V. I. LENIN — A. I. RYKOV.
[First half of March 1911. Paris.]1

Dear Vlasov! You are proposing something strange! We cannot send such a telegram, we cannot take on this risk. You send it from Leipzig, if you want to take the risk, which we do not advise.

Is it possible that the matter is being held up because of money? Could they not have borrowed for a ticket to Berlin??

Clearly, the delay is not about money.

The Bundist — a scoundrel and liquidator (Liber) is babbling here that he knows about some kind of delay and some kind of trip to the Caucasus (!!?).2

Another piece of news: both Kostrov and Petr are free. Both call themselves Plekhanovites.

But we know for certain from the plenum that both are liquidators.

You made a tremendous mistake by not taking credentials from the samovars, and now you are making it worse by not sending anyone to the samovars. What is the result, do you see! Time is passing (the Pravda people are already selecting delegates in Moscow for the conference — a split is in the air).3 You are losing patience. It's nothing but a farce.

It is clear that what needed to be done was what we demanded: i m m e d i a t e l y send a person to the samovars. Do this at once, otherwise we get an absurdity.

We cannot, after everything that has been, and after your accounts, trust the samovars and w a i t, wait months and months. These delays will force us to — break with everything, declare to the Germans that there is no Central Committee and demand money immediately.

There is nothing else left to do, and your passivity ("perhaps the samovar will move") is to blame for it all.

SHAKING YOUR HAND

Lenin.

1 Justification of the date: from the content of the letter it is clear that it was sent following the letter of March 10, 1911.

2 From Tyshka's letter to Lenin and Zinoviev of March 20, 1911, it is evident that Nogin's proposal to move the Central Committee session of the "Russian composition" abroad (made by him at the end of February or beginning of March 1911 under the influence of the insistent demands of the foreign center of the Bolsheviks) met with protest from Lindov and Yudin; Yudin shortly afterward departed for the Caucasus after the Menshevik Adrianov in order, upon arrival, to immediately arrange a Central Committee session in Russia. The session did not take place because Nogin, having noticed surveillance, went into hiding from Tula for some time.

3 The reference is to the campaign for the convening of an allegedly "all-party" conference, begun on the pages of "Viennese Pravda" (see No. 18-19, the article "For an All-Party Conference"); the campaign subsequently led to the convening of an anti-party conference of liquidators in Vienna in August 1912.