...that X., when he hadn't yet left his master's service, began secretly, under a pseudonym, to help the workers!!*
It is clear that the workers contemptuously brush aside these despicable anonymous slanderers, maintained by the bourgeoisie's liquidator newspaper.

But this is not enough. It is not enough to brush aside. The liquidators, who want to destroy the workers' organizations, have long resorted to such a trick: to slander individuals in the most shameless manner.

No organization is possible without an organizational rebuff to such a method of political "struggle." And what should this organizational rebuff consist of?

Every worker should demand that the liquidators, from whom the Marxists have turned away with contempt, convene "their" commission from "their" group of seven, "their" "leading institution" of Jews, Latvians, Caucasians, etc. Let them try to issue "their" resolution, to communicate it to the International. Then we will brand these villainous slanderers before the whole world.

And while these villains, these dirty individuals, hide behind anonymous articles in the liquidator newspaper, let every union of workers instruct its board to investigate the matter, taking all documents and information from everywhere, verifying the decision of the Marxist commission from five institutions, and issuing its own resolution. 254

Universal condemnation of the slanderers, a universal demand to them: "Take back the vile slander, or you will not be allowed to enter any organization" - that is the answer of the working class, the organizational answer to the destroyers of organization.

V. Ilyin**
This question of principle must be raised in the Duma.

P.S. If "Za Pravdu" is shut down, it is essential to lower the tone fivefold, to become more legal

* Articles in "Novaia Rabochaia Gazeta": in Nos. 55 and 56 - "To Account!", in No. 60 - "To the Pillory!". Ed.

** The letter is also signed by L. B. Kamenev and G. E. Zinoviev. Ed.

and meeker at all costs. This is possible and necessary. Write as in "Voprosy Strakhovaniia" 255 and appoint your own censorship. For God's sake, do it, otherwise you are ruining the cause in vain.

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Written no earlier than November 1, 1913.

Sent from Krakow to Petersburg

First published in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXV

Printed from the manuscript