V. I.

Lenin

237

To:   THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF PRAVDA [5]

Dear Colleague, Received your parcel with files of Pravda and Nevskaya Zvezda . [1]

Will you please follow it up with the issues of the old Zvezda
which I am missing (you should have a list of these issues). If you do not
have the list of missing issues, let me know, and I shall send it at once.

I also received your detailed letter* concerning our co-operation. We
shall try to carry out as much as we can of this extremely broad
programme. But it must be underscored once again that it is absolutely
impossible to carry on without:

(1) money. The office already owes 200 rubles, of which 100 rubles
should have been sent by June 1, old style, and 100 rubles by June 15. The
debt must be paid without delay and the money sent punctually by the
stipulated dates, as agreed; (2) it is necessary to send new books , works of reference,
etc. Without new books it is impossible to carry out even
one-tenth of your co-operation programme. In my previous letter I gave you
a list of books and would ask you to let me know whether you can send them
all.

Further, you ask in your letter “what other newspapers we should
send”. The list was sent you with the previous letter and I can only
repeat my request that you inform me by telegram: “papers ordered”;
otherwise there will be an interruption in the sending of
articles.

We are making inquiries about Sinclair’s novel in Leipzig. But that is
a translation of the English. Or do you want to translate from the German
translation ?

At your service,

V. Ulyanov

P.S. As regards the agrarian question in particular, we
especially need current publications— government and
Zemstvo . Print a notice without fail in the next issue that the
paper would like to receive all publications of the kind,
promising to publish a list of them as well as reviews of
the most important ones.

Vl. Ulijanow. Zwierzyniec. L. 218. Oesterreich.

Krakau.

P.S. The newspaper Nevsky Golos [6] is also badly needed (we do not have No. 4 or
later issues ), as are all trade union publications. Otherwise the section you want about the struggle between
labour and capital cannot be started.

P.P.S. I cannot but draw your attention to some most unpleasant misprints
in the articles. I have just received (not from the editorial office or
from St. Petersburg at all) Nevskaya Zvezda No. 13. In the article
by a “Non-Liberal
Sceptic” [2] the word “ispolzovat” [3] became “ispovedovat” [4]

Yet the handwriting of the author of the article is by no means
difficult to make out. More, it cannot but be familiar to the compositors
and the proof-reader. Lastly, the proof-reader should have easily caught
the mistake from the meaning.

It is desirable to see to it that there should be fewer errors of
this kind .

Pravda No. 43 has just been received in five copies as promised. But I haven’t got Nos.  41 and 42. Please
send five copies of each.

---
Notes:
[1]
Your letter was postmarked June 18. But we have not yet
received Nevskaya Zvezda for June  17 !! Please see to it
that the papers are mailed regularly. — Lenin

[2]
See V. I. Lenin, “Capitalism and ‘Parliament’” (present
edition, Vol. 18, pp. 129–31).— Ed .

[3]
Use.— Ed .

[4]
Confess.— Ed .

[5]
Pravda (The Truth)—a legal Bolshevik daily; first issue
appeared in St. Petersburg on April 22 (May 5), 1912.

The decision to put out a daily mass-circulation workers’ paper was
taken at the Sixth (Prague) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.

Lenin gave ideological guidance to Pravda , wrote for it almost
daily, advised its editors. He wanted it to be a militant, revolutionary
organ.

The paper was constantly hounded by the police, and on July 8 (21),
1914, it was closed down.

Publication was resumed only after the February bourgeois-democratic
revolution in 1917. On March 5 (18), 1917, Pravda became the organ
of the Central and St. Petersburg Committees of the R.S.D.L.P.

[6]
Nevsky Golos (Nova Voice)—a legal Menshevik-liquidationist
weekly published in St. Petersburg from May 20 (June 2) to August 31
(September 13), 1912, by D. F. Kostrov in lieu of Zhivoye Dye to
(Vital Cause). All told nine issues came out.