**Date:** 1917-03-25
**Source:** Lenin Miscellany, vol. 26
**Pages:** 43-43

Dear Comrade Anatoly Vasilyevich*!

Regarding the conference, my personal opinion (I am forwarding your letter to Zinoviev) is that it is expedient now only between people prepared to warn the proletariat not only against the Gvozdevites, but also against the vacillations of Chkheidze.

This, in my view, is the crux of our intra-party situation and, if one may so express it, the situation around the party.

For precisely this reason I am not wasting time on any conference with Martov and Co.

The independence and distinctiveness of our party, no rapprochement whatsoever with other parties—these are for me ultimative. Without this it is impossible to help the proletariat advance through the democratic revolution toward communism, and I would not serve any other ends.

With people and groups in agreement on this fundamental point, I would personally be in favor of a conference.

To simply converse with you, without any formal conferences, I would be very pleased to do, and would consider this personally useful (and useful for the cause).

From the bottom of my heart I congratulate you, for my part, and firmly shake your hand, send greetings also from Nadezhda Konstantinovna to you both.

With comradely greetings. Lenin.

My address: Wl. Ulianow. Spiegelgasse. 1411 (bei Kämmerer)
Zürich. I

¹ **Dating justification:** Lenin in his letter to V. A. Karpinsky of March 25, 1917, reported: "Lunacharsky wrote to me, proposing a 'conference.' I replied: I agree to speak personally with you (with Lunacharsky) (he will be in Zurich). As to the conference, I agree only on the condition of warning the workers against Chkheidze's vacillations. He (Lunacharsky) said nothing in reply" (see Works XXIX, 342).

The letter printed here represents Lenin's reply to Lunacharsky on his proposal for a conference.

37473

* In the original: a clerical error—"Aleksandrovich." —Ed.