V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v48; en:MT;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

Dear A. M., I wish you a Happy New Year, too, and all the very best, but above all, good health! We have Malinovsky, Petrovsky and Badayev here just now. Yesterday I received your letter and read it to them; they were all extremely glad. Malinovsky wanted to go and see you, but the distance will probably prevent him. Oh, if only you could come nearer...

If your health permitted, you might move to Galician health resorts here, like Zakopane, find a healthy spot in the mountains, two days nearer to Russia, workers’ visits could be more frequent, we could again organise a workers’ school, 157 crossing the frontier is easy, the fare from Petersburg is 12 rubles, and contact with workers in Moscow and the South would also be possible! I began dreaming when M. F. was going... What a splendid idea she had, really splendid. Be sure to drop me a line when you have a chance, whether she succeeded in becoming legal (she will probably succeed). Also drop me a line as to how Malinovsky can find her in Petersburg or in Moscow. Through Tikhonov? If we cannot raise money to expand and consolidate Pravda, it will perish. The deficit now is 50–60 rubles a day. We must increase the circulation, reduce expenses, enlarge the paper. We have held out for 200 issues—a record. We are systematically influencing 20,000 to 30,000 workers in a Marxist spirit; it is a tremendous job, and it would be a devilish pity if it perished. We are racking our brains with the deputies in every way to find a way out of Pravda’s difficult position, but we fear that without financial support from outside we shall not pull through.

Malinovsky, Petrovsky and Badayev send you warm greetings and best wishes.

They are fine fellows, especially the first. With such people we can, by Jove, build a workers’ party, although the difficulties are incredibly great. The Cracow base has proved useful: our move to Cracow has fully “paid off” (from the standpoint of the cause). The deputies confirm that the revolutionary mood among the masses of workers is unquestionably growing.

If we can now create a good proletarian organisation, without the interference of the traitor-liquidators, the devil only knows what victories we could achieve with the growth of the movement from below...

What you tell me about letters from Russia is remarkably interesting and characteristic. The Menshevik workers say that Russia has outlived Marx!! And this is not an isolated case. The liquidators are introducing such depravity, such a treacherous spirit, such renegacy, that it is hard to imagine. And on top of that, thousands of intrigues for “uniting” with them: the only way to ruin the whole cause, to spoil the party building that has been started with such difficulty, is to start intrigues again = “uniting” with the liquidators. Well, we shall yet fight...

I am ready wholeheartedly to share your joy over the return of the Vperyodists, if... if your assumption is correct that “Machism, god-building and all that sort of thing have been sunk for ever”, as you write. If that is so, if the Vperyodists have understood or will now understand, then I warmly join in your joy over their return.

But I stress the “if”, because for the time being it is more a wish than a fact. Do you remember, in the spring of 1908, on Capri, our “last meeting” with Bogdanov, Bazarov and Lunacharsky? Do you remember I said that we would have to part for two or three years, and M. F., who was in the chair, protested furiously, calling me to order and so on! 158 It turned out to be 4½, nearly five years. And that is not much for such a period of profound disintegration as 1908–1911. I do not know whether Bogdanov, Bazarov, Volsky (a semi-anarchist), Lunacharsky, Alexinsky are capable of learning from the hard experience of 1908–1911. Have they understood that Marxism is a more serious and profound thing than they thought, that it cannot be scoffed at as Alexinsky used to do, or treated as a dead thing as the others did? If they have understood—a thousand greetings to them, and all personal matters (inevitably brought in by the acute struggle) will be forgotten in a moment. But if they have not understood, have not learned, then don’t blame me: friendship is friendship, but duty is duty. For attempts to revile Marxism or confuse the policy of the workers’ party we shall fight without sparing our lives.

I am very glad that a way has been found for the gradual return of the Vperyodists precisely through Pravda, which did not attack them directly. I am very glad. But it is precisely in the interests of a firm rapprochement that we must now proceed slowly and cautiously. That is what I wrote to Pravda, too. The friends of the reunion of the Vperyodists with us must direct their efforts to this: a cautious, experience-tested return of the Vperyodists from Machism, otzovism, god-building can give a devil of a lot. The slightest carelessness and a “relapse of the Machist, otzovist, etc., disease”—and the struggle will flare up even more fiercely... I have not read Bogdanov’s new “Philosophy of Living Experience”; probably the same Machism in a new guise...

We are in excellent touch with Sergei Moiseyev in Paris; we have known him for a long time and work together. He is a Party member and a real Bolshevik. It is with such people that we are building the party, but there are devilishly few of them now.

Once again I press your hand, I must finish the letter, or I have gone on indecently long. Keep well!

Yours,
Lenin

N. K. sends warm greetings!
(We have several more good workers from Russia here. We are arranging a conference. 159 Oh, if only we had money, we could do the devil knows how much from this base!)

I am writing to Pravda today to tell them to print, after asking Tikhonov, that Tikhonov and you are in charge of the belles-lettres section of Pravda. Isn’t that so? Drop them a line, too, if they don’t print it.

(Italy)