Lenin: 250. TO N. G. POLETAYEV












V. I.

Lenin



250



To:   N. G. POLETAYEV


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Written: Written October 25, 1912

Published:

First published in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXV.

Sent from Cracow to St. Petersburg.

Printed from a typewritten copy found in police records.


Source:

Lenin
Collected Works,

Progress Publishers,

[1977],

Moscow,

Volume 43,

pages 303b-304a.


Translated: Martin Parker and Bernard Isaacs


Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala


Public Domain:



(2005).

You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.


• README




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Dear Colleague,

I was very happy to receive one of your rare letters. Many, many thanks
for the subscriptions to the journals. I can send you the book by Litvinov
whenever you want it. I do not recall a book by Chistyakov. What is it
about, what sort of a book is
it?[1] Your hopes that I am sufficiently well informed are, alas,
entirely unfounded. In fact, to me it sounds almost like mockery.... Of
course I quite under stand your reference to the “hurry-scurry”, but a
political hurry-scurry, you know, seldom takes the form of silence or
reserve. As a contributor to Pravda on political questions I too
experience the “hurry-scurry” and that is why I cannot



remain silent even when the circumstances are not at all conducive to
conversation (owing to the silence of the interlocutor). In my view it
would be extremely important before the elections on
October 17[2] to set forth still more clearly and resolutely the basic
principles of the anti-liquidationist platform, to print our own list once
more in full, to warn against vacillation à la
Sudakov[3] (strange, very strange that you say nothing on this
score). I am sending article after article about this. Knock and it shall
be opened unto you.... Is this applicable to your newspaper? It would be
advisable to put out an extra sheet on these questions on Wednesday. It
would cost some 100–200 rubles—but even that sum would be repaid tenfold
by the success of the election campaign, for what we need are re liable and
lasting friends, do not forget that. Don’t stint 100–200 rubles at the
decisive moment, you will economise far more in the long run.... As regards
the technicalities, it is important to give some attention to curbing the
chair man of the congress of representatives. I would advise consulting
lawyers by telephone and writing an article about the rights of members of
the congress of representatives vis-à-vis the chairman. I do not have the
law at the moment (Legal Code, Vol. II, 1892 edition, articles 179–91,
general gubernia institutions), in any case the lawyers ought to know and
will give clear practical advice on how to file complaints against the
chairman and secure one’s rights. Don’t grudge the expense of wiring me the
election results.

N. L.




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Notes





[1]

A reference to V. P. Litvinov-Falinsky’s book New Workers’
Insurance Laws, St. Petersburg, 1912, and I. Chistyakov’s Workers’
Insurance in Russia. From the History of Workers’ Insurance in Connection
with Some Other Welfare Measures, Moscow, 1912.

[2]

On October 17 (30), 1912, the second congress of delegates from the
worker curia of St. Petersburg was held to choose the electors from among
whom the worker deputy to the Fourth Duma was to be elected.

[3]

P. I. Sudakov, a worker, was elected at the first congress of
delegates of the workers of St. Petersburg Gubernia held on October 5 (18),
1912, thanks to the vote of Pravda supporters. On October 6 (19)
he wrote an item entitled “At the Meeting of Delegates” (Pravda
No. 136) in which he declared himself a supporter of Pravda and
Zvezda. On the following day, October 7 (20), Luch No. 19
carried a letter to the Editor from Sudakov in which he went back on the
statement he had made in Pravda. For more about the Sudakov
incident see Lenin’s “On Political Spinelessness (Letter to the Editor)”,
Collected Works, Vol. 41, pp. 266–67.




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