V. I. Lenin

For the Draft Agreement with Struve {2}

Representatives of the Zarya-Iskra Social-Democratic group and
the Svoboda democratic opposition group have agreed on the following:

1) The Zarya group shall publish with the magazine of the same
name a special supplement entitled Sovremennoye Obozreniye in the
editing of which the Svoboda group will take part.

2) The editing shall be conducted on the following basis: each of the
sides has the right of veto in respect of material and articles.

3) Programme of the publication: a) material and documents relating to
the activity of the government, {1} government, public and class institutions, etc.;

b) articles, on questions of domestic public life in Russia and the
government’s domestic and foreign policy;

c) domestic reviews.

4) Both sides undertake to make efforts to supply material for
Sovremennoye Obozreniye . But the
Zarya {3} Editorial Board is free to carry in its special
editions the material at its disposal on the subjects specified in
§ 3, whenever it is more suitable in character for such editions.

5) The Zarya group undertakes to perform all the necessary
operations in publishing, transporting and distributing Sovremennoye Obozreniye . For its part, the X group shall pay all the expenses this
entails.

6) In the event the said enterprise is liquidated, each side shall
receive one-half of the copies of Sovremennoye Obozreniye in
stock.

Note : The Zarya Editorial Board shall have the right to print announcements of its publications on the covers of
Sovremennoye Obozreniye .

---
Notes:
{1}
The text given in brevier is in Potresov’s hand.— Ed .

{2}
The draft agreement with P. B. Struve was worked out as a result of the
talks held by V. I. Lenin, V. I. Zasulich and A. N. Potresov with Struve,
which had been started on Potresov’s initiative on December 29, 1900 (see
present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 380–82). The “legal Marxists” (mentioned in
the document as the Svoboda [Freedom] democratic opposition group) Struve
and M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky wanted the establishment of an illegal organ
abroad (suggesting the name of Sovremennoye Obozreniye
[Contemporary Review]) to be published parallel with Iskra and
Zarya , but not openly connected with the Social-Democrats. The
Editorial Board of Iskra and Zarya agreed to participate
in the publication, hoping to obtain political material and reports for
Iskra through Struve, but stipulated that the new organ should
appear not more often than Zarya and as a supplement to it. The
Editorial Board was to consist, on an aqua I footing, of the Iskra
Editorial Board, and Struve and Tugan-Baranovsky.

The talks revealed that Struve intended to use the Editorial Board of
Iskra and Zarya to cater for Sovremennoye Obozreniye and was trying to turn it into an organ competing with
Iskra in volume, content and frequency of publication. When the
draft agreement was being worked out, Struve rejected Clause 7, which had
been proposed by the Iskra and Zarya group and which gave
the Iskra Editorial Board a completely free hand in making use of
all the political material received by Sovremennoye Obozreniye . Lenin set out the content of the talks with Struve in a
letter to 0. V. Plekhanov on January 30, 1901, and came out strongly for
breaking off the talks (see present edition, Vol. 84, pp. 55–57). The
subsequent talks ended in a complete break.

p. 34

{3}
Zarya (Dawn)—a Marxist scientific and political journal
published in Stuttgart in 1901 and 1902 by the Iskra Editorial
Board. Altogether four issues (three books) of Zarya made their
appearance: No. 1 in April 1904 (actually March 23, new style), No. 2–3 in
December 1901, and No. 4 in August 1902.

Zarya’s tasks were defined in a draft declaration by the
Iskra and Zarya Editorial Board, written by Lenin in
Russia (see present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 320-30). In view of the fact that
during the discussion of the publication of these organs abroad, jointly
with the Emancipation of Labour group, it had been decided to publish
Zarya legally and Iskra illegally, the declaration of the
Iskra Editorial Board in October 1900 no longer made mention of
Zarya .

The journal Zarya criticised international and Russian revisionism and came out in defence of the theoretical principles of
Marxism. Some of Lenin’s works, Including “The Persecutors of the Zemstvo
and the Hannibals of Liberalism” and “The

Agrarian Programme of Russian Social-Democracy”, were published in
Zarya .

p. 35