V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v48; en:MT;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

TO A. M. GORKY

November 22, 1910

Dear A. M.,

I wrote to you a few days ago, sending you Rabochaya Gazeta, and asking what had come of the journal we discussed in the summer* and about which you promised to write to me**.

Today I read in Rech an announcement of Sovremennik, published “with the immediate and exclusive (that is how it is printed! ungrammatically, but all the more pretentiously and significantly) participation of Amfiteatrov” and with your regular collaboration.

What does this mean? How is it? A “big monthly” journal, with sections on “politics, science, history, social life”—this is quite, quite different from miscellanies aiming to concentrate the best forces of belles-lettres. Such a journal must either have a perfectly definite, serious, consistent trend, or it will inevitably disgrace itself and disgrace its contributors. Vestnik Yevropy has a trend—a poor, watery, talentless trend, but a trend serving a definite element, definite strata of the bourgeoisie, uniting also definite circles of the professorial, official and so-called intelligentsia among the “respectable” (or rather, those wishing to be respectable) liberals. Russkaya Mysl has a trend—a foul trend, but one that serves the counter-revolutionary liberal bourgeoisie very well. Russkoye Bogatstvo has a trend—a Narodnik, Narodnik-Cadet trend, but a trend that has held its line for decades, serving definite sections of the population. Sovremenny Mir, too, has a trend—often Menshevik-Cadet (now with a leaning towards party Menshevism), but a trend. A journal without a trend is an absurd, incongruous, scandalous and harmful thing. And what trend can there be with the “exclusive participation” of Amfiteatrov? Surely G. Lopatin is not capable of giving a trend, and if the rumours (which have also reached the newspapers) about Kachorovsky’s participation are true, then that is a “trend”, but a trend of the blockhead Socialist-Revolutionary variety.

When we talked in the summer and I told you that I had almost written you an angry letter about Ispoved but did not send it because of the split with the Machists that had then begun, you replied: “It’s a pity you didn’t send it.” Then you reproached me for not going to the Capri school, and said that the split with the Machist-Otzovists might, under different circumstances, have cost you less nervous strain and less waste of energy. Remembering these talks, I have decided to write to you now without delay and without waiting for any verification, under the fresh impression of the news.

I think that a fat political and economic journal with the exclusive participation of Amfiteatrov is something many times worse than a special faction of Machist-Otzovists. What was and is bad about that faction is that the ideological trend was and is moving away from Marxism, from Social-Democracy, without, however, going so far as to break with Marxism, but only creating confusion.

The Amfiteatrov journal (Krasnoye Znamya did well to die in time!) is a political move, a political undertaking, in which there is not even an awareness that a general “Leftism” is not enough for politics, that after 1905 it is impossible, inconceivable, unthinkable to talk seriously about politics without clarifying one’s attitude to Marxism and to Social-Democracy.

It is turning out badly. My mood is sad.

Yours, Lenin

To M. F. [Maria Feodorovna]—salut et fraternité!