V. I.

Lenin

182

To:   A. I. LYUBIMOV

Dear Mark, I entirely agree, of course, to your making free use of my letter for a report
or for publication.
[1]

Bear in mind, though, that I am writing an article
[2]

for
Proletary in which I bluntly describe the gang of scoundrels, Maximov
and Co., as canaille , and call their school nothing but a “Yerogin’s
hostel”.
[3]

And so, to avoid misunderstanding I agree to speak “mildly” only to workers who address me personally
over their own signatures.

Maximov and Co., however, are a band of adventurers who have enticed some
workers into their Yerogin hostel. To avoid contradictions, do not circulate my letter among our people, but send it exclusively to
organisations with this reservation (the reservation had better be
published too):

“ The appropriate reply to the company of offended writers, unrecognised
philosophers and ridiculed god-builders [4] who have hidden away
their so-called “ school ” from the Party, will be given in
Proletary . The present letter, however, is Lenin’s personal
reply to those workers who have addressed him personally.”

I should advise everyone either not to go to Bogdanov’s
lecture—or to answer him in such a way as once and for all to kill the
desire to butt in. It is base cowardice to go gate-crashing on a faction from which he has already been ejected. There is
nothing more harmful now than sentimentalising. A complete break and
war, more determined than that against the Mensheviks . This war will
quickly teach the fools who have still “not made things out”.

All the best.

N. Lenin

P.S. And Plekhanov’s “Dnevnik”! [5]
Don’t forget I am waiting.

---
Notes:
[1]
The reference is to a letter to students at the Capri Party School
see present edition, Vol. 15, pp. 472–78).— Ed .

[2]
If I manage to finish it, I shall send it to you tomorrow express—perhaps it will be in time for the report.
— Lenin

[3]
See “The Faction of Supporters of Otzovism and God-Building”
(present edition, Vol. 16).— Ed .

[4]
God-builders —adherents of a religious-philosophical trend,
hostile to Marxism, which in the period of reaction (1907–10) arose among
a section of the Party intellectuals who had moved away from Marxism after
the defeat of the revolution of 1905–07. The god-builders advocated the
creation of a new “socialist” religion and tried to reconcile Marxism
with religion. An extended meeting of the editorial board of
Proletary held on June 8–17 (21–30), 1909 condemned god-building
and declared in a special resolution that the Bolshevik section of the
Party had nothing in common with “such a distortion of scientific
socialism”. (See the C.P.S.U. in the Resolutions and Decisions of Its Congresses, Conferences and Plenums of the Central Committee , Part 1,
1954, p. 222.)

The reactionary nature of god-building was exposed by Lenin in his book
Materialism and Empirio-criticism ^^(see Vol. 14 of this
edition)^^.

[5]
Dnevnik Sotsial-Demokrata (Diary of a Social-Democrat)—a
non-periodical organ published by Plekhanov in Geneva from 1905 to
1912. The last issue appeared in Petrograd in 1916.