Letter to Georgi Plekhanov, February 7, 1902

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February 7, 1902

Dear G. V.,

I am sending you the draft programme with Berg’s amendments. Please write whether you will insert the amendments or present a complete counterdraft. I should like to know also which passages you have found unsatisfactory.

Regarding religion, in a letter of Karl Marx on the Gotha Programme I read a sharp criticism of the demand for Gewissensfreiheit[1] and a statement that Social-Democrats ought to speak out plainly about their fight against religiösem Spuk.[2][3] Do you consider such a thing possible and in what form? In the matter of religion we are less concerned about cautiousness than the Germans, as is the case, too, in regard to the “republic”.

Will you please let Koltsov copy from your copy; it will not take much time.

How is your work going (if you are writing an article for Zarya, as we assume)? When do you think you will finish it?

You have still not sent me Neue Zeit (Nos. 1 and 3) and the letter on the agrarian programme! Please send them or write why there has been this delay.

I have ordered Conrad’s JahrbĂŒcher[4] for 1902 for you. Wirtschaftliche Chronik for 1901 will come out in February—it will be sent to you then. Have you subscribed to Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta[5] and have you already begun to receive it?

Have you heard anything more about the Rabocheye Dyelo people? We haven’t heard a thing.

My pamphlet is being set up.[6]

VorwÀrts has refused to publish even a condensed reply and the matter has gone to the Vorstand.[7] It is said that Bebel is on our side. We shall see.

All the very best.

Yours,

Frey

  1. ↑ Freedom of conscience.—Ed.
  2. ↑ Religious spookery. —Ed.
  3. ↑ See Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 11, Moscow, 1962, p. 35. p. 94
  4. ↑ Conrad’s JahrbĂŒcher—JahrbĂŒcher fĂŒr Nationalökonomie und Statistik—a periodical published in Jena from 1868 by the bourgeois economist J. Conrad. p. 94
  5. ↑ Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta (Commercial Industrial Gazette)—a daily supplement to Vestnik Finansov, Promyshlennosti i Torgovli (Finance, Industry and Trade Herald); published in St. Petersburg from 1893 to 1918. From 1894 onward was issued as an independent publication. p. 94
  6. ↑ What Is To Be Done? (See present edition, Vol. 5).—Ed.
  7. ↑ Executive Committee (of the German Social-Democratic Party).—Ed.