V. I.

Lenin

234

To:   CAMILLE HUYSMANS

Dear Citizen Huysmans, I fully agree with you, and, like yourself, believe that the Bureau
cannot act as a go-between in polemics. I also believe that the best and
only way to prevent this is to circulate only those documents which you
receive from the highest bodies of the parties represented in the Bureau
and which concern these parties. I was bound to inform you of the decisions
of our Party conference which reconstituted the Central Committee, which
our Party did not have at the moment, and I would not of course have
protested against the passing on of information emanating from an other
Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, but I
considered it my duty to protest against the circulation of polemics
between groups abroad.

You also ask what I think of your draft appeal urging the convocation
of a joint conference. In my view this would not be advisable at the
moment, and since I do not pretend to be impartial, I take the liberty to
cite the opinion of the Poles (see Vorwärts ). The Poles refused
to take part in our conference, but they also refused to participate in the
conference the Bund wants to call, declaring that it would be a conference
of liquidators. It is better to wait; let us see whether the liquidators’
conference will take place and what it will do.

I shall send you shortly some rather interesting documents which will
give you a better idea of the state of affairs in the Russian S.D.L.P.

Yours,
N. Lenin

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