Dear comrade!

I sent you copies of 2 of my letters to *Pravda* through Inessa. I hope you fulfilled my request and today (on Sunday) or tomorrow sent them back to me by express.

After Tuesday (I am reading here Tuesday evening) I will send you a copy of letter No. 3*. Then, I think, it will be easy for us to agree on tactics.

Lunacharsky wrote to me, proposing a "conference." I replied: I am willing to speak personally with you (with Lunacharsky).** (He will be in Zurich.) As for a conference,

* See V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, 5th ed., vol. 31, pp. 34-47. Ed.

** See present volume, pp. 410-411. Ed.

I agree only on the condition of warning the workers against Tsereteli's wavering. He (Lunacharsky) remained silent.

That means we shall limit ourselves to a personal conversation.

Tsereteli is clearly wavering: compare "Le Temps" March 22 praising Tsereteli; March 24 condemning Tsereteli.

The picture is clear!!

Therefore I fear that you were hasty in drawing up a general resolution (I sent it today to *Pravda* together with my article at the address: Herrn Furstenberg. Boulevard Hotel. Kristiania. You can send articles here, stipulating that they are for *Pravda* and that I gave the address; it would be useful to agree with you in advance about articles of principle).

*Pravda* probably needs articles. I, in any case, am writing and advising all comrades to write.

I fear that you are hurrying and uniting with the "Vperedists."

The end of your resolution is good (I only had time to glance through it hurriedly: I had to send it off), but the beginning (about democracy in general) seemed very bad to me.

Regarding unification with *Vperyod*. I sent a telegram to Scandinavia to departing members of our party:
"Our tactics: absolute mistrust, no support to the new government, especially suspect Kerensky, armament of the proletariat sole guarantee, immediate elections to the Petrograd Duma, no rapprochement with other parties"*.

The last is a conditio sine qua non**.

We do not trust Tsereteli.

Our deputies and Kamenev are already in Petersburg or will arrive in a few days. The Central Committee is in Petersburg (excerpts from its manifesto were in the *Frankfurter Zeitung*, delightful!), *Pravda* exists.

We are absolutely for the preservation of this party, against any mergers with the Interdistrictists.

* "Our tactics: complete mistrust, no support to the new government, especially suspect Kerensky, armament of the proletariat—the sole guarantee, immediate elections to the Petrograd Duma, no rapprochement with other parties." Ed.

** An indispensable condition. Ed.

(The Interdistrictists must not be in Petersburg, because *Frankfurter Zeitung* and *Vossische Zeitung* published in detail the proclamation of Tsereteli and Co. from March 16—there is not a word about the Interdistrictists there.)

Precisely for the elections to the Constituent Assembly (or for the overthrow of the Guchkov and Milyukov government) we need a special party, ours, which has, in my opinion, fully justified itself during 1914-1917.

So? Do the Vperedists want to enter, honestly enter this party?

Good!*

They don't want to? I will not go in for "concessions" and "haggling."

Talk with them heart to heart more than once and write me a note so that I can have your answer by Tuesday (at the latest Wednesday morning).

Will you undertake to type out in 2 copies (or in 1 copy) for payment no less than last time my manuscript of 500 pages (handwritten on octavo paper)**? I would publish it immediately in Petersburg.

You would oblige me greatly!

Answer me.

Yours in comradeship, Lenin

P.S. Lyudmila has left Stockholm. Do not write to Stockholm!

P.P.S. Will you and Olga go to Russia if there is an opportunity, and when? Who else from Geneva would go?

First published in complete form

* Good! Ed.

** This refers to Lenin's work "The Agrarian Program of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution of 1905-1907" (see Collected Works, 5th ed., vol. 16, pp. 193-413). Ed.

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Written March 25, 1917

Sent from Zurich to Geneva

Published in 1930 in Lenin Miscellany XIII

Printed from the manuscript