V. I.

Lenin

60

To:   INESSA ARMAND

... [1]
Idiotically stupid are the people who have “taken fright” at trusted
agents, [2] as something allegedly “insulting” to the Party
cells. That means, the argument runs, that there are no Party cells if
they want trusted agents!

Comedians! They chase words , without thinking about how
devilishly complicated and subtle life is, producing entirely new
forms, which we only partly “catch on” to.

People for the most part (99 per cent of the bourgeoisie, 98 per cent
of the liquidators, about 60–70 per cent of the Bolsheviks) don’t know how
to think , they only learn words by heart . They’ve learnt
the word “underground”. Firmly. They can repeat it. They know it by
heart.

But how to change its forms in a new situation, how to learn and think anew for this purpose, this we do not under
stand.

The summer conference of 1913 (abroad) decided to over come the
Seven. The campaign of the working masses in the autumn of 1913 in
Russia—the majority are for us!! A “circle” of “trusted
agents” (without election by the Party cells!! Alarm!!—shout Antonov,
Isaac and Co.) decided—and the masses carried it out.

How can that be done? Well, that is where one must learn to understand
such a “cunning” mechanism. It could not have been done, were
there no underground and no Party cells. And it could not have been done , if there were no new and cunning forms of the
underground and the Party cells.

I am very interested in whether you will succeed in making our people
understand this. Write in as much detail as you can.

We have received one copy of Sputnik Rabochego . [3] 5,000 copies have already been sold!!
Hurrah!! Set about the women’s journal [4] super-energetically!

---
Notes:
[1]
The beginning of the letter has never been found.— Ed .

[2]
Trusted agents —workers chosen to maintain constant contact
between the Central Committee and the local Social-Democratic groups, and
to evolve flexible forms of leadership for local activities in the big
working-class centres. The system of trusted agents was initiated by the
Cracow Conference of the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P. of 1913 and the need for it
was confirmed by the Poronin Conference.

[3]
Sputnik Rabochego na 1914 God (Worker’s Handbook for
1914)—a pocket calendar put out by the Party Priboi Publishers in
December 1913. The whole edition was sold in one day. In February 1914 a
second, revised edition was produced.

The calendar included Lenin’s article “Strikes in Russia” (see
present edition, Vol. 19, pp. 534–38).

[4]
Lenin refers to the preparation for the publication of the magazine
Rabotnitsa (Working Woman), the first issue of which appeared in
St. Petersburg on February 23 (March 8), 1914.