V. I.

Lenin

Some Reflections on the Letter from “7 Ts. 6 F.” [2]

I am writing under the fresh impression of your letter, which I have just
read. Its senseless twaddle is so exasperating that I am unable to
suppress the desire to state my opinion frankly. Please send my letter on
to the author and tell him that he need not take offence at the severe
tone. After all, it is not meant for publication.

The letter deserves a reply, in my opinion, because it shows up in
particularly bold relief a characteristic trait in the mood of many
present-day revolutionaries: waiting for instructions; demanding
everything from above, from others, from outside; looking lost
when faced by failures caused by local inactivity; piling up complaint
after complaint, and inventing recipes for a cheap and simple cure of the
evil.

You will not invent anything, gentlemen! If you yourselves are
inactive, if you permit splits to take place under your very noses and
then heave sighs and make complaint— no recipes will help
you. And it is utterly absurd to shower us with complaints on this
score. Don’t imagine that you offend us by your accusations and attacks:
you see, we have become inured, so devilishly inured to them that they do
not provoke us!

“Mass” literature “by the hundredweight”
—this battle-cry of yours is nothing but an imaginary recipe for someone else to cure you of your own inactivity. Believe
me, no such recipes will ever work! If you yourselves are not
energetic and alert, no one will help you in any way. It is highly
unreasonable to wail, “give us this or that, deliver something or other,” when you yourselves should do the getting and delivering . It is useless to write about it to us, for we cannot do
it from here, whereas you can and should do it by yourselves: I am referring to the delivery of literature we are
publishing and have on hand.

Some local “activists” (so called because they are inactive),
who have seen no more than a few issues of Iskra and who do not
work actively to get and distribute it in mass quantities, invent
the flimsy excuse: “That is not what we want. Give us mass
literature, for the masses! Masticate it for us, put it into our mouths,
and perhaps we’ll manage to do the swallowing ourselves.”

How phenomenally absurd these plaints appear to those who know and see
that they, these local “activists,” are unable to organise the
distribution of even what is available. Is it not ridiculous to read: give
us hundredweights, when you are unable to take and transport even
a

fewpounds?

Do that first, worthy “dreamers for an hour” (for the first
mishap makes you abandon everything, even all your convictions!). Do that,
and then, when you have done it not once, but dozens of times, the
publication, too, will grow with the demand.

I say it will grow, for your plaints about mass literature (which you have
uncritically and senselessly copied from the Socialist-Revolutionaries,
Svoboda people, and all sorts of confused “inactivists”)
are caused by forgetfulness of a small ... a very small trifle, namely,
forgetfulness of the fact that you are unable to take and distribute
even a hundredth part of the mass literature we are publishing
now. I shall take one of the recent lists of one of our few (miserably,
pitifully, shamefully few) consignments. The Nizhni-Novgorod speeches, the Rostov struggle, the pamphlet on strikes, the Dikstein pamphlet [1]
[3] –I

shall limit myself to these. Four, only four small items! So little!!

Yes, it is very little! Yes, we need four hundred, not four.

But, permit me to ask you, have you been able to distribute at least these four things by the ten thousand? No, you have not been able to
do this. You have not been able to distribute them by the hundred
even. That is why you shout: give us hundredweights! (No
one will ever give you anything if you are unable to take it: bear that in mind.)

Have you been able to make use of the hundreds of copies which
have been delivered to you, brought to you, and placed into your mouths?? No, you have not been able to do that. Even
in this trifle you have not been able to link up the masses with
Social-Democracy. Every month we get tens and hundreds of Leaflets,
reports, news items, and letters from all parts of Russia, but we have had
not a single (give good thought to the exact meaning of the
words, “not a single”!) report about the distribution of these
hundreds of copies among the masses , about the impression they
made on the masses , about the reaction of the masses ,
about discussions among the masses on these things! You are placing us in a position wherein the writer does the
writing and the reader (the intellectual) does the reading—after
which this same slothful reader fulminates against the writer because he
(the writer!!!) does not furnish literature “by the hundredweight” everywhere. The person whose sole business it is to linkup the writer with the masses sits like a ruffled turkey and gobbles away:
give us mass literature, while at the same time he is unable to make use of even a hundredthpart of what is available.

You will of course say that it is impossible , impossible in
general, to get, for instance, Iskra , our main product,
linked up with the masses. I know you will say that. I have heard
it hundreds of times and have always replied that this is untrue, that it
is a subterfuge, shirking, inability, and indolence, the desire to have
roast duck fly straight into your mouths.

I know from the facts that enterprising people have been able to
“link up” Iskra (this super-intellectual
Iskra , as the sorry little intellectuals consider it) with the
masses of even such backward and uneducated workers as those in
the industrial gubernias around Moscow. I have known workers who
have themselves distributed Iskra among the masses (there)

and who merely remarked that there were too few copies. Quite recently I
heard a “soldier from the field of battle” tell of how in one
such out-of-the-way factory area in central Russia Iskra is read
at one and the same time in numerous circles, at gatherings numbering from
ten to fifteen people, the committee and subcommittees themselves
reading over every issue in advance, planning jointly just how to
use each article in agitation talks. And they were able to make use of
even those paltry five to eight (maximum: eight!! ) copies which
were all that they got owing to the helpless inactivity of the activists
stationed near the border (who are never even able to make arrangements
for reception of literature consignments and hope that the writer will
give birth not only to articles but to people to do the work for them!).

Come now, tell us with your hand over your heart: have many of you made
such use of every copy of Iskra you received (delivered to you, brought to
you)? You are silent! Well then, let me tell you: one out of a hundred copies that get to Russia (by the will of the fates and due
to the inactivity of the “readers”) is being used in this way , with discussions on the agitation value of every item, with
readings of every item in workers’ study circles, in all circles
of all workers who are accustomed to foregather in a particular
town. And yet people who are unable to assimilate even a
hundredth part of the material that gets to them wail: give us hundred
weights!! Shchedrin’s formula (the writer does the writing) still regards
the “reader” far, far too optimistically!!

The present-day reader (from among the Social-Democratic intellectuals)
has gone so far as to complain about the writers because the
local intellectuals are lazy and “order” the workers about,
without doing anything for them. The complaint is justified, a thousand
times justified, only ... is it directed to the proper quarter? Won’t you
permit us to return this complaint to the sender , with a double
charge as punishment?? What about yourselves, my worthy complainants? If
your friends are unable to make use of Iskra for readings in workers’ study circles, if they are unable to assign
people for the delivery and distribution of literature, if they are
unable to assist the workers to set up circles for this purpose,
why

don’ tyouthrow such helpless friends overboard??

Just think, in what sort of pretty situation do you find yourselves when you complain to us about yourown helplessness?

It is a

fact

that the “practicians” do not make use of even a hundredth
part of all they could take. And it is a no less indubitable fact
that the special varieties of “mass” literature which these
people have thought up are only pretexts and dodges. In the letter of
"7 Ts. 6 F.,” for instance, three varieties are recommended to
“us” (ii would be to us, of course):

1) A popular newspaper. Chew over every fact so as to make its
assimilation possible without digestion, so that w e , “activists,” should need no stomachs at all.

It does not matter that the world has never yet seen such a
“popular” “newspaper,” since a newspaper giver answers to everything , while popular literature gives instruction on a few things. It does not matter that
all our examples of such literature, beginning with Rabochaya Mysl , on through

Vperyods , [4]
Rabocheye Dyelos , Krasnoye Znamyas ,” [5] and the like, have unavoidably and necessarily proved mongrels, being
neither popular nor newspapers. It does not matter that all
efforts of the “workers’” news papers have merely nurtured, and
always will nurture, the absurd division into an intellectual movement and
a working-class movement (a division caused by the dull-wittedness and
bungling of the intellectuals, who go so far as to send complaints about
their own bungling from the seat of the trouble to the ends of
the earth!). It does not matter that all the efforts of the
“workers’” newspapers so far have been breeding, and will always
breed among us, amateurishness and special, profound, Kazan and Kharkov
theories. All this does not matter. Look at the captivating Svoboda group and the captivating (“breath-taking”)
Socialist-Revolutionaries; what a mass (ugh, what a mass!) of popular
newspapers and periodicals they are publishing!! Narodnoye Dyelo, Krasnoye Znamya, Svoboda —a magazine for workers,
Otkliki—a newspaper and magazine for workers, Luchina—for peasants, Rabochaga Mysl —the
Geneva news paper of the St. Petersburg workers!! It does not matter that
all this is trash, but it is mass trash for all that.

And all you have is just one Iskra ; after all, it gets
monotonous! Thirty-one issues and all Iskra , while with the captivating people every two issues of one title (of trash) are
immediately followed by three issues of another title (of trash). Now,
this is energy, this is jolly, this is new! But our Social-Democrats....

2) And “they” are always having new pamphlets. Each reprint is
considered a pamphlet and all this is meretriciously trumpeted forth, and
the printed sheets are added up (a million printed sheets: see No. 16 of
Revolutsionnaya Rossiya. They have broken all records!
Champions!).

But in our case! Reprints are not counted as pamphlets— that is
highbrowism, bookishness!! The ancient Dikstein pamphlets are being
republished, when every girl in Paris and in Chernigov knows that
ten new pamphlets (trash) are worth a hundred times more than one
old pamphlet, even a good one.

It is only the Germans who do things in such a way that, for example, in
1903 Bebel’s Our Aims , written thirty-four years ago, is
being republished for the eleventh time!! That is so boring. Our
“captivating” Socialist-Revolutionaries are pouring out
stuff. But our local “activists” are able to use neither the old

Plekhanov pamphlets (twenty years old: ancient stuff! To the archives with
them!), nor “some” one (one!) pamphlet on strikes [6] and on the Witte memorandum!

This quite apart from the fact that the local “activist” does
not lift a finger to squeeze good pamphlets out of authors now in exile—and to get local writers to contribute to “Iskra.” Why do that? It is much easier to
complain than to undertake such a troublesome business! And the
present-day reader unblushingly calls himself an Iskra -ist on the
grounds that he writes complaints to Iskra . Nor does it trouble
his conscience in the slightest that 90 per cent of the articles are
written by the one and the same three and a half writers. Nor does he find
it necessary even to think about the fact that Iskra must not be
allowed to stop publication and that the fortnightly issue of one and a
half to two signatures calls for a lot of work. Still, he continues to
shout with simply unparalleled fatuity: thirty-one issues, and there are
still many fools in the localities and much helpless wailing!! A truly
crushing argument.... Only whom and what does it crush?

3) Leaflets.

Give us leaflets! The committees cannot do it!! Write, deliver, bring (and distribute?) leaflets!

Well, now, this is indeed consistent. I open my mouth and you shovel it
in: here we have the new formula for the relations between the
“writer” and the Iskra practician! To go so far as to state that the local organisations (consisting of slothful
“activists”?) cannot manage to issue local leaflets, that these
leaflets should be delivered from abroad, that is the limit . This
is such a splendid (in my opinion) crowning touch to the whole letter of
“7 Ts. 6 F.” that it only remains for me to conclude with this
“crown.” Any further remarks or comments will only dim its shining
lustre.