V. I.

Lenin

80

To:   THE SECRETARY, EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE GRANAT PUBLISHING HOUSE

Berne, November 17, 1914

Dear Colleague, I have sent you today by registered post the article on
Marx and
Marxism [1] for the dictionary. It is not for me to judge how far I have succeeded in solving the difficult
problem of squeezing the exposition into a framework of
about 75,000 letters and spaces. I will observe that I had
to compress the literature very intensively (15,000 was the
ultimatum), and I had to select the essence of various tendencies (of course, with the majority for Marx). It was
difficult to make up my mind to renounce many quotations
from Marx. In my view, quotations are very important for a dictionary (especially on the most controversial
questions of Marxism, which include philosophy and the agrarian
problem first and foremost). Headers of the dictionary should have available all the most important statements
by Marx, otherwise the purpose of the dictionary would not
be achieved. That is how it seemed to me. I don’t know either whether you will be satisfied from the point of view
of censorship: if not, perhaps we could manage to agree on
the rewording of some passages, having in mind passing the
censor. For my part, without ultimative demands from the
editorial board, I could not make up my mind to “correct”
a number of quotations and propositions of Marxism for reasons of censorship.

I hope you will be kind enough to let me know immediately (a postcard will do) that you have received the article.
I would ask you particularly to send the fee due to me as
soon as possible to Gospodin Mark Timofeyevich Yeliza- rov , 17 Grechesky Prosp., Flat 18, Petrograd (sending it to
me here in wartime would involve the expense of an exchange
operation and would be most inconvenient for me).

With assurances that I am at your service,
V. Ilyin

P.S. On account of the war, my library has been held up
in
Galicia, [2] and I could not find some quotations from
Marx’s works in the Russian translations. If you think it
necessary , perhaps you could request someone in Moscow to
do it? (In my view, it is not.) Incidentally, I should be
very glad if you found it possible to send me a proof of
the article, and to let me know whether partial corrections
of the proof are possible or not. If you cannot send the
proof, I hope you will be kind enough to send me an off-print.

My address: Wl. Uljanow. 11. Distelweg. 11. Bern.