4/V 09.

Dear friend! I received your letter and I protest in the most decisive manner.

Let us say we made a mistake with Pokrovsky (I am prepared to admit this and take the entire blame upon myself, since it was I who persuaded Gregory), but it is the height of absurdity for you to leave because of this. One cannot undo things with Pokrovsky now. There is no need to summon Meshkovsky before Vlasov and the regionalists (Shchur is intact and vouches that no otzovist will get through from Moscow, Lyadov and Alsinskiy...* — he is now at Capri — will not get through either. From Petersburg, they say, an anti-otzovist will appear). What is necessary now: to wait for the plenum of the CC. Otherwise the petty squabbling will grow — whereas we have nonetheless suppressed it. It is beyond doubt that at a meeting with Pokrovsky, Bogdanov would have inflicted a dozen new insults and drawn Pokrovsky into them; now it came to just one. And that one was inevitable: do not exaggerate, really! The "embittering" of both Nikitich and Lyadov and Pokrovsky, yesterday's neutrals, is not accidental but inevitable: the matter has accumulated. It has accumulated and the abscess is beginning to burst, and when there is a stinking squabble all around one cannot always endure without complaint.

But for you to leave is madness. We shall hold out here another month, be assured, without any worsening of the cause. For you to strain your nerves (Paris strains nerves considerably) before the plenum — that is the height of absurdity.

I protest a thousand times: you must absolutely remain in the sanatorium until the very plenum. To economize 200-300 frs. is foolish. If you remain in the sanatorium, we shall have at least one person completely ours for the plenum with completely healthy nerves and not entangled in petty squabbling (here they will entangle you, even if you were seven spans tall in forehead). If you leave, you will only increase the number of wound-up people without any benefit to the cause.

I protest decisively: under no circumstances leave, but absolutely remain in the sanatorium until the very plenum.

* One word in the manuscript is illegible. — Ed.