Letter to Alexander Bogdanov, November 2, 1904

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Written jointly with Krupskaya. Passages by Krupskaya are in brevier.—Ed.

November 2

Your letter of October 9 (22) received. The undeciphered letter has been repeated. Not a word about the light-minded Minonosets. To what address was the money sent? Lidin, Alexeyev, Afanasyeva have left, no news from Popova.

Now for some semi-foreign, semi-Russian news.

The Bonch-Bruyevich and Lenin Publishers are very slow, pamphlets are coming out in driblets. The long-promised pamphlet The Fight for a Congress has only just come out. The hitch there is partly due to the printery, but mainly to lack of money. In general the money question is most desperate, for sending people to Russia (the demand is enormous) and transport cost a great deal. Every effort should be made to obtain a big sum. This is now the only hitch, everything else we have. Without a big sum we are doomed to the intolerable, depressing vegetable existence we are leading here. We must get that money if it kills us. For Russia is organising and expects decisive steps from us! The Riga Committee has adopted a resolution supporting this publishing business, and so have the Odessa, Nikolayev and Yekaterinoslav committees. Many people are asking why the Majority did not ask permission, but they completely ignore the actual situation and forget that Bonch-Bruyevich and Lenin acted as private individuals and not in the name of a group, though in Russia this was not understood and a resolution was adopted in support of the group headed by Bonch Bruyevich and Lenin, which is absurd. The CC refused to transport Majority literature on the grounds that it was not Party literature.

There is virtually a complete split in the Party. The Minority and the CC have already made a deal and they are pursuing a common line consisting in machinations against the congress and liquidating the committees “from below”. This is done by sending into the militant Majority committees Minority groups which lay siege to the committee, carry on agitation in order to undermine confidence in it among the public, among the workers, and especially in the periphery. Then, after the ground has been prepared with the aid of the periphery, they kick up a row in the committee demanding its surrender. This is what is happening now, with the benevolent participation of the CC, in Petersburg. The CC is pursuing a hypocritical policy towards the Majority committees, assuring them that if there is no reconciliation with the Minority, which, they say, is quite possible (there’s hypocrisy for you!), the CC will call the congress, that the CC is not against the congress and has not changed its views, that it considers it possible to make a deal with the Editorial Board of the Central Organ since they do not consider it the organ of the Party but of a group. Although it is a Majority CC, the fact is that at the Congress and after it, the only consideration in the elections to the CC was whether X or Y was a good practical worker; the Congress gave the CC no ligne de conduite, and hence it can lay down its own line and is not obliged to adhere to the Majority stand. In a word, they talk any amount of nonsense.

In Russia there is strong resentment against them. The Nikolayev, Odessa and Yekaterinoslav committees called a conference and adopt ed a resolution.... The Majority participants answered them as follows.... It is proposed to elect candidates from a few of our own committees, then announce the formation of a Bureau of the Majority Committees, and after that make the rounds of the rest of the committees inviting them to join in and add one or two of their own candidates to the list.

Where is Boroda? Arrange for a password with Gorky. When are you coming?

Do everything you can to make the light-minded Minonosets move faster. The procrastination is inexplicable and terribly harmful. Reply at once and in greater detail, and more definitely. So far the Bureau nominees are Demon, Felix, Baron, Lidin, Alexeyev, Gusev, Pavlovich.