To the Monk from Lenin, personal

Dear Comrade! I was very glad to learn that it is now possible to establish more regular contact with you. It would be good if you took advantage of this and wrote me a few lines yourself about your mood and immediate plans. Until now, all reports about you have come through intermediaries, which always makes mutual understanding somewhat more difficult.

Our Party affairs have been disgraceful all year, as you have probably heard.

The minority definitively wrecked the Second Congress, created a new *Iskra* (have you seen it? what is your attitude towards it?) and now, when the vast majority of the committees that have expressed themselves have resolutely risen against this new *Iskra*, the minority has also wrecked the Third Congress. It became too obvious to the minority that the Party would not reconcile itself to their organ of gossip and squabbling in the struggle, a return to Economism in principles, the notorious theory of organization-as-process.

Now the situation has become clear. The committees of the majority have united (the four Caucasian ones, Odessa, Yekaterinoslav, Nikolayev, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Riga, Tver, the Northern and Nizhny Novgorod). With new literary forces I have begun to publish here a newspaper, *Vperyod* (the announcement has come out, No. 1 will appear at the beginning of January, New Style). Let me know what your attitude is and whether we can count on your support, which would be extremely important for us.

TO THE CAUCASIAN BUREAU OF THE R.S.D.L.P. DECEMBER 1904

Written between December 23, 1904 and January 4, 1905

Sent from Geneva to Syzran

First published in 1930 in Lenin Miscellany XV

Printed from the manuscript