V. I.

Lenin

The Journal Svoboda [1]

Svoboda is a worthless little rag. Its author—indeed, this is precisely the impression it creates, that one person has written
it all, from beginning to end—claims to write popularly “for
the workers”. But what we have here is not popularisation, but
talking down in the worst sense of the term. There is not one simple
word, everything is twisted.... The author cannot write a single phrase
without embellishments, without “popular” similes and “popular” catchwords such as “theirn”. Outworn
socialist ideas are chewed over in this ugly language without any new
data, any new examples, any new analysis, and the whole thing is
deliberately vulgarised. Popularisation, we should like to inform the
author, is a long way from vulgarisation, from talking down. The popular
writer leads his reader towards profound thoughts, towards profound
study, proceeding from simple and generally known facts; with the aid of
simple arguments or striking examples he shows the main
conclusions to be drawn from those facts and arouses in the
mind of the thinking reader ever newer questions. The popular writer
does not .presuppose a reader that does not think, that can not or does
not wish to think; on the contrary, he assumes in the undeveloped reader
a serious intention to use his head and aids him in his serious
and difficult work, leads him, helps him over his first steps, and
teaches him to go forward independently. The vulgar writer
assumes that his reader does not think and is incapable of thinking; he
does

not lead him in his first steps towards serious knowledge, hut in a
distortedly simplified form, interlarded with jokes and facetiousness,
hands out “ready-made” all the conclusions of a known theory, so that the reader does not even have to chew but merely to
swallow what he is given.