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Special pages :
Letter to Maxim Gorky, April 16, 1908
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1974, Moscow, Volume 34, page 393
April 16, 1908
Dear Al. M.,
Today I received your letter and hasten to reply. It is useless and harmful for me to come: I cannot and will not talk to people who are preaching the union of scientific socialism and religion. The time for notebooks[1] is past. Itâs no use arguing, and itâs stupid to jangle oneâs nerves for nothing. Philosophy must be separated from Party (factional) affairs: the decision of the Bolshevik Centre[2] makes this obligatory.
I have already sent to be printed the most formal declaration of war.[3] There is no longer any room for diplomacy hereâof course, I am speaking of diplomacy not in the bad sense, but in the good sense of the word.
âGoodâ diplomacy on your part, dear A. M. (if you, too, have not come to believe in God), should consist in separating our joint (i.e., including myself) affairs from philosophy.
A talk on other matter than philosophy wonât come off now: it would be unnatural. Incidentally, if these other matters, not philosophical, but Proletary matters, for example, really demand talks just now, and at your place, I could come (I donât know whether I shall find the money: there are difficulties at present), but I repeat: only on condition that I do not speak about philosophy or religion.
And I definitely intend coming to have a talk with you when I am free and through with my work.
All the very best.
Yours,
Lenin
Best regards to M. F.: she is not for God, by any chance, is she?
- â âNotebooksâââNotes of an Ordinary Marxist on Philosophyââ was written by Lenin in 1906 in connection with Bogdanovâs book Empirio-monism (Issue III). Lenin deals with these âNotesâ in greater detail in his letter to Gorky dated February 25, 1908^^(see Vol. 13 of this edition)^^.
- â The Bolshevik Centre was elected by the Bolshevik group of the Fifth (London) Congress of the RSDLP in 1907.
- â Lenin is referring to his article âMarxism and Revisionismâ published in the symposium Karl Marxâ1818â1883, in which he stated for the first time in print that he would shortly write a number of articles or a separate book against the neo-Humist and neo-Berkeleyan revisionistsâBogdanov, Bazarov and others^^(see Vol. 15, pp. 29â39, of this edition)^^.