Date: 1893
Source: ru:PSS/v46


Source: CW vol 46

Letter to Arkady

Dear friend! I have read your long letter of June 6, and I want to add something to my previous letter*. Your report about the conversation with the workers was very encouraging. It is extremely rare for us to receive such letters, which indeed give a great deal of cheer. Please convey this to your workers and ask them on our behalf to write to us not only for publication, but also just for an exchange of thoughts, so as not to lose touch with each other and mutual understanding. I am particularly interested in how the workers will react to *What Is To Be Done?*,* since I have not yet received any feedback from the workers.

So, connect your workers' circle directly with us, and also Masha***: this is very important and will greatly strengthen both their approach to *Iskra* and your position among them. Then, if there are capable people among Masha's leaders, it would be good for one of them to come to us: suggest this idea to them and talk about how they view it.

Then, three more points.

1) If Vanya**** is ours, then how do you think you should define your relationship with him? What do you think? Perhaps, if Vanya and Masha are entirely ours (and if they issue the statement I wrote about - this is extremely important), they could accept you into their CC 186 and, in addition, formally appoint you to the function of specifically unifying all-Russian work? (i.e., "The CC entrusts NN, its member and a member of the Russian organization of *Iskra*, with which organization the CC is in full solidarity, to handle matters related to preparing party unification in the spirit of *Iskra*").

Perhaps this could be modified as follows (of course, I am only outlining possible and feasible suggestions, no more): "The CC of the St. Petersburg Committee, expressing its full solidarity with the Russian organization of *Iskra*, gladly accepts into the Committee, with the general consent of the members, a group of persons belonging to this organization and specifically engaged in the transportation of *Iskra* and its distribution throughout Russia. The CC assigns certain members and allocates certain funds to assist this group, with one of the members of this group (Arkady) joining the CC of the St. Petersburg Committee, remaining a member of the Russian organization of *Iskra*, and taking charge of the specific task of preparing all-party unification in the spirit of *Iskra*." By "group," I mean those persons whom you sent for fish 187, etc. I repeat once again: I am only outlining various acceptable and possible suggestions, fulfilling your request to provide a "concrete outline of a plan" and leaving it to your discretion to use my suggestions in one way or another. Be sure to write about how things stand now and in what direction you are moving them. Strike while the iron is hot, and remember that we need to coordinate as thoroughly as possible on the plan for the final and irreversible conquest of the "tuning fork" (= the St. Petersburg Committee = Vanya). You must be as wise as a serpent with your young friends!

If this is possible, it would be the best. Then you would be in the OC (for preparing Sasha*) as a delegate from Vanya, and from Sonya, there would be one more person from us. Write soon about how you view this question? Have you talked about it with Vanya and Masha?

2) You must definitely form the Russian OC and take it into your hands: you from Vanya, Claire from Sonya, and + one more from the south - that would be ideal. Be extremely cautious and restrained with the Bund, without showing your hand, allowing it to handle its own affairs and

* See this volume, p. 192-197. Ed.

** See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 5th ed., vol. 6, pp. 1-192. Ed.

*** Masha - a conspiratorial name for the Workers' Organization Committee in St. Petersburg. Ed.

**** Vanya - a conspiratorial name for the St. Petersburg Committee. Ed.

* Sasha - a conspiratorial name for the Second Party Congress. Ed.