V. I.

Lenin

1913

26

To:   MAXIM GORKY

Dear A. M., New Year’s greetings to you, too! I wish you all the
very best, and above all health! We have
Malinovsky, [1]
Petrovsky and Badayev staying with us just now.
Yesterday I received your letter and read it out to them. They
were all extraordinarily pleased. Malinovsky wanted to visit you, but probably the distance will be a barrier.
Ah, if only you could be nearer to us.... If your health
permitted, you could transfer to the local Galician health
resorts like Zakopane, find a healthy place in the mountains, two days nearer to Russia; we could get more
frequent visits from the workers, once again organise a
workers’ school [2] : crossing the frontier is not difficult, the price
of the journey from Petersburg is 12 rubles, contacts with
the workers of Moscow and the South are also possible....
I’ve been really day-dreaming in connection with M. F.’s
journey.... That was a wonderful idea of hers, really wonderful. Make sure to drop me a line, when you have a chance,
whether she has succeeded in getting her legal papers (
probably she will succeed). Also let me know how Malinovsky
can find her in Petersburg or in Moscow. Through Tikhonov?
If we can’t find some cash to expand and strengthen Pravda ,
it will perish. The deficit is now 50–60 rubles a day. We
have to increase the circulation, reduce costs, expand the
paper. We have held out for 200 issues—a record. After all, we are influencing twenty to thirty thousand worker– readers systematically in a Marxist spirit: it is something
really big, and we should be damnably sorry if the paper
went under. We are discussing with the deputies, from every
point of view and in every possible way, how to get Pravda
out of its difficulties, but fear that without financial help
from outside we won’t succeed.

Malinovsky, Petrovsky and Badayev send you warm greetings and best wishes. They are good fellows,
especially the first. Really, it is possible to build a workers’
party with such people, though the difficulties are incredibly great. The base at Cracow has proved to be useful:
our move to Cracow has fully “paid for itself” (from the
point of view of the cause). The deputies confirm that a
revolutionary mood is unquestionably growing among the mass of the workers. If we now create a good proletarian
organisation, without obstacles from the treacherous liquidators—the devil knows what victories we can then win
when the movement from below develops....

What you write about letters from Russia is remarkably interesting and characteristic. Menshevik workers say that
Russia has outlived Marx!! And this is not the only case.
The liquidators introduce such corruption, such a spirit
of treachery, such desertion, as it is difficult to imagine.
And in addition, thousands of intrigues for “uniting” with
them: the only way to make a mess of the whole cause, to
spoil the building of the Party, which has had a difficult
start, is once again to begin the intrigues =“unity” with
the liquidators. Well, the battle isn’t over yet....

I am ready to share with all my heart in your joy at the
return of the Vperyod group, if ...
if your supposition is justified that “Machism, god-building [3] and all that
nonsense has been dumped for ever”, as you write. If that is
so, if the Vperyod people have understood this or will understand it now, then I warmly join in your delight at
their return. But I underline “ if ” because this, so far, is
still a hope rather than a fact. Do you remember, at Capri
in the spring of 1908, our “last meeting” with Bogdanov,
Bazarov and
Lunacharsky [4] ? Do you remember how I said that we should have to part company for two or three
years, and how then M. F., in the chair, furiously protested,
calling me to order, etc.! [5]

It has turned out to be four and a half, nearly five years.
And this is not very long, for such a period of the most
profound collapse as occurred in 1908–11. I don’t know whether Bogdanov, Bazarov, Volsky (a semi-anarchist),
Lunacharsky, Alexinsky [6] are capable of learning from the
painful experience of 1908–11. Have they understood that
Marxism is a more serious and more profound thing than it seemed to them, that one cannot scoff at it, as Alexinsky
used to do, or dismiss it as something dead, as the others
did? If they have understood this—a thousand greetings to them, and everything personal (inevitably brought in
by the sharpness of the struggle) will in one moment be
thrown on the scrap-heap. But if they haven’t understood
it, if they haven’t learned anything, then don’t hold it
against me: friendship is friendship, but duty is duty.
Against attempts to abuse Marxism or to confuse the policy
of the workers’ party we shall fight without sparing our
lives.

I am very glad it is through Pravda , which did not directly attack them, that the way has been found for the gradual
return of the Vperyod people. Very glad. But for the sake
of a lasting rapprochement, we must now move towards it slowly and cautiously . That is what I have written to
Pravda too. And friends of the reunion of the Vperyodists
with us must bend their efforts to this also: a careful, tested
return of the Vperyodists from Machism, otzovism, [7] god-building can yield great results. The least carelessness, any
“recurrence of the Machist, otzovist, etc., disease”, and
the struggle will burst, out still more violently.... I have
not read the new “Philosophy of Living Experience” by
Bogdanov, probably the same old Machism in a new dress....

We have excellent connections with Sergei Moiseyev in
Paris. We have known him a long time, and are working together. He is a real Party man and Bolshevik. It, is with
such people that we are building the Party, but there are
damnably few of them left.

Once again I wish you the best: I must finish this letter,
which has become indecently long. Good health!

Yours, Lenin

N. K. sends her warm greetings!

( Some more good workers from Russia have gathered here. We are organising a
conference. [8] Alas, we haven’t the money, or we could get a devil of a lot done from this
base!)

I am writing to Pravda today that they, after asking
Tikhonov, should print a notice that Tikhonov and you are in charge of the literary ^department of Pravda . Isn’t
that so? Write to them yourself, if they don’t print it.

---
Notes:
[1]
Malinovsky was subsequently exposed as an agent provocateur .

[2]
Reference is to the Party school at Poronin, which the C.C. of
the R.S.D.L.P. planned to organise in 1913, during the Duma’s
summer recess, for members of the Social-Democratic group in the
Duma, workers and Party activists. Lenin intended giving an
important series of lectures on political economy, the theory and
practice of socialism in Russia, and on the agrarian and
nationalities problems. Difficulties, such as lack of funds, etc., prevented
the school from being organised.

[3]
Machism, or empirio-criticism —reactionary subjective-idealist
philosophical trend which became widespread in Western Europe
at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth
centuries. Its founders were the Austrian physicist and philosopher
Ernst Mach and the German philosopher Richard Avenarius.
In Russia, during the years of reaction, the influence of Machism
made itself felt among some intellectuals of the R.S.D.L.P.,
particularly Menshevik intellectuals (N. Valentinov, P. Yushkevich
and others). Some literary men among the Bolsheviks also adopted
Machist positions (V. Bazarov, A. Bogdanov and others). Though
they claimed to advocate Marxism, the Russian Machists were
trying to revise the fundamental principles of Marxist philosophy.
In his book Materialism and Empirio-criticism Lenin revealed the
reactionary essence of Machism, defended Marxist philosophy from revisionist attacks and in the new historical conditions obtaining
at the time pushed forward the development of dialectical and
historical materialism in all respects. The defeat of Machism was
a crippling blow to the ideology of Menshevism, otzovism and
god-building.

God-building —A religious-philosophical trend hostile to
Marxism. It arose during the period of reaction among certain Party
intellectuals who departed from Marxism after the defeat of the
1905–07 revolution. The god-builders (A. V. Lunacharsky, V.
Bazarov and others) advocated a new “socialist” religion and tried
to reconcile Marxism with religion. Maxim Gorky was at one time
associated with them.

[4]
Bogdanov, A. = ( Malinovsky, A. A. ; =

Maximov, N. ) (1873–1928)— Social-Democrat, philosopher, sociologist, economist; by training,
a doctor. After the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. he joined
the Bolsheviks and was elected a member of the Central
Committee. He was on the editorial boards of the Bolshevik newspapers
Vperyod and Proletary , = and worked as an editor of the Bolshevik
newspaper Novaya Zhizn (New Life ). In the years of reaction (1907–
10) and the subsequent revolutionary revival ho headed the
otzovists, and the Vperyod anti-Party group. In philosophy he tried
to create his own system of “empiric-monism” (a variety of
subjective-idealist philosophy), which Lenin criticised sharply in his
Materialism and Empirio-criticism . At a meeting of the enlarged
editorial board of the newspaper Proletary in June 1909 Bogdanov
was expelled from the Bolshevik Party. After the October Socialist
Revolution he became one of the organisers and leaders of the
Proletcult (Proletarian Culture Organisation). From 1926 onwards he
was director of the Blood-Transfusion Institute which he had
founded.

Bazarov, V. (real name Rudnev, V. A. ) (1874–1939)— philosopher and economist, joined the Social-Democratic movement in
1896.

Between 1905 and 1907 he contributed to a number of Bolshevik
publications, gave up Bolshevism in the years of reaction, and
became one of the main representatives of the Machist revision of
Marxism.

Lunacharsky, A. V. (1875–1933)—professional revolutionary,
prominent Soviet statesman.

Having entered the revolutionary movement in the early nineties, he became a Bolshevik after the Second Congress of the
R.S.D.L.P. During the years of reaction he turned away from
Marxism, took part in the anti-Party Vperyod group, and called
for the merging of religion and Marxism.

[5]
Lenin visited Capri for a few days at Gorky’s request in April
1908. During his stay he told A. Bogdanov, V. Bazarov and
A. V. Lunacharsky that he definitely disagreed with them in
matters of philosophy.

[6]
Alexinsky, G. A. (b. 1879)—started his political career as a
Social-Democrat. An otzovist and one of the organisers of the anti-Party

Vperyod group in the years of reaction, he became a social–
chauvinist during the world war and worked for a number of bourgeois
papers. In July 1917 he made slanderous allegations against Lenin
and the Bolsheviks. In April 1918 he fled the country.

[7]
Otzovism (from the Russian “otozvat”—to recall)—an opportunist
trend among the Bolsheviks, which was led by A. Bogdanov.
Under cover of revolutionary phrases the otzovists (besides
Bogdanov the group included G. A. Alexinsky, S. Volsky, A. V.
Lunacharsky and M. N. Lyadov) demanded the recall of the
Social-Democratic deputies from the Third Duma. They also refused to
work in legal organisations. Declaring that under conditions of
reaction the Party should conduct only illegal work, the otzovists
refused to participate in the Duma, the trade unions, the
cooperatives or any mass legal and semilegal organisations.

A variety of otzovism was ultimatumism. The ultimatumists
proposed that the Social-Democratic deputies in the Duma should
be presented with an ultimatum demanding implicit obedience to
the decisions of the Party Central Committee and, if they rejected
it, that they should be recalled. Ultimatumism was actually a
masked form of otzovism. Lenin called the ultimatumists “bashful
otzovists”.

The otzovists caused great harm to the Party. Their policy
would have isolated the Party from the masses and converted it
into a sectarian organisation.

[8]
Reference is to the Conference of the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P. with
Party workers, known for conspiratorial purposes as the “
February Conference”. It look place in Cracow on December 26, 1912,
lasting till January 1, 1913 (January 8–14, 1913).