V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:LS/v2
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

Dear A. M.,

As for your coming here—that is quite unnecessary.

Why should I start quarrelling with Maximov, Bogdanov, Lunacharsky and the rest?

You yourself write: “you are at loggerheads among yourselves”—and you invite us to be at loggerheads in public.

That won’t do.

And as for repelling the workers, that is also unnecessary.

If they accept our invitation and come to see us, we shall have a chat with them and fight for the views of a certain newspaper which some factionaries have long been calling (I have heard this from Lyadov and others) a most boring, illiterate, useless sheet, which has no faith in the proletariat and socialism.*)

As for the new split,**) your argument is not consistent. On the one hand, both are nihilists (and the “Slav anarchists”—oh, my dear fellow, the non-Slav Europeans in times like ours fought, quarrelled and split a hundred times worse!)—and on the other hand, the split will be no less deep than that between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.

If the trouble lies in the “nihilism” of the “loggerheads”, in the illiteracy, etc., of some who have no faith in what they write, and so forth—then the split is not deep, and it is not even a split.

But if the split is deeper than that between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, then the trouble is not nihilism and not writers who have no faith in their own writings.

It is not consistent, I assure you!

You are mistaken about the present split

and you are right*) when you say: “I understand the people, but I do not understand their actions.”

What seems to you insincerity, worthlessness, etc., in Proletary is explained by a quite different point of view on the whole of the present moment and on Marxism (of course).

We have been marking time for nearly two years, chewing over those questions which Maximov (Bogdanov) still regards as “debatable”, but which life has long since decided. And if we continued to “argue” about them, we should still be marking time to no purpose.

By splitting, we shall show the workers clearly, directly and definitely two ways out.

The workers (Social-Democrats) will make their choice easily and quickly, for the tactics of preserving (in a tin) the revolutionary words of 1905–1906, instead of applying the revolutionary method to the new, changed situation, to the altered epoch which demands different methods and different forms of organisation—these are dead tactics.

The proletariat is going and will go to the revolution—but not in the same way as before 1905. To those who “believe” that it is going and will go, but do not understand this “not in the same way”—to them our position must seem insincere, worthless, boring, based on lack of faith in the proletariat and socialism, and so on, and so forth.

The divergence arising from this is undoubtedly deep enough to make a split—at least abroad—inevitable.

But it does not even remotely approach the depth of the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, if we speak of the depth of the split in the Party, in Social-Democracy, among Marxists.

You are surprised that I do not see the hysterics, the lack of discipline (you should not talk, nor Mikhail listen) and other evil qualities of Mikhail.

Well, I had a chance to test him on a small matter: I thought that our talk with you would not come off, that there was no point in writing.

Under the impression of my talk with Mikhail I wrote at once, in the heat of the moment, without even re-reading the letter, without putting it off till the next day.

Next day I thought: I was foolish, I believed Mikhail.

But it turned out that, however carried away Mikhail may be, to that extent he was right, for our talk with you did come off after all—not without some friction, of course, not without some abuse of Proletary, but what can you do about that!

I press your hand firmly.

N. Lenin.

*) The reference is to the newspaper Proletary, which Gorky, in his reply to Lenin’s previous letter, had characterised in the words quoted by Lenin.

**) Here and further on the reference is to the split between the “Leninists” and the “Vperyodists”, headed by A. A. Bogdanov.