V. I.

Lenin

14

To:   N. E. BAUMAN [1]

May 24, 1901

We received your letter with the report for January, February, March and April. Thanks for the detailed and
clear list of income and expenditure. But as regards your
activity in general, we are still unclear what exactly this
activity is and what its results are. You wrote that you
have your hands full and there is no one to replace you,
but you have still not kept your promise to describe, this
activity. Is your work confined to forwarding literature
to the points named in the report? Or are you engaged in
forming a group or groups? If so, where and what kind, what has been done already, and what are these groups
for—for local work, for sending to us for literature, or for something else?

We ask about this because the question is very important.
Things with us are going none too well. We are bad off financially, Russia gives almost nothing. Shipping is still
unorganised and haphazard. Under these conditions, our “tactics” must aim wholly at 1) sending here the fullest
possible amount of the money collected in Russia for Iskra ,
and reducing local expenditure to a minimum; 2) spending
money almost exclusively on shipment , as we already have
receiving agents functioning in Pskov and Poltava who are
comparatively very cheap and no burden on our exchequer.

Please think this over carefully. Our daily bread, by which we barely manage to keep alive, consists as before
solely of suitcases. For a couple of them we pay about a
hundred rubles, and the chance nature of the persons sent
entails a vast amount of delay, carelessness, loss, etc.
Nothing is being done to organise the sending of “suitcasers”
from Riga (which, according to both Raznotsvetov and

Ernst, is possible). There is no news from
Leopold. [2]
Nothing is being arranged in Finland, although this is also
possible, as we are assured from various quarters. Is it
reasonable, in such a state of affairs-, to spend 400 rubles
in four months on local reception and intermediaries for
forwarding literature?

We think you should move into the immediate vicinity of the frontier for the sake of shipping at least 2-4
suitcases and 10–20 pounds per month by personal handling.
What do you say to this?