For Fred

Dear Comrade!

I received your latest letter. I am writing to your old address, although I fear letters are not getting through; your previous letter received a rather detailed reply. That comradely trust which is evident in all your letters compels me to write to you personally. This letter is written neither from the collective nor for the committee.

The state of affairs in your committee, languishing from a lack of people, absence of literature, and complete lack of information, is the same as the state of affairs throughout all of Russia. Everywhere there is a terrible dearth of people; in the committees of the minority there are even fewer than in the committees of the majority; complete fragmentation, general heavy mood and embittered relations, stagnation in positive work. Since the second Congress the party has been torn to pieces, and now in this respect very, very much has been done: the minority's tactics have terribly weakened the party. It has done everything possible to discredit both the Central Committee, beginning its hounding even at the Congress, pursuing it intensively both in print and orally; and it has discredited the Central Organ even more, transforming it from a party organ into an instrument for settling personal scores with the majority. If you have read *Iskra*, there is nothing new to say about this. In pursuit of disagreements, they have now put forward as their slogan the "liquidation of the fourth—Iskra—period" and are burning everything they worshipped yesterday, completely distorting perspective, interpreting Iskraism in the very way its bitterest enemies once interpreted it. Party workers who remember what they defended yesterday do not follow the Central Organ. The vast majority of committees stand at the point of view of the Congress majority, and their spiritual bonds with the party organ are increasingly coming undone.

But the present state of affairs reflects so heavily upon positive work, so much impedes it, that among a whole series of party workers there has arisen such a mood: to retreat into positive work, removing themselves completely from all that embittered internal strife which is occurring in the party. They want to close their eyes, stop their ears, hide their heads under the wing of positive work; they flee and hide from everything from which now, being in the party, there is nowhere to escape. Part of the Central Committee has occupied such a "conciliationist" position, striving to hush up the growing disagreements, striving to hush up the fact of the party's decomposition. The majority (non-conciliationist) says: it is necessary to find some way out as soon as possible; it is necessary to reach agreement one way or another; it is necessary to try to find a framework within which ideological struggle could proceed more or less normally; a new Congress is needed. The minority is against the Congress; they say: the vast majority of the party is against us, and the Congress is disadvantageous for us; the "conciliationist" majority is also against the Congress, being fearful of that embittered sentiment which is mounting among everyone both against the Central Organ and against the Central Committee. If one were to think that

TO V. D. BONCH-BRUEVICH. AUGUST 1904

a Congress could only lead to a split, this would mean acknowledging that we have no party whatsoever, that party feeling is so weakly developed among all of us that it cannot overcome the old circle-ism. In this respect we hold a better opinion of our opponents than they hold of themselves. Of course, one cannot vouch for anything, but an attempt to resolve the conflict in a party manner and find a way out—this must be made.

The majority, in any case, does not want a split, but to continue working under the conditions which have now been created is becoming increasingly impossible. Already more than 10 committees have come out in favor of a Congress (Petersburg, Tver, Moscow, Tula, Siberia, Caucasus, Yekaterinoslav, Nikolaev, Odessa, Riga, Astrakhan),273 but even when the vast majority of committees declare themselves in favor of a Congress, it will not take place soon, for both the Central Organ and the Central Committee, and probably the Soviet as well, will be against the wishes of the vast majority of Russian comrades.

Regarding literature, a comrade from the Central Committee with whom this was discussed replied that literature is being delivered to your committee regularly. Evidently there is some confusion. People were sent to you twice, but in Russia they were directed to other places. We shall try to send new publications at the next opportunity.

With comradely greetings, Lenin in Switzerland in the hand of N. K. Krupskaya

Written August 15, 1904

Sent to Gomel

First published in 1934 in the journal *Krasnyi Arkhiv* No. 1

Printed from a copy written