Letter to the Editor
The undersigned, already as a permanent political contributor to "Pravda" and "Nevskaya Zvezda," deems it his duty to express his protest against the behavior of the colleagues leading these newspapers during a critical time.

The elections in St. Petersburg for the workers' curia and the 2nd city curia are a critical moment, a moment of realizing the five-year results of work, a moment of determining in many respects the direction of future five-year work.

The guiding organ of the working democracy at such a moment should conduct a clear, firm, and precisely defined policy. However, "Pravda," which in many ways is a guiding organ, does not conduct such a policy.

"Luch" and "Metallist" [117] are desperately shouting about "unity," using this "popular" banner to carry out the worst policy of the liquidators, namely: the non-subordination of a negligible minority to the vast majority of worker Marxists in St. Petersburg, and imposing on hundreds of worker groups a candidate from some three, five, or ten groups of the intelligentsia and a handful of workers.

In the few days remaining before the election of electors from the workers, and in the few weeks remaining before the elections in St. Petersburg for the 2nd curia, "Pravda" must undoubtedly lead an unrelenting struggle against this deception of the working masses, covered by respectable and popular phrases. It is absolutely necessary to explain, prove, and make clear to everyone, first, that liquidationism is a non-Marxist, liberal current; second, that unity requires the subordination of the minority to the majority, and the liquidators, based on eight months of experience, are a negligible minority; third, that those who want to support the working democracy must know where the working masses are and where the petty-bourgeois, playing at Marxism, intelligentsia is; fourth, that the conference, which the liquidators and "Luch" are carrying on about, has been rejected and exposed even by the neutral Plekhanov (he said directly that "non-party and anti-party elements" participated in their conference) and even by the hostile-to-anti-liquidators Alexinsky.

Etc., etc.

If "Pravda" does not explain all this in time, then it will be responsible for confusion and schism, because, having the vast majority of workers behind it and explaining the matter in time, "Pravda" would have certainly ensured unity, for the liquidators are masters at boasting and threatening, but in practice, they would never dare to go against "Pravda."

"Pravda" itself acknowledged that there are two, formalized, lines, platforms, and collective wills (the August one of the liquidators and the January one). Yet "Pravda" gives the impression that it is pursuing some kind of "its own," third, line, invented yesterday by someone and amounting (as we are told from Petersburg indirectly, since the editorial board of "Pravda" persistently refuses to answer us) either to giving in to the liquidators on one of the three candidates or to handing over the entire second curia to them "in exchange for the working one." If these rumors are untrue, then "Pravda" is entirely to blame for them, for it is unacceptable to sow such uncertainty among Marxists that known friends—Marxists—believe these rumors and pass them on.

In a heated time, "Nevskaya Zvezda" is closed without a single letter or explanation, the collegial exchange of opinions is completely interrupted, and political contributors remain in the dark, not knowing whom they are helping to promote, whether it is not a liquidator. I am compelled to protest against this fervently and to relieve myself of responsibility for this abnormal situation, fraught with long subsequent conflicts.

I request that this letter be communicated to the "owner" of "Pravda" and "Nevskaya Zvezda," to the entire editorial board of both newspapers, and to all contributors from among the consistent working democrats.

With greetings, V. Ilyin

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Written in the first half of October 1912

Sent from Krakow to St. Petersburg

First published in 1956 in the journal "Kommunist" No. 5

Printed from the manuscript