We have sent you a telegram—its meaning is clear—agreement. But bear in mind that telegraph communications are very dangerous; copies are made from telegrams. Try to limit yourself to the mail. There is no need to come for negotiations about details. Everything can be discussed by correspondence. Do you have an experienced printer? If yes, then it is possible to use matrices, which are easy to send (in journals, etc.). The advantages of this method are: 1) there is no need to have type, 1a) it is much faster, 2) fewer people involved—which means safer from a conspiratorial standpoint, 3) the newspaper will have the appearance of a foreign publication, which again is much more convenient for purposes of conspiracy. For a trial, we shall send you matrices in a binding to the address K...** in the next few days. Open it carefully, conduct all experiments, and report the results to us as soon as possible. The "Universal apparatus for stereotypy," necessary for casting from matrices, costs about 300 marks, but we do not know whether it can be freely purchased in Russia. Tell us what format your machine is? Can you print in the format of our *Iskra*? In any case, send us a sample of your work as soon as possible, whatever it may be.

If your technical capacity is established, try to publish, as soon as possible, at least one complete issue of *Iskra* (if it is difficult to publish in 8 pages as in No. 6, then publish at least issue No. 5—it is 4 pages). It would be extremely important for us to have a copy of the Russian edition of *Iskra* before the congress here,135 that is, within a month (maximum 1½).

From what date is the 800 rubles reckoned as owed? Our treasury is in bad shape at present, and this debt can only be covered if your technical facility really produces at least three to five thousand copies of *Iskra* (in 4-8 pages) per month. But if you manage this, then there will be income, of course.

* The letter was written jointly with N. K. Krupskaya. Ed.

** Pseudonym not identified. Ed.