Letter to Vyacheslav Karpinsky, April 25, 1917

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Author(s) Lenin
Written 25 April 1917


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First published in 1923 in Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya No. 9. Sent from Petrograd to Geneva. Printed from the typewritten copy found in police records.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 35, pages 316-317.
Collection(s): Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya
Keywords : Letter, Vyacheslav Karpinsky

April 12, 1917

Dear Friend,

I hope that this letter will all the same reach you, and also the newspapers which are being sent to you. I say “all the same” because the difficulties of communication with foreign countries are incredibly great. We were allowed in, and received here with furious attacks, but up till now we have received no books, manuscripts or letters. Evidently the military censorship is working wonderfully—even with excessive zeal, since yon know, of course, that we had not even the slightest mention of the war, and could not have.

Please stop typing the agrarian manuscript, because I have found one copy here, already set. What is missing in it is the end, the end of the “Conclusion”,[1] beginning with the words:

“The whole of the peasantry and the proletariat are opposed to the private ownership of the land. The reformative path of creating a Junker-bourgeois Russia necessarily presupposes the preservation of the foundations of the old system of landownership and the slow....”

Now, from these words the end of the Conclusion is missing.

You will oblige me very much if from these words, and to the end of the Conclusion, you take 4–5 copies and send them (1) to me personally; (2) to Pravda, 32 Moika; (3) to Stockholm, to the address given to you. I ought to receive at least one of these copies.

Drop me a postcard, addressed to Pravda, or better still to M. T. Yelizarov (for V. I.), 48/9 Shirokaya, Flat 24,

Petrograd, whether yon have received this letter, and when yon sent the copies of the end of the Conclusion.

Our journey was wonderful, flatten was not admitted by Milyukov.

The atmosphere here is a furious campaign of the bourgeoisie against us. Among the workers and soldiers—sympathy.

Among the Social-Democrats, victory of “revolutionary defencism” (now, they say, there is something to defend—the Republic, against Wilhelm). Chkheidze and Co., Steklov (leaders of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies in Petrograd) have completely descended into revolutionary defencism. Chkheidze is in a bloc with Potresov. All are howling and screaming for “unity” of the whole Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. We, of course, are against.

On April 22, 1917 there will be an All-Russia Conference of the Bolsheviks (of our Party) in Petrograd.[2]

Write me whether our “Farewell Letter” has been published, in what languages and how sales are going.

Write whether you have received the papers (I am sending you a file of Pravda and cuttings from various papers). Keep Paris and all Switzerland as well informed as possible. All the best.

Yours,

V. Ulyanov

  1. ↑ What is meant here is the Conclusion to Lenin’s book The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905–1907. The book was written in November and December 1907 and printed in 1908, but while it was still at the print-shop it was confiscated by the police and destroyed.
    While he was abroad, Lenin decided that when he returned to Russia he would get the book reprinted. This was done in 1917, but only part of the Conclusion appeared. The Conclusion was not published in full until 1924, in the magazine Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya (No. 5, pp. 166–72), after the discovery in the Geneva Party archives of Lenin’s manuscript entitled “The Agrarian Problem during the First Russian Revolution (Towards a Revision of the Social-Democrats’ Agrarian Programme)”, which contained the full text of the Conclusion,
  2. ↑ Reference is to the Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the RSDLP(b), held in Petrograd, April 24–29 (May 7–12), 1917 (see present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 225–313).
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