V. I.

Lenin

TO THE BORBA GROUP

February 21, 1901

Dear Comrades, Your insistence on “defining relations” has surprised
us but, to our deep regret, we cannot satisfy you in this
respect. Our business is just being started, the wheels have
only just been set in motion, and whether it will really
get going depends on everyone vigorously co-operating
—when suddenly, instead of doing the urgent work, we are
asked to set about “defining relations” with some kind of particular exactness! We think that close and constant
collaboration (which has already been expressed by your
sending us two articles, and on which we were relying for
the future) is a sufficiently definite relation, and that from
it there clearly follows also the right of contributors to
speak on behalf of the publication, enlist supporters, establish contacts, collect funds, order articles, etc. That this
enlistment will naturally lead also to more intimate contacts between those enlisted and the editorial board, and
that the establishment of final agreements (about any undertaking, or about the management of this or that
section, or this or that function) will require direct contacts
between the editorial board and those who have been enlisted, all this likewise follows, as a matter of course, from
the very nature of relations between close contributors
and the editorial board.

We hope that our relations could in the course of time develop from the form of simple collaboration to the kind
of co-operation under which some departments would be allocated, and general editorial conferences would be held
from time to time.

Furthermore, we do not deny of course that the business
of organising things abroad will require (in 3 or 6 months’
time) the creation of new forms, organs and functions, and
were relying on you in this respect, but we are unable-to
set about all this immediately, when Zarya and Iskra have
still to be consolidated.

We hope that you, too, will realise our position and will agree that any further “definition of relations” at the
present time is impossible.

All the best.