Letter to Grigori Shklovsky, March 13, 1912

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Author(s) Lenin
Written 13 March 1912


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First published in 1930 in Lenin Miscellany XIII. Sent from Paris to Berne. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 35, page 27
Keywords : Grigori Shklovsky, Letter

Dear Comrade,

Nadya sent you my little note today.[1] I hasten to let you know—so that there should be no misunderstanding and you should not make any mistake in your report— that yesterday there was a meeting in Paris of “ Social-Democrats” who were enemies of the Conference. They all (the Plekhanovites and the Golos group,[2] the Vperyod group and the conciliators, and tutti quanti[3] ) adopted a resolution of protest against the Conference, and also something about excluding me from the International Socialist Bureau[4] (this is from hearsay, because, of course, the Bolsheviks and the supporters of the Conference[5] did not attend the meeting).

Naturally, all this is laughable. If these gentry proved unable to retain their grip even on the CC Bureau Abroad (make fun of it in your report, using Plekhanov’s funeral oration in No. 15 of this Dnevnik, Supplement 2![6]), now they will be even less able to set up anything. Well, kind friends, not words but deeds: you boast that you have united. Do please unite in Nasha Zarya and Zhivoye Dyelo, and above all in Golos Sotsial-Demokrata.[7]

Comedians!

All the best, and best wishes for success.

Yours,

Lenin

  1. ↑ See the previous letter.—Ed.
  2. ↑ Golos group—Mensheviks associated with the liquidators’ paper Golos Sotsial-Demokrata (Voice of the Social-Democrat) published first in Geneva and then in Paris.
  3. ↑ The like.—Ed.
  4. ↑ International Socialist Bureau (I.S.B.)—permanent executive and information body of the Second International. The decision to set up the Bureau was taken at the Paris Congress of the Second International in 1900. From 1905 to 1912 Lenin represented the RSDLP in the Bureau. With the outbreak of the world war the I.S.B. became an obedient tool in the hands of the social-chauvinists.
  5. ↑ In Paris, on March 12, 1912, a meeting of representatives of the Bund Committee Abroad, the Vperyod group, Golos Sotsial– Demokrata, Trotsky’s Vienna Pravda, the pro-Party Mensheviks and the conciliators passed a slanderous anti-Party resolution aimed against the Sixth (Prague) All-Russia Conference of the RSDLP and its decisions. As representative of the CC of the RSDLP in the International Socialist Bureau, Lenin wrote two letters concerning this resolution to the Bureau Secretary Camille Huysmans (see present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 547–50, and this volume, pp. 31–32).
  6. ↑ Reference is to Plekhanov’s article “Vechnaya Pamyat” (Eternal Memory) published in Supplement 2 to No. 15 of Dnevnik Sotsial-Demokrata (Diary of a Social-Democrat), which Plekhanov brought out at intervals between March 1905 and April 1912 in Geneva. Sixteen numbers were issued. Publication was resumed in 1916 in Petrograd, but only one issue appeared.
  7. ↑ Nasha Zarya (Our Dawn), = Zhivoye Dyelo (Vital Cause) and = Golos Sotsial-Demokrata (Voice of the Social-Democrat) were organs of the Menshevik liquidators.
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