Letter to Lev Kamenev, March 21, 1910

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21.III. 10

Dear L. B.,

The article about Koltsov received, read and passed on...[1] ; I liked it very much, I think it turned out quite well[2]..., no doubt it will cause a grand row? but there is a constant row there as it is!! The composition of the CO has deteriorated[3]—a year before the plenum not a single row. Now not a single issue [without ] some document of protest, threats and hysterics from Martov....

[How do matters stand ] with the report?

Don’t give me away, for the love of Christ!

I am again being “harried”—that is to say, reminded—by the International Bureau. Write, write that [report ] as quickly as possible [for the sake ] of all that’s holy.... As soon as the report is ready we shall [tackle ] a legal Bolshevik [journal].[4]

With best regards,

Yours,

Lenin

P.S. Rather scurvy behaviour of Trotsky’s in No. 10 of Pravda,[5] I must say!

  1. ↑ Manuscript partly damaged. Words in square brackets have been inserted as suggested by the context and the remaining legible letters.—Ed.
  2. ↑ A reference to L. B. Kamenev’s article “Another ‘Critic’ of the Proletarian Movement”, printed in Sotsial-Demokrat No. 14, June 22 (July 5), 1910.
  3. ↑ The Editorial Board of Sotsial-Demokrat, the Central Organ of the RSDLP, consisted, as decided by the January 1910 plenary meeting of the CC, RSDLP, of 2 Bolsheviks, 2 Mensheviks, and one representative of the Social-Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania. Its composition was as follows: from the Bolsheviks, Lenin and G. Y. Zinoviev; from the Mensheviks, Y. 0. Martov and F. I. Dan, and from the Polish Social-Democrats, A. Warski. When Martov and Dan found themselves in the minority on one or another question, they created conflicts and complained to the Central Committee Bureau Abroad about the Bolsheviks and the representative of Polish Social-Democracy. The CC Bureau Abroad addressed an inquiry to the CC concerning the “extent of the jurisdiction of the CC Bureau Abroad in matters relating to conflicts arising in the Editorial Board of the Central Organ”. The Bolsheviks proposed to the CC that a plenary meeting of the CC be called to replace Martov and Dan in the Editorial Board of the Central Organ with pro-Party Mensheviks (see present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 191–94).
  4. ↑ The journal Mysl (Thought), started publication in Moscow in December 1910. It was closed in April 1911, the last issue, No. 5, being confiscated.
  5. ↑ A reference to the Menshevik liquidationist paper Pravda, Trotsky’s factionalist organ, published in 1908–12. The first issues came out in Lvov and from No. 4 on it was published in Vienna.