V. I.

Lenin

March 22, 1902

Dear P. B., How is your health after your journey? Have you
recovered from the life of a wanderer, and from the “reaction” you expected when you were going away?

Velika Dmitrievna sent you G. V.’s programme and our scheme for a “settlement in
committee”, [2] through a committee of arbitration sui generis . This scheme seems to be
falling through because of G. V.’s unwillingness, but I
don’t yet know this for certain. I should like to know your
impression of G. V.’s new draft and which of the two drafts
you now favour.

The copying of your pamphlet [3] has only just been started: up to now the copyist was busy with copying for
Iskra (with Tsvetov away, Iskra has been making very slow
headway: only one issue will appear in March). Evidently
delay is inevitable if your pamphlet is to be published here;
but if you are very much opposed to this, let me know, and
we may then send it on to Geneva. If speed is not so important for you, then as soon as the copying is finished and
Tsvetov returns, the pamphlet will be sent to the printers.

A few more words about the programme. We consider it very undesirable to put it up for a vote by the whole
League (instead of the editorial board alone), respective [1] have a discussion in the press among ourselves (although
this will not be easy to avoid if the attempt to reach agreement fails). What is your opinion?

All the very best wishes for your health.

Yours....

---
Notes:
[1]
Or.— Ed .

[2]
A reference to the second draft Party Programme drawn up by
Plekhanov.

The “settlement in committee ” consisted in agreeing two draft
programmes—Lenin’s and Plekhanov’s—in a co-ordinating committee appointed by the Iskra Editorial Board to work out a single
draft programme of the R.S.D.L.P. Prospective members for the
committee were Martov, Zasulich, Dan or Deutsch (see Lenin Miscellany II , pp. 91–92).

The draft agreement did not “fall through”, as Lenin had feared:
Plekhanov agreed to a settlement in committee, and the agreed
draft was approved by the Iskra Editorial Board in Zurich
on April 14, 1902, in Lenin’s absence. The draft Programme of
the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, worked out by the
Editorial Board of Iskra and Zarya , was published in Iskra No. 21
on June 1, 1902.

[3]
A reference to P. B. Axelrod’s article which he intended to issue
in pamphlet form as a supplement to Iskra . The article, entitled
“The Emergence in Our Country of Bourgeois Democracy as an
Independent Revolutionary Force”, appeared only in 1906 in
a collection of his articles, The Struggle of Socialist and Bourgeois Trends in the Russian Revolutionary Movement .