V. I.

Lenin

101

To:   L. B. KRASIN [2]

From Old Man to Horse, private

In connection with the documents sent you (the agreement with Nil and my
official letter to the C.C.
[1]

),

I should like to have a talk with you, but I do not know whether we shall succeed in meeting. Your
“friend” [3] was here recently and he spoke of your possible arrival, but Nil
contradicted this news. It will be a great pity if you do not come; your coming
would be absolutely essential in all respects, as there are misunderstandings
galore and they will increase more and more, hindering all work, unless we
succeed in meeting and having a detailed talk. Write to me without fail whether
you are coming and what you think of my pamphlet. In general, you are unpardonably inactive where letters are concerned.

In my opinion, Boris (and Konyaga , too, apparently) have got stuck in
an obviously obsolete point of view. They are still “living in
November”, when squabbling overrode everything else in our Party struggle,
when it was permissible to hope that everything would “come right of
itself” given a certain personal tractibility, etc. This point of view is
now antiquated and to persist in it means either being a parrot senselessly
repeating one and the same thing, or a political weathercock, or renouncing any
leading role whatsoever and becoming a deaf-and-dumb cabman or factotum. Events
have irrevocably shattered this old point of view. Even the Martovites refuse
to have anything to do with “co-optation”; the theoretical drivel that fills the new Iskra has already de facto pushed
all squabbling far into the background (so that now only the parrots can call
for a cessation of squabbling); by the force of events the issue has
boiled down —for heaven’s sake grasp this—it has boiled down to whether the Party is satisfied with the new Iskra . If we
don’t want to be pawns, we absolutely must understand the present
situation and work out a plan for a sustained and inexorable struggle on behalf
of the Party principle against the circle spirit, on behalf of revolutionary
principles of organisation against opportunism. It is time to get rid of old
bugbears which make out that every such struggle is a split, it is time to stop
hiding our heads under our wings, evading one’s Party duties by references
to the “positive work”... of cabmen and factotums; it is time to
abandon the opinion, at which even children will soon be laughing, that agitation for a congress is Lenin’s intrigue.

I repeat: the G.G. members are in very serious danger of becoming extremely
backward eccentrics. Anyone who possesses a particle of political honour and
political honesty must stop shifting and shuffling ( even Plekhanov has
not succeeded in that, leave alone our good Boris!), and must adopt a definite
position and stand by his convictions.

All the very best. Awaiting your reply, Yours, Lenin