V. I.

Lenin

28

To:   MAXIM GORKY

Dear A. M., Of course, I have nothing against your sending my letter
to Tikhonov.

After your account I have become interested in
Lunacharsky’s article “Between Fear and Hope”. Couldn’t
you send it to me, if you have a copy? If you want it I
shall return it without fail.

The collections for the Moscow paper rejoiced us greatly.
Our trio of deputies from Moscow Region—Malinovsky, Shagov and Samoilov—will set about this. That has already
been agreed. But care is needed: before consolidating
Pravda , we cannot set about a Moscow paper. We have a plan for organising a Moskovskaya Pravda . [3]

Please write to Tikhonov that he should talk only to
Badayev and Malinovsky —but he must talk with them.

I was particularly glad of the following words in your letter: “From all the plans and suppositions of the Russian
intelligentsia, it is clear beyond any doubt that socialist
thought is interlarded with various currents radically hostile to it. They include mysticism, and metaphysics,
and opportunism, and reformism, and relapses into
Narodism. All these currents are all the more hostile because
they are extremely indefinite and, not having their own
platforms, cannot determine themselves with sufficient clarity.”

I underline the words which have particularly delighted
me. That’s just it: “radically hostile”, and all the more
so because they are indefinite. You ask, for example, about

Stepanov (I. I.). [4] What did he turn out to be in the era
of collapse and vacillation, 1908–11 (yet he was a good
fellow, a hard worker, well-read, etc.)? He wanted to make
peace with the Vperyodists. But then that means that he
was wobbling himself.

He wrote letters to me about giving up the democratic revolution in Russia as a bad job, that in our country things
would proceed without revolution, on Austrian lines.
I branded him as a liquidator for these philistine ideas.
He was offended. And then
Larin [5] blurted out his ideas in print.

Now Stepanov is demonstratively writing not for us but for Rozhkov’s paper Novaya Sibir at
Irkutsk. [6] And do you know what “trend” Rozhkov has discovered? Did you
read his article in Nasha Zarya of 1911 and my reply in
Zvezda? [1]

And Rozhkov has dug himself in as an arch– opportunist. And Stepanov? Allah knows. That’s just it: an
“extremely indefinite” and muddled position. I should never entrust any at all independent department to
Stepanov now: he himself doesn’t know where he will jump
next. But probably he could be a useful contributor. He
is one of those who haven’t “seen clearly”. To commission
him to “organise” a department means to kill both him and the department for certain.

You write: “It’s time we had our journal, but we haven’t,
a sufficient number of people who have come properly to
terms with each other for this.”

I don’t accept the second part of this sentence. The journal would oblige a sufficient number of people to come to terms with each other, provided there was a journal,
provided there was a nucleus .

A nucleus does exist, but there is no full-size journal
for external reasons—no money. If we had money, I am sure we could manage a full-size journal even now, because
in addition to the nucleus of contributors we could, for
payment, draw in a lot of people by giving out subjects
and allocating jobs.

So long as we have no money, we must in my opinion not only dream hut build upon what we’ve got, in other
words, on
Prosveshcheniye . [7] Of course, it’s a little fish, but in the first place a big fish, like everything else, grows
from a little one. Secondly, better a little fish than a big
cockroach.

It’s time, high time, to begin coming to terms, if we want
to have “people who have come to terms” in large numbers.

“ It’s time we had our journal.” The literary nucleus is there. The correctness of the line has been confirmed
by the experience of 12 years (or even 20), and particularly
by the experience of the last six years. We should gather
around this nucleus, thereby defining it in greater detail,
training it up and expanding. We had to begin with the illegal one and with Pravda . But we don’t want to stop
at that. And therefore, once you have said that “it’s time
we had our journal”, allow me to call you to account for
these words: either to draft out at once a plan of enquiries
for money for a full-size journal with such-and-such a programme, such-and-such an editorial board and
such-and-such a body of contributors, or to begin on the same
plan expanding Prosveshcheniye .

Or more truly, not either —or, but both .

I await your reply. You probably have already had a letter from Vienna about Prosveshcheniye . There is a reliable
hope of consolidating it for 1913 in a smaller form. You
want us to “have our journal”, then let’s push it ahead
together.

I haven’t heard anything about the Dashnaks. But I think it’s a nonsensical rumour. It’s been started by the
government, which wants to swallow up Turkish
Armenia. [8]

The
P.P.S. [2] are undoubtedly for Austria and will fight for her. A war between Austria and Russia would be a
very useful thing for the revolution (throughout Eastern
Europe), but it’s not very probable that Franz-Josef and
Nicky will give us this pleasure.

You ask me to keep you better informed. With pleasure— only you must reply. I send you (for the time being confidentially) the resolutions of our recent conference (which
in my view was very successful and will play its part). [9]

Resolutions, they say, are of all forms of literature the
most boring. I am a man who has consumed too many resolutions. Drop me a line about how readable they are
for you (especially about revolutionary strikes and about
the liquidators).

What bad effect has the rumour about an amnesty had in Russia? I don’t know. Drop me a line.

N. K. sends her regards.

All the best.
Yours, Lenin

---
Notes:
[1]
See “A Liberal Labour Party Manifesto” (present edition Vol. 17,
pp. 313–24).— Ed .

[2]
P.P.S. (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna)—Polish Socialist
Party.— Ed .

[3]
Reference is to the newspaper Nash Put (Our Path). Lenin had
pointed out the necessity for a legal workers’ newspaper in
Moscow in the summer of 1912. But the fund-collecting campaign for
the Moscow newspaper did not begin until November 1912. Pravda No. 176 for November 24 (O.S), 1912 published a “Letter from
a Group of Moscow Workers”, which indicated that it would be
possible and opportune to start a workers’ newspaper in Moscow.
The call to make collections for the paper was enthusiastically
supported by the workers, but, its appearance was delayed by the
arrest, in February 1913, of the group of Bolsheviks who were
starting it.

The first number of Nash Put appeared on August 25 (
September 7), 1913. Lenin was active on the paper. Its contributors
included Maxim Gorky, Demyan Bedny, M. S. Olminsky, I. I.
Skvortsov-Stepanov, and also the Bolshevik deputies to the Fourth
Duma. Nash Put was very popular among the workers and received
donations from 395 workers’ groups. When the paper was banned
on September 12 (25), 1913, after only 16 issues had appeared, the
Moscow workers staged a protest strike but did not succeed in
getting the ban lifted.

[4]
Skvortsov-Stepanov, I. I. (1870–1928)—one of the oldest
participants in the Russian revolutionary movement. He joined the
R.S.D.L.P. in 1896, becoming a Bolshevik and Marxist writer
towards the end of 1904. On several occasions between 1907 and
1911 he was nominated by the Bolsheviks as a candidate for the
Duma. In the period of reaction he held incorrect views on the
agrarian problem and adopted a conciliatory attitude to the
anti-Party Vperyod group, but under Lenin’s influence overcame his
mistakes.

[5]
Larin, Y. (Lurye, M. A. ) (1882–1932)—Social-Democrat, Menshevik. After the defeat of the 1905–07 revolution he became an active
supporter of liquidationism, but in August 1917 was admitted to
the Bolshevik Party. After the October Socialist Revolution he
held various administrative and managerial posts.

[6]
Novaya Sibir (New Siberia)—socio-political and literary daily
newspaper with a liberal orientation. It was published in Irkutsk
from December 1912 to February 1913. The liquidator N. Rozhkov
was, in practice, its editor.

[7]
Prosveshcheniye (Enlightenment)—legal Bolshevik socio-political
and literary monthly; began publication in St. Petersburg in
December 1911. Maxim Gorky was editor of the fiction section. The
magazine was banned by the tsarist government on the eve of the
first world war, in June 1914. One further issue (a double one)
appeared in the autumn of 1917.

[8]
Reference is probably to rumours of the possibility of a rising in
Turkish Armenia under the leadership of the Armenian bourgeois-nationalist Dashnaktsutyun Party. This was suggested in an
article “Turkish Armenians and Russia” in the newspaper Russkoye Slovo (Russian Word) No. 7, January 9, 1913.

[9]
Reference is to the resolutions of the Cracow Conference of the
C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P. and Party workers (January 8–14, 1913).