V. I.
Lenin

67

To:   Y. O. MARTOV

To Comrade Martov from the Editors of the Central Organ of the R.S.D.L.P.

Comrade, The editorial board of the Central Organ considers it its duty officially to
express its regret at your refusal to participate in Iskra and
Zarya (at present Zarya No. 5 is being prepared for the press). In
spite of the numerous invitations to co-operate which we made immediately after
the Second Party Congress, before Iskra No. 46, and which we repeated
several times after that, we have not received a single literary item from you.

What is more, even the publication of the second edition of your pamphlet
The Red Flag has been held up for many weeks owing to non-delivery of
the end of the manuscript.

The editorial board of the Central Organ states that it considers that your
refusal to co-operate has not been caused by any action on its part.

No element of personal irritation, of course, should be allowed to hinder work
in the Central Organ of the Party.

If, however, your withdrawal is due to any divergence between your views and
ours, we would consider a detailed exposition of such differences extremely
useful in the interests of the Party. Moreover, we would consider it highly
desirable that the nature and extent of these differences should be made clear
to the whole Party as soon as possible through the pages of the publications
edited by us.

Finally, for the sake of the cause, we once again bring to your notice that at
the present time we are ready to co-opt you as a member of the editorial board
of the Central

Organ. so as to give you every opportunity to officially state and defend all
your views in the highest Party institution.

Geneva, October 6, 1903 [1]

Lenin . Plekhanov