V. I.

Lenin

Your letter is the first, I believe, to offer a “report” on
Basle! [2] It’s rather late.... Evidently something was
lacking (or in excess?) at Basle.... I believe that what
the delegates lacked was organisation. And that is extremely sad. Kamenev, of course, was run off his feet, but
what about the other five? Was it really not clear that
it was necessary to write to Pravda daily ? Was it really so
difficult to assign the various duties? We’ve not had a
single letter in Pravda from the spot, while the liquidators
had several in Luch .

Isn’t it a shame? Of course, so long as we sleep and the
liquidators work, they will make more headway. Is anything being done to collect money for Pravda ? It doesn’t
look like it, while the liquidators have reports in Luch
of collections abroad. Yet Pravda is very, very, very much
in need .

Not a single one of the delegates (except Kamenev) has written here about Basle. It was essential to get organised
and write twice a day. But all kept silent. Evidently there
is some dissatisfaction. What with? God only knows! I am
tremendously satisfied with the results of Basle, because
the liquidator idiots let themselves be caught out on the
question of the initiating group! [3] You couldn’t have
pinned down the riffraff better. But I’m worried by the
inactivity of our delegates, and a sort of “in-the-pouts”
behaviour on their part, for no apparent reason. Did they
talk with the German delegates? (After all, 4 or 5 did know
German!) Who? With whom? How? What about? There’s not a word, except from Kamenev. Agitation among the
Germans is very important.

You write that “with us things are not too good in the press and in the Duma group”. They are not too good with
Prosveshcheniye . [4] There is no money. It’s a serious crisis.
It should be given help to enable it to pull through.

Pravda’s circulation is about 23,000. Luch has 8,000– 9,000. It would be sinful to complain thus far. But in
April and May Pravda had 60,000, and in the summer dropped to 20,000. It’s rising very slowly. Without help it won’t pull through. In the Duma group things are better
than ever before. All the six seats in the workers’ curia
are ours . [5] That’s something we’ve never had. For the first
time, we have taken the South. Six and six out of 12.
Mankov is a Menshevik. Rusanov is a question mark. We can
fight. Here are precise data on our progress. Deputies in
the workers’ curia:

II Duma— 12 Mensheviks, 11 Bolsheviks (=47%)

III Duma— 4 ” 4 ” (=50%)

IV Duma— 3 ” 6 ” (=67%)

(“Minutes of
London Congress”,
p. 451). [6]

If you have anyone anywhere who is losing heart, let him think over these figures and be ashamed of his
faint-heartedness. For the first time we have among our people
in the Duma an outstanding workers’ leader (Malinovsky).
He will read the declaration. There’s no comparing him with Alexinsky. And the results—maybe not at once—
will be great . In the III Duma we started out with 0!

In the sphere of illegal work, thanks to the Bureau’s moving here, more has been done than before. We are
moving ahead, even if slowly. We are publishing illegally
more than others. But we have no money. If we get help,
we shall also publish Rabochaya Gazeta , etc.

Illegal work can be helped from abroad only by visits.
Then help is very important in the form of new connections
(1) letters; (2) chance visits; (3) passports ; (4) etc., etc.
What is being done in this respect is not enough. Only one
per cent is being done in the localities abroad of what could
be done. The most important thing right now is to help
Pravda to pull through . And it is getting poor help. One
man in Vienna (Bukharin) is making an effort. But nothing
is being done in the other cities! No one writes regular
reports. No one makes collections . No one collects interesting local books and pamphlets for dispatch
here ... [1] material for interesting articles. Comrades, we must give more
thought to these things! For example, who among the
Social-Democrats at Neuenburg in Switzerland ... has done
anything? What has been done about it?

All the best....

P.S. Please send this letter to Yuri, for him to pass on
to Antonov in Paris, and from there on to Vienna. To this
day, we have not yet found out whether Plekhanov had spoken at the October meeting of the Bureau on unity
with the S.R.s (cf. Martov in No. 37 of
Luch . [7] ) Didn’t anyone make inquiries about this with Rubanovich, or
Nêmec, or Huysmans, or anyone else?

---
Notes:
[1]
An illegible word in the copy at this point looks like “as”.— Ed .

[2]
The report of the R.S.D.L.P. C.C. delegation on the Basle Congress
of the Second International. The report appeared in No. 30 of the
newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat on January 12 (25), 1913.

[3]
The withdrawal of six representatives of the C.C. from the R.S.D.L.P.
subsection at the Basle Congress in protest against the
endorsement of the credentials of the representative of the St. Petersburg
Initiating Group, an organisation which was hostile to the Party
and fought it.

[4]
Prosveshcheniye (Enlightenment)—a legal theoretical monthly
of the Bolsheviks, published in St. Petersburg from December
1911 to June 1914. The magazine was organised on Lenin’s
initiative in place of Mysl (Thought), a Bolshevik journal closed down
by the tsarist government. It had a circulation of up to 5,000.
Lenin directed Prosveshcheniye first from Cracow and then from
Poronin.

On the eve of the First World War, the magazine was closed
down by the tsarist government. In the autumn of 1917, its
publication was resumed, but only one (double) issue appeared.

[5]
The six Bolshevik deputies in the Social-Democratic group in
the Fourth Duma.

[6]
See Pyaty (Londonsky) syezd RSDRP (Fifth [London] Congress
of the R.S.D.L.P.). Minutes, Moscow, 1963, p. 660.

[7]
Martov’s article “The International Bureau on Social-Democratic
Unity” quoted Plekhanov as saying at an I.S.B. meeting in
Brussels (October 28 and 29, 1912) that “the time is not far off
when the Russian Social-Democrats will unite not only among themselves but also with the S.R.s ”.