DRAFT LETTER FROM THE BOLSHEVIK CENTRAL COMMITTEE TO THE COUNCIL
SCHOOLS ON CAPRI
[Between August 18 and August 30, 1909 *; Bonbon, Seine-et-Loire Department.]
The Executive Committee of the B.C. [was] profoundly gratified by the report from the “Council of the Party School on Capri” dated August 16, 1909, which stated that the Council had no objection to “ideological oversight” by the B.C.
However, in order to determine whether the B.C. [could] undertake this oversight and effectively carry it out—whether it could provide literary and financial support to the school, as the Council had requested—it was essential to gain a thorough understanding of the school’s affairs. Yet the B.C. possessed no detailed knowledge about the school whatsoever.
While the School Council had been able to discuss (as it stated) the relationship between the Party School and the B.C., drawing upon the B.C.’s published resolutions and the journal Pravda, and while it knew the composition of the B.C. from its former members—by contrast, the B.C. was utterly unable to address the question of its own relationship to the School Council’s request, for the B.C. did not know: (1) what the School Council actually was; (2) what the School’s Executive Committee consisted of; (3) what the School’s program was—though the School’s Executive Committee had promised to send it, but never did; (4) what the current roster of lecturers at the School looked like, and (5) who the students enrolled in the School were; (6) what resources the School currently possessed; (7) what the anticipated…

THE STRUGGLE ON TWO FRONTES

duration of the courses; (8) how closely the School’s students were tied to its particular location—that is, to the island of Capri; (9) whether the School’s students might be able to come to Paris (as three members of the B.C. had personally written to them), for how long, and so forth.
Lacking such information, the B.C. could at this stage only say one thing: it stood ready to offer every possible form of literary and lecturing assistance to all members of the Social-Democratic organizations active in Russia, as well as to all comrades delegated by those organizations to the B.C., in their efforts to assimilate the Social-Democratic worldview—without, of course, refusing financial aid within the limits of what was feasible, provided that this matter were discussed in conjunction with the local organizations’ own needs.
The B.C. hereby formally transmitted to the School Council:
1) a complete set of Pravda Nos. 39–46; 2) the B.C.’s printed letter concerning the School; 4; 3) the B.C.’s resolutions. 5
With socialist‑democratic greetings, the Executive Committee of the expanded editorial board of Pravda.
1 From the very outset of the organization of the Capri Fractional School, the Bolshevik Center (the expanded editorial board of Pravda) had given this undertaking due consideration—and had appraised it appropriately, as evidenced by the resolution of the expanded editorial board of Pravda regarding the Party School on Capri (see Collected Works, Vol. XIV, p. 102)—and had waged a vigorous campaign to secure the transfer of the School either to the Central Committee or to the Bolshevik Center itself. The School officially opened on August 3–4, 1909, and classes began on August 5. At the meeting held on August 16, the School Council resolved “to extend an invitation to the expanded editorial board of Pravda to participate in the School’s work, to lend its literary resources and financial support,” while also declaring that it had “no objection whatsoever to ideological oversight by the expanded editorial board of Pravda, should the latter deem it necessary to exercise such oversight.” The School Council’s Executive Committee (or Committee) brought this resolution to the attention of the B.C.
The present draft letter, penned by Lenin, constituted a response to this official appeal from the Capri School Council. However, Lenin’s reply was never sent; instead, another draft letter, authored by Zinoviev, was adopted and dispatched—a fact that Lenin mentioned in his second letter to Lyubimov, written in early September (see below, p. 42). Zinoviev’s response was subsequently published in the appendix to Nos. 47–48 of Pravda, dated September 24, 1909.
* The date has been established on the following grounds: judging from the letter’s content, it was written later than Lenin’s letter to the organizers of the Capri Party School, dated August 18 (Collected Works, Vol. XIV, p. 116), yet earlier than his letter to the School’s students, dated August 30, 1909 (ibid., p. 118).
* The three members of the Bolshevik Center who addressed the School Council’s Executive Committee on their own behalf were: Lenin, Zinoviev, and Dubrovinsky. Lenin himself had written to the School’s organizers on August 18.

4 It appears that this refers to a letter-resolution issued by the Bolshevik Center and sent to the Moscow Committee during the preparatory phase of the School. In this letter, the B.C. pointed out the anti‑party character of the planned School and declared that it refused to assume responsibility for its orientation.
5 For the notification and resolutions of the expanded editorial board of Pravda, see Collected Works, Vol. XIV, p. 89.