Letter to Pavel Axelrod, Middle of November 1895

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Author(s) Lenin
Written November 1895


MIA-bannière.gif
First published in 1923. Sent from St. Petersburg to Zurich. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1974, Moscow, Volume 34, page 23.
Keywords : Letter, Pavel Axelrod

We have received the Breslau report.[1] We unstuck it with great difficulty, in the course of which a large part was torn (the letter, thanks to the good paper, remained intact). Evidently you have not yet received the second letter. You must use very thin paste—not more than a teaspoonful of starch (and it must be potato starch, not wheat starch, which is too strong) to a glass of water. Ordinary (good) paste is needed only for the top sheet and coloured paper, and the paper holds well, under the action of a press, even with the thinnest paste. At any rate, the method is suitable and it should be used.

I am sending you the end of Thornton. We have material on the strike 1) at Thornton’s, 2) at Laferm’s, 3) on the Ivanovo-Voznesensk strike, 4) on the Yaroslavl strike (a worker’s letter, very interesting), and on the St. Petersburg Boot Manufacturing Factory. I am not sending it, as we have had no time yet to copy it and because I do not count on being in time for the first issue of the Miscellany. We have established contacts with the Narodnaya Volya printing-press,[2] which has already put out three things (not ours) and has taken one of ours.[3] We are planning to publish a newspaper,[4] in which this material will be printed. This will be definitely settled in about 1 \frac1/2 to 2 months’ time. If you think the material will arrive in time for the first issue, let us know at once.

Yours,

Ilyin

Have you any difficulty in handling our parcels? We must jointly improve the method.

  1. ↑ This refers to the report of the Breslau Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party hold in 1895. The correspondence from abroad was sent in the binding of a book. p. 23
  2. ↑ This refers to the illegal printing-press of the young Narodnaya Volya group, organised in January 1895. Lenin negotiated with this group for the purpose of using the press for the publication of literature for the workers. In November 1895 Lenin’s pamphlet Explanation of the Law on Fines Imposed on Factory Workers (see present edition, Vol. 2) was handed over to this group for printing. This is the fourth thing (“one of ours”) which Lenin refers to. p. 23
  3. ↑ Send us material, if you have any, for workers’ pamphlets. They will gladly print it. —Lenin
  4. ↑ This refers to Rabocheye Dyelo (Workers’ Cause), which was being prepared by the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. The first number of this newspaper was compiled and edited by Lenin, who also wrote all the main articles: the editorial “To the Russian Workers”, “What Are Our Ministers Thinking About?”, “Frederick Engels” (see present edition, Vol. 2). In addition the newspaper contained articles by other members of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle, such as G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, A. A. Vaneyev, P. K. Zaporozhets, L. Martov (Y. O. Tsederbaum) and M. A. Silvin.
    In his book What Is To be Done? Lenin wrote: “This issue was ready to go to press when it was seized by the gendarmes, on the night of December 8, 1895, in a raid on the house of one of the members of the group, Anatoly Alexeyevich Vaneyev, so that the first edition of Rabocheye Dyelo was not destined to see the light of day” (see present edition, Vol. 5, p. 376). p. 23
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