V. I.

Lenin

50

To:   I. V. BABUSHKIN

January 16

We have received from Geneva Rabochaya Mysl No. 16 (evidently published
and even written by Svoboda , i.e., by Nadezhdin) already labelled as
the organ of the St. Petersburg Committee. It has a letter of the Bouncers
making a correction, a trivial correction, strictly speaking not a correction at
all but a compliment to Svoboda . If the Bouncers assure you of
their solidarity with Zarya and Iskra , that is obvious
deception, the sheer humbug of people who are playing for time in order to gain
strength. We earnestly and insistently advise you therefore to issue immediately (and if you cannot issue it, send it here) a leaflet protesting in the
name of the Committee and in general to refute all conciliatory manoeuvres and
approaches, and to launch a vigorous war, a ruthless war, against the Bouncers,
with an exposure of their defection from Social-Democracy to the
“Revolutionary-Socialist” Svoboda . We approve the energetic behaviour of Novitskaya and once again ask you to continue in the same
militant spirit, without allowing the slightest vacillations. War on the
Bouncers and to hell with all conciliators, people of “elusive
views” and shilly-shallyers! Better a small fish than a big beetle. Better two or three energetic and wholly devoted people than a dozen
dawdlers. Write as often as possible and, without delay , give us access
to your workers (and a characterisation of them) so that in case of arrests we
shall not be stranded.