and the results of our friends' work. Up to now all the Petersburg people (shame on them) have not given us a single new Russian connection (neither Serafim, nor Sysoyka, nor Zemlyachka, nor Nik. Iv.). This is a scandal, this is a disaster, this is a collapse! Learn from the Mensheviks, for Christ's sake. In No. 85 of *Iskra* there is a mass of correspondence. After all, you read *Vpered* to the young people—so why didn't you connect us with anyone from this youth?? Remember that if you should fail, we are left high and dry, so long as you have not acquired for us a dozen new, young, loyal friends of *Vpered*, who know how to work, who know how to maintain relations, who will be able to correspond without you. Remember this!! A professional revolutionary must create in each place dozens of new connections, put all the work in the hands of these people while he is present, teach them and bring them along not through lectures, but through work. Then go to another place and return after a month or two to check on the young replacements. I assure you that among us there is some sort of idiotic, philistine, Oblomovian fear of youth. I beseech you: fight this fear with all your might.

Your Lenin in the journal

Sent from Geneva to Petersburg

First published in 1925

*Proletarskaya Revolutsiya* No. 4

Printed from the manuscript