V. I.

Lenin

TO *** [1]

I hasten to remind you about one thing which it is essential to translate and publish as soon as possible, and
which I forgot to mention in my talk with you (although
I have had this thing in mind for a very long time!). It
is Friedrich Engels’s Die Reichsverfassungskampagne , from
the collection of the works of Marx and Engels published
by Mehring (Marx, Nachlass , etc., Vol. III). This is quite
a separate thing, which really must appear as a pamphlet.
It is now of particularly great interest. [2]

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Notes:
[1]
The addressee has not been ascertained.

[2]
Lenin examines in detail Engels’s Die deutsche Reichsverfassungskampagne (The German Campaign for an Imperial Constitution)
in his report at the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. on May
1, 1905, dealing with the participation of Social-Democrats in
the provisional revolutionary government (see present edition,
Vol. 8, pp. 393–95). This work of Engels is an essay on the history
of the Baden-Pfalz uprising of 1849, in which he personally took
part as an A.D.C. of Willich.

In the spring and summer of 1905, some legal publishing houses
set up in Russia undertook the publication of the works of Marx
and Engels in Russian translations. Lenin edited Marx’s The Civil War in France and other works for Burevestnik
Publishers in Odessa. Engels’s pamphlet was not published in Russian
before the October Revolution.