## A Few Thoughts
Concerning the Letter of 7 c. 6 f.
(From Zarin to Lenin)

I am writing under the fresh impression of having just read your letter. It has outraged me with its thoughtless bombast, so that I cannot restrain myself from desiring to speak my mind frankly. Please convey my letter to its author and tell him that there is no reason to take offense at sharp words. This is not for publication, after all.

The letter deserves a response, in my view, because it illuminates with particular clarity one characteristic feature in the mood of many present-day revolutionaries. To wait for directives, to demand everything from above, from outside, from abroad, to helplessly throw up one's hands at the sight of failures experienced locally thanks to one's own inactivity, complaints and more complaints, the inventing of recipes that would cure the evil cheaply and simply.

You will not invent them, gentlemen! When you yourselves are inactive, if you will tolerate schisms right under your nose and then moan and groan and complain—no recipes will help. And it is positively foolish to shower us with complaints over this. Do not think that we are offended by your accusations and attacks: we are accustomed, you know, devilishly accustomed to them, so that they do not wound us!

"Mass" literature, "dozens of poods"—this battle cry of yours is nothing other than precisely an invented recipe for curing yourselves from the outside of your own inactivity. Believe me, no such recipes will ever work! If you yourselves are not energetic and resourceful, no one will be able to help you with anything. To shout: give us this and that, deliver this and that—is highly unreasonable, because you yourselves must take and deliver. It is useless to write to us about this, because we cannot do it from here, but you can and must do it from where you are: I am speaking of the delivery of the literature we have and are publishing.

Some local "activists" (receiving this name from their inactivity), seeing only a few copies of *Iskra* altogether, not working actively over its mass receipt and distribution, invent for themselves an easy excuse: that is not the right thing. Give us mass literature, for the masses! Chew it up, put it in our mouth, and maybe we will swallow it ourselves.

How phenomenally absurd these cries seem to one who knows and sees that these very local "activists" do not know how to organize the distribution even of what exists. Is it not laughable to read: give us dozens of poods, when you cannot take and transport even five poods? Do this first, most esteemed "fantasists of the moment" (for the first failure knocks you off your feet altogether, even off all your convictions!). Do this, and then, when you have done it not once but dozens of times, the publishing house will grow in step with demand.

I say: it will grow, because your cries about mass literature (thoughtlessly borrowed from the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the liberals and all sorts of bewildered "inactive people") are based on forgetting a small... a very small trifle, namely: on forgetting that you cannot take and distribute even a hundredth part of the mass literature we are now publishing. I take one of the latest lists from one of the few (pitifully, miserably, shamefully few) of our transports. Nizhgorod speeches, Rostov struggle, a pamphlet on strikes, Dickstein*—I will confine myself to that. Four, merely four little things! How little!!

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

"Svoboda" and the S.-R.s publish by the pood monthly; there is waste paper and charlatanism. Charlatans are always fussy and make more noise, and some naive people take this for energy.

* That is old!—you cry out. Yes, all parties having good popular literature distribute old works: Guesde and Lafargue, Bebel, Bracke, Liebknecht and others for decades. Do you hear: for decades! And popular literature is good, is suitable only insofar as it serves for decades. For popular literature is a series of textbooks for the people, and textbooks set forth the basics, unchanging over half-centuries. That "popular" literature which "captivates" you and which

But allow me to ask you, were you able to distribute even those four in tens of thousands? No, you were not able to do it. You were not able to distribute even hundreds. Therefore you cry out: give us dozens of poods! (No one will ever give you anything if you cannot take it yourselves: remember that.)

Were you able to use those hundreds that were delivered to you, brought to you, put in your mouth? No, you were not able to do it. You were not able even on this trifle to connect the masses with social democracy. We receive monthly dozens and hundreds of leaflets, reports, correspondence, and letters from all corners of Russia, and we have not received a single one (think carefully over the precise meaning of these precise words: "not a single one"!) report of the distribution of these hundreds among the masses, of the impression on the masses, of the masses' responses, of conversations among the masses about these things! You leave us in such a position that the writer writes away, and the reader (an intellectual) reads away,—and then this same gape-mouthed reader hurls thunder and lightning against the writer for the reason that he (the writer!!!) does not give "dozens of poods" everywhere and in all places. A man whose whole task is to connect the writer with the masses sits like a ruffled turkey and shouts: give us mass literature, while being unable at the same time to use even a hundredth part of what exists.

You will say, of course, that *Iskra*, for example, this chief product of ours, simply cannot, absolutely cannot be connected with the masses. I know you will say this. I have heard it hundreds of times and have always answered that it is not true, that it is an evasion, a shirking, an inability and torpidity, a desire to have roasted woodcock put directly in one's mouth.

I know from facts that energetic people were able to "connect" *Iskra* (this arch-intellectual *Iskra*, in the opinion of wretched intellectuals) with the masses even of such backward, underdeveloped workers as the workers of the Moscow region industrial provinces.

I knew workers who themselves distributed *Iskra* among the masses (of that region) and said only that there was too little of it. I heard quite recently an account "from a soldier in the field of battle," of how in one of such factory backwaters of central

Russia *Iskra* is read simultaneously in many circles, at gatherings of 10-15 people, with the committee and subcommittees themselves reading each issue in advance and jointly determining how to use each article in agitation. And they managed to use even those pitiful 5-8 (maximum: eight!!) copies that alone came their way thanks to the ham-fisted inactivity of those sitting near the border "activists" (who never know how to even organize receptions for transporters and expect that the writer will give birth not only to articles but to people with hands!).

Tell me now, hand on heart: have many of you made such use of each copy of *Iskra* that you received (that was delivered to you, brought to you)? You are silent? Well, then I will tell you: one out of a hundred copies reaching Russia (by the will of fate and through the inactivity of "readers") is used thus, with discussion of each item for its agitational significance, with reading of each item in a circle of workers, in all circles of all workers who have the habit of gathering together in a given city. And here are people unable to process even a hundredth part of the material coming to them, shouting: give us dozens of poods!! The Shchedrin formula (the writer writes away) still looks far, far too optimistically at the "reader"!!

The contemporary reader (from intelligent social-democrats) has reached the point of complaining against writers because the intellectuals in the localities are torpid and "command" the workers, doing nothing for them. A just complaint, a thousand times just, but only... is it directed to the right address? Will you not allow us to return this complaint to the sender with a double fine assessed against him?? What are you looking at, most esteemed gentlemen complainers? If your friends do not know how to use *Iskra* for reading in workers' circles, do not know how to single out people for the delivery and transport of literature, do not know how to help the workers themselves form circles for this, then why do you not throw such ham-fisted friends out on their ears?? Just think what a pleasant position you find yourselves in when you complain to us about your own ham-fistedness!!

It is a fact that a hundredth part of what they could take is not being utilized by the "practitioners." And no less certain is the fact that the only evasion and shirking is the invention by these practitioners of special sorts of "mass" literature. In the letter of 7 c. 6 f., for example, three sorts of things are recommended "to us" (of course, already to us):

1) A popular newspaper. Chew up each fact so thoroughly that it goes down without further digestion. So that we, "activists," would not even have to have stomachs at all.

Never mind that the world has not even seen such a "popular" "newspaper" up to now, because a newspaper responds to everything, while popular literature *teaches* something limited. Never mind that all our examples of such literature, beginning with *Rabochaya Mysl'*, continuing with *Vpered*, *Rabochee Delo*, *Krasnoe Znamena*, etc., have inevitably and without fail turned out to be hybrids, neither popular nor newspapers. Never mind that all attempts at "workers'" newspapers have only nourished and will always nourish the absurd division of the intelligent and working-class movements (a division caused by the feeble-mindedness and ham-fistedness of intellectuals who reach the point of sending complaints from afar about their own ham-fistedness!). Never mind that all attempts at "workers'" newspapers have hitherto bred and will always breed among us handicraft production and particular, profound, Kazan and Kharkov theories. Never mind all this. After all, here is the enchanting "Svoboda" and the enchanting (the spirit swoons!) Socialist-Revolutionaries publishing—and oof, what a mass of them!—popular newspapers and newspaper-journals!! *Narodnoe Delo*, *Krasnoe Znamena*, *Svoboda*—a journal for workers, *Otkliki*—a newspaper and journal for workers, *Luchina*—for peasants, *Rabochaya Mysl'*—the Genevan newspaper of Petersburg workers!! Never mind that all this is shit, but it is massive shit.

And you have only one *Iskra*, how boring! 31 issues and all *Iskra*, whereas for the enchanting people for every two issues of one name (shit) there immediately appear three issues of another name (shit). That is energy, that is jolly, that is new! But our social-democrats...

2) And their pamphlets are all new and ever new. And each reprint counts as a pamphlet, and all this is shouted about charlatanically, sheets are counted (a million sheets: see No. 16 of *Revolutionnaya Rossiya*. A record broken! Champions!).

And we! Reprints do not count as pamphlets—that is intellectual affectation, literary affectation!!

Old, very old Dicksteins are reprinted,—whereas it is known to all the young ladies in Paris and Chernigov that ten new pamphlets (shit) mean a hundred times more than one old, even a good one.

This is something only the Germans do, that in 1903, for example, they reissue for the eleventh time Bebel's "Our Aims," written 34 years ago!! That is boring. Our "enchanting" Socialist-Revolutionaries just burst with them. But our local "activists" cannot use either the old (from 20 years ago: old stuff! to the archive!) Plekhanov pamphlets or "any" single (a single!) pamphlet on strikes and Witte's memorandum!

I am not even speaking of the fact that the local "activist" has not lifted a finger to squeeze good little pamphlets from the exiled writers,—to establish the collaboration of local literati in *Iskra*. What is the point? It is much easier to complain than to set up such a troublesome affair! And the contemporary reader, without blushing, calls himself an "Iskraist" on the grounds that he writes complaints to *Iskra*. And he is not in the slightest ashamed that in *Iskra* 99/100 of everything is written by the same 3½ people. And he does not even have to consider that *Iskra* cannot be stopped, that a biweekly publication of 1½-2 sheets does require effort. And yet, with a frivolity directly incomparable, he exclaims: 31 issues, and still there are plenty of fools in the localities and spineless whiners!!

An argument, truly, devastating... but whom and what does it devastate?

3) Leaflets.

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

## TO V. D. BONCH-BRUYEVICH. 21 FEBRUARY 1903

Yes, this is already consistent, in a way. I open my mouth wide,—and you scatter [seeds]: here is a new formula for the relations between the "writer" and the "Iskraist"-practitioner! To have gotten to the point of arguing that local leaflets are beyond the capacity of local organizations (consisting of gape-mouthed "activists"?), that these leaflets must be given from abroad,—this is already the limit of everything. This is such a magnificent (from my point of view) crowning of the whole edifice of the letter of 7 c. 6 f., that I can only conclude with this "crown." This gleaming crown will only tarnish from additions or commentary.

Written in February, later than the 12th, 1903

Sent from London to Kiev

First published in 1924 in the journal *Molodaya Gvardiya* No. 2-3

Printed from the manuscript