V. I.

Lenin

19

To:   M. G. VECHESLOV

Draft of letter dated 18.V.01

We of course agree with your plan to begin publication of
bulletins [1] at once. Only it is necessary to work out the
organisational aspects of the scheme, that is, to settle some inevitable
preliminary questions. For instance, will the entire Iskra
promotion group in Berlin be involved in publishing and editing the
bulletins (if I am not mistaken, the idea was not to inform the whole group
of our organisational plan as yet), or just a part of it, or a few
individuals? Will the title of the bulletins indicate their relationship to Iskra or not? It would also be desirable that the programme of
the bulletins should accord with the programme put forward in our draft and
that the editors should see to it that the departments (translations of
Polish, Finnish and other literature) are distributed among Iskra
sympathisers and supporters. Lastly, it is essential definitely to decide
(the decision of course should not be published) that the group publishing
and editing the bulletins under take the task provisionally with a view to
turning it over to an elected Literary Commission when the Iskra
organisation abroad which we have proposed has been openly
constituted. There are also other matters which you of course will see for
yourself and settle when you get down to working out your plan
organisationally in its final form.

We on our part shall select some material we have on hand and send it
to you. Let us know when you plan to put out the first issue. Will the
bulletins you propose to publish be the same as the earlier ones (as
regards format) or different?