V. I. Lenin

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

Dear A. M., As for your coming—that is quite unnecessary. Why should I go and quarrel with Maximov, Lunacharsky and the rest? You yourself write: “You are at loggerheads among yourselves”—and you invite me to come and be at loggerheads in public. That’s not the thing. And as for repelling the workers, that is also unnecessary. If they accept our invitation and come to see us, we shall have a chat with them, and have a fight over the views of a certain newspaper*, which some factionaries call (I have long heard this from Lyadov and others) most boring, semi-literate, useless to anybody, and lacking in faith in the proletariat and socialism.

As for a new split, your argument is not quite consistent. On the one hand, both sides are nihilists (and “Slav anarchists”—oh, my dear fellow, the non-Slav Europeans in times like ours fought, quarrelled and split a hundred times worse!)—and on the other hand, the split will be no less deep than that between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. If the trouble lies in the “nihilism” of the “loggerheads”, in the semi-literacy, etc., of some who do not believe in what they write, and so forth—then the split is not deep, and it is not even a split. But if the split is deeper than that between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks—then the trouble is not nihilism and not writers who do not believe in their own writings. It is not consistent, upon my word! You are mistaken about the present split, and you are right** when you say: “I understand the people, but I do not understand their actions.”

What you and Maximov regard as insincerity, worthlessness, etc., in *Proletary* is to be explained by a quite different point of view on the whole of the present period (and on Marxism, of course). We have been marking time for nearly two years, chewing over those questions which Maximov still regards as “debatable”, but which life long ago decided. And if we had continued to “argue” about them, we should still be marking time to no purpose. By parting company, we shall show the workers clearly, directly and definitely two ways out. The worker Social-Democrats will make their choice easily and quickly, for the tactics of preserving (in a tin) the revolutionary words of 1905-06, instead of applying the revolutionary method to the new, different situation, to the changed epoch which demands different methods and different forms of organisation—these tactics are dead. The proletariat is going and will go to the revolution—but not as it did before 1905: to those who “believe” that it is going and will go, but do not understand this “not as it did before”—to them our position must seem insincere, worthless, boring, based on lack of faith in the proletariat and socialism, and so on and so forth. The divergence that follows from this is undoubtedly deep enough to make a split—at least an émigré split—inevitable. But it does not even remotely approach the depth of the split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, if we are speaking of the depth of the split in the Party, in Social-Democracy, among Marxists.

You wonder how it is that I do not see Mikhail’s hysterics, lack of discipline (you should not talk, nor Mikhail listen) and other evil qualities. Well, I had a chance to test him in a small matter: I thought that no conversation would result between you and me, and that there was no point in writing. Under the impression of my talk with Mikhail, I wrote at once, in the heat of the moment, without even re-reading the letter, without putting it off till the next day. Next day I thought: I was foolish, I believed Mikhail. But it turned out that, however much Mikhail may be carried away, he was right to that extent, for a conversation between you and me did result—not without some friction, of course, not without “annihilating” *Proletary*, but what can one do about that!

I firmly shake your hand.  
N. Lenin

1909  
Capri (Italy)

* This refers to the newspaper of the Bolshevik Centre—*Proletary*. *Ed.*

** A remark about “you are right”: I must qualify this. Without understanding the actions, one cannot understand the people except... externally. That is, one can understand the psychology of this or that participant in the struggle, but not the meaning of the struggle, not its Party and political significance.