iskra", written by Lenin. (See Collected Works, vol. IV, pp. 11-16.)
2) See below, p. 295.
3) The merger document is the "Program of the St. Petersburg Union
of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class" and the "Charter of the Allied Organization",
subsequently printed in No. 11 of "Rabochaya Mysl".
The provisions developed in these documents formed the basis of the agreement on which the merger of the "St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class" and the "Workers' Organization" took place.
The years 1898, 1899 and 1900 were the heyday of "Economism", and St. Petersburg
was the center of this trend.
At the end of June 1900, a new organization of "Economists" emerged here under the name "Workers' Organization".
It
was a purely workers' organization, all its members were
workers from top to bottom, intellectuals were admitted only as
propagandists, etc. The propagandists formed a "Council of Propagandists",
which sent its representative to the "Committee of the Union of Struggle"
(it included representatives of districts from agitators, propagandists,
technicians, cashier, groups for communication with the province and abroad).
Thus, the "Workers' Organization" united with the "Union
of Struggle".
Lenin has in mind the program and charter of this united organization.
About this "program", printed in No. 11 of "Rabochaya Mysl",
there is a small note in No. 6 of "Iskra" in the "From the Party" section. (About the "Workers' Organization". The Past Years. 1908.
K. Semenov.
The first year of the St. Petersburg Workers' Organization.)
4) Evgenia
Samoilovna Ettinger - Davidson, participant of the Kiev
organization of the time of the first congress. In 1898 she emigrated abroad:
during the period of the "Iskra's" struggle with the "Union of Russian
Social-Democrats
Abroad" she took a conciliatory position, and after the split she went over
to the side of the Mensheviks.
On the first book of "Zarya" on the reverse side of the title page it says:
Verantwortlich für Redaction: K. Fentz in Stuttgart (responsible editor
K. Fentz, Stuttgart).