V. I.

Lenin

51

To:   KARTAVTSEV [1]

4/VIII.

1) I received two more letters from you but could not
make them out. Your invisible ink is not concentrated enough. Try it out
each time before writing. It is terribly annoying to get a letter and not
be able to read it.

2) Did you get our letter asking you to send us some
300 rubles out of our money?

3) What have you heard from prison?

4) Illg’s address. You have it wrong, it should
be: [2]

5) Let us know what’s doing in the committee. It is said
that a certain “Leonty” (Potyomkin) [3] has arrived in Berlin. He is supposed to have told a Berlin comrade of ours
that
a) the Kiev Committee is stripping the “Stariki’s supporters” of all
authority,
b) that it is indignant about the Iskra letter and will oppose the
recognition of Iskra as the Party organ,
c) that the committee had instructed him to contact Zhizn , which
the Kiev people want to make the Party organ,
d) that the committee is powerless to counteract the
Socialist-Revolutionaries, does not venture to come out against terrorism
and merely seeks to oppose the circulation of literature such as The Ways People Live and the like. There is probably something wrong here
and we have asked word to be passed on to Leonty that be should write us
and give us a detailed account of what is happening. But he has not
written. Let us know how things stand.

We earnestly beg you to contact us directly on all matters of
any importance, for passing on information through Berlin, etc. ,
always confuses things terribly. We believe that in this case too there has
been some mix-up. When giving assignments to people going abroad they must
be told not to confine themselves to seeing one or another League member
but to contact the Editorial Board without fail either in person
or by writing themselves (i.e., not leaving it to some League
member to do)—registered letters from abroad to the Dietz and other
addresses are quite safe. This is necessary because the members of
the League and even members of its administration are scattered all over
Europe and do not know much about contacts with
Russia. [4]

We still haven’t got the address for contacting you. It
was probably in one of the letters we could not make out, but there’s
nothing we can do about it. We are waiting for your reply.

Please put us in touch with Vakar.

---
Notes:
[1]
Identity not established.— Ed .

[2]
Address not given in the original.— Ed .

[3]
Identity not established.— Ed .

[4]
Insertion in a letter written by Krupskaya.— Ed .