V. I.

Lenin

2

To:   MAXIM GORKY

Dear A. M., I am very glad you have agreed to try and write a May
Day leaflet.

I enclose the Conference resolutions.

I have seen Zhivoye Dyelo . [1] A rotten little liquidationist
rag with an “approach”. Liberal propaganda. They are glad that the police prevent the question of the Party being
openly discussed.

Zvezda will continue, either as a weekly or as a kopek daily . [2] You helped Zvezda very, very much with your
splendid Tales , and that made me extremely joyful, so that
the joy—if I am to talk straight—outweighed my sadness at your “affair” with the Chernovs and
Amfiteatrovs [3] ....
Brr! I am glad, I must confess, that they are “going up
the spout”.

But as for your having nothing to live on and not being
able to get printed anywhere, that’s bad. You ought to have got rid of that leech Pyatnitsky long ago and
appointed an honest agent, an agent pure and simple, to deal with
Znaniye [4] (perhaps it’s already too late, I don’t know)!!!
If only.... It would have been a gold mine....

I see Rozhkov’s Irkutskoye Slovo [5] very rarely. The man’s
become a liquidator. And Chuzhak is an old ass, hardened
and pretentious.

Yours, Lenin

Thank
M. F. [6] for her letter to Moscow, and a thousand
greetings!