Date: 1905
Source: ru:LS/v16

# Source: Lenin Collection XVI, p. 134
# Date: 1905

LENIN COLLECTION
certain party committees. The Caucasian Union, in its official organ,
calmly and thoroughly [refuted]—and in doing so, brilliantly [demonstrated]—the arguments advanced by the Mensheviks, conclusively proving the complete legitimacy of the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., even under the condition that five of the mandates contested by the Mensheviks had been declared invalid.
Lenin’s note, “Information to the International Social Democrats Regarding Our Party Affairs,” was printed without a signature in No. 45 of Proletary, dated September 5 (August 23), 1905. The article was not included in Volume VIII of the Collected Works, since the manuscript—by means of which it was possible to establish Lenin’s authorship—was only transferred to the Lenin Institute after the publication of Volume VIII had been completed.
2GG8G
INFORMATION TO THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL DEMOCRATS REGARDING OUR PARTY AFFAIRS.
[September, before the 5th, 1905. Geneva.]
Keeping the international social democratic movement informed about our party affairs is one of the most serious duties incumbent upon all social democrats living abroad. We remind them of this obligation and call upon them to engage in the most vigorous agitation in defense of the positions adopted at the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. Agitation must be carried forward tirelessly, on every occasion, whenever the opportunity arises, among all resolute circles of foreign workers as well as among individual members of the social democratic parties abroad. The agitation must be conducted in ways worthy of conscious social democrats and of members of the workers’ party. At the heart of this agitation must lie a thorough, document-based understanding of the matter. Foremost among these tasks is the dissemination of the resolutions we have published—in French (as an appendix to the newspaper Le Socialiste, dated June 25, 1905; the address of Le Socialiste, the central organ of the French socialists, is Bue de la Cordcric 16, Paris)—and in German (in the pamphlet Bericht über den 3. Parteitag; the publisher’s address is Birk et Co., Buchdruckerei und Verlagsanstalt in München, Viltelsbacherplatz 2).
* At the top of the manuscript, Lenin wrote: “To the Section on Party Affairs. P. 4–o.”
Peö.

LETTER FROM MOTYA AND KOSTYA
(Price: 20 pfennigs) The resolutions of the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., along with French and German translations of those resolutions, can also be obtained from our party’s expeditionary office.
In addition to this already available material, it is essential to translate the most important documents and articles from our own literature.
In doing so, we must expose the insidious, obfuscatory tricks of the Khlestakovian new Iskra. The Iskra will publish neither in German nor in French the full text of the resolutions of its own conference—resolutions that reveal it to be nothing more than a self‑proclaimed, usurping body masquerading as the Central Committee—but instead, the Iskra merely places in European social democratic printings “statistics” concerning organized workers that are laughable in their absurdity (it suffices to say that, in Russian, the new Iskra has still not dared to publish these “statistics,” for fear of being exposed—and yet we have reprinted this entire set of statistics in Proletary).¹
The Iskra is now circulating, throughout all foreign colonies, a letter signed by the editorial board, containing the same ludicrous Khlestakovian assurances about the strength of the minority—assurances that have hitherto been shamefully concealed from the Russian readers of our social democratic newspapers. We must combat the propagandists with all our might, but we must fight in a dignified manner, striving to ensure that the public is fully informed and that the truth of the matter is made clear—without any boastful rhetoric or literary [braggadocio] and without ever descending to baseless gossip or insinuation, for fear of exposing themselves to the light of open scrutiny.
1 See above, pp. 128–120.
Below is printed Lenin’s reply to the “Letter to Comrades,” which had been submitted to the editorial office of Proletary and signed “Members of the ‘Majority’ of the Odessa Organization, Motya and Kostya.”
It has not been possible to determine who bore these nicknames. The letter from Motya and Kostya was written shortly after receipt in Odessa of No. 46 of Proletary, dated September 4 (4), 1905.
The letter was penned by Lenin in ink on a large-format sheet of postal paper. The manuscript bears editorial corrections and amendments by P. Krupskaya, noted in the footnotes.
The letter from Motya and Kostya is printed in excerpts in the appendix. At the top of the manuscript of this letter, Lenin wrote:
Will not be published. Answered by letter from the [editor].