Date: 1912-10-08
Source: ru:PSS/v48

Source: PSS, Volume 48

Please take the time to jot down a couple of lines (in response to my 200-page treatise) regarding your perspective on this matter.

Next, I would like to discuss the two workers’ newspapers in Petrograd. “Luch” is unprincipled and base; it is not a newspaper at all, but rather a mere “flyer designed to discredit” Social-Democratic candidates. Yet they know how to fight—they are alive and vigorous. In contrast, “Pravda” now behaves, during election season, like a drowsy old maid.

“Pravda” does not know how to wage battle. It neither attacks nor pursues either the Cadets or the Liquidators.

But can an organ of advanced democracy truly remain noncombatant in times of intense struggle?

Let us assume the best: let us suppose that “Pravda” is confident of the victory of the anti-Liquidationist forces. Even so, it is imperative to fight—so that the country knows what is at stake, who is sabotaging the elections, and in the name of what ideas the struggle is being waged. “Luch” fights with frenzied zeal, with hysterical fervor, and with the most shameless abnegation of its own principles. “Pravda,” by contrast, in direct opposition to “Luch,” adopts a solemn, affected demeanor—and does not fight at all! Does this even resemble Marxism? Did Marx not know how to combine the fiercest, most passionate, selfless, and merciless combat—with complete adherence to principle?

To refrain from fighting during election time means to betray the cause. Look at what has come of “Luch’s” “Cadet-eating” campaign! And in “Pravda,” they were afraid—were we perhaps eating too many Cadets?!

Best regards,

Yours, V. Ilyin

1912

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Written after October 3

Sent from Kraków to Petrograd

First published in 1956

in the journal Kommunist, No. 5

Printed from the manuscript