V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v47; en:CW/CW34;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

29. I. 08.

Dear Comrade,

In Finland I received your letter, about 2½-3 months ago, reminding me of the debt, and handed it over to the C.C.130 Now the “devastation of Finland” has compelled me to leave for Geneva, and the move has taken up a lot of time and trouble. Today a comrade here informs me that you are insistently reminding me of the debt and that the Englishman even threatens publication in the newspapers (!) and the like.

I am immediately writing again and again to Russia that the debt must be paid. But, you know, it is extremely difficult to do this now! The devastation of Finland, the arrest of many comrades, the seizure of papers, the necessity of moving printing-presses, of sending many comrades abroad—all this has involved a mass of quite unexpected expenditure. The Party’s financial position is all the more deplorable because during the past two years everybody has grown unaccustomed to underground work and has been “spoilt” by legal or semi-legal activity. The secret organisations have to be built up almost anew. This costs a tremendous amount of money. And all the intellectual, petty-bourgeois elements are abandoning the Party: the exodus of the intellectuals is enormous. Only the pure proletarians remain, without the possibility of open collections.

It would be advisable to explain this to the Englishman, to make him understand that the conditions of the period of the Second Duma, when the loan was arranged, were quite different, that the Party will, of course, pay its debts, but that it is impossible, unthinkable, to demand payment now, that it would be usury, and so on.

The Englishman must be convinced. He is hardly likely to get his money. A scandal would lead nowhere.

As far as I remember, the members of the factions signed separately and are responsible separately?131

I shake your hand.

Yours, N. Lenin

P.S. I wrote to Quelch, not knowing your address, asking him to collect some literature for me. I am extremely grateful to him: I am afraid my terrible English is not always intelligible to him!

My address: Vl. Oulianoff. 17. Rue des deux Ponts. Genève.