Letter to Karl Hjalmar Branting, April 19, 1901

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The letter was an exhibit at the Royal Library exposition in Stockholm in 1955. It was first published in Sweden on March 8, 1955, in Morgon-Tidningen (Morning Newspaper) No. 65, and then on March 11, in Helsingin Sanomat (Helsinki News) No. 68.

April 19, 1901

Dear Comrade,

Our comrade in Berlin has already written you on our behalf that we should like to establish closer contacts with the Swedish and Finnish comrades.

Allow me, at this time, to make the following request on behalf of the editorial board of the Russian Social-Democratic journal Zarya (J.H.W. Dietz Verlag. Stuttgart).

We attach very great importance to informing the Russians in general, and the Russian workers in particular, of the political situation in Finland and the oppression of Finland, and also of the stubborn struggle waged by the Finns against despotism. We should therefore be most grateful to you if you transmitted to all the Finnish comrades you know our urgent request to support us in this undertaking.

It would of course be particularly helpful for us if we could find a permanent Finnish contributor who would send us, firstly, monthly notes (4,000-8,000 letters), and, secondly, longer articles and reviews from time to time. We need the latter for Zarya and the former for the illegal Russian paper Iskra, whose editorial board has made this request of us.

If you think it useful, I will send you Zarya and two issues of Iskra.

The articles may be written also in Swedish or in Finnish; we shall find a translator ourselves.

I beg you to inform me whether you can comply with our request.

With Social-Democratic greetings,

I. Petrov

P.S. Please excuse my extremely bad German.

My address is as follows:

Herrn J. H. W. Dietz Verlag.

Furthbachstr. 12.

Stuttgart.

On the inner envelope:

An die Redaktion der Morgenröte—für Herrn Petroff.