Your little article "What Are We to Do?" is unsuitable for publication. You are creating a disagreement that does not exist. We have so many serious disagreements that we must be careful not to breed more of them. Who and where spoke specifically about dispersing by force the 12? It seems that no one did. We only admitted this as an inevitable result beyond our will. We called for going to meetings, penetrating even by force in order to preach our slogans.

I admit that there were sometimes awkward expressions, but to quibble over them would mean repeating the filthy tricks of the new "Iskra."¹³ You, of course, have no desire to quibble—this is beyond doubt. But you prove nothing whatsoever regarding the presence of "tactlessness." And to say "all tactics must be expressed in the word tact" and so on—well, you know, that's simply... "not quite the thing."

With comradely greetings,
N. Lenin

"'Vperyod' and 'Proletarii.' The First Bolshevik Newspapers of 1905."

Written in January 1905

Sent from Geneva to Russia

First published in 1924 in the book

Moscow, "Krasnaya Nov'" Publishing House

Printed from the manuscript