Letter to the Central and St. Petersburg Committees of the RSDLP, August 14, 1905

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To Absolut’s address

To the Members of the CC and the St. Petersburg

Committee from Lenin

14.VIII.

Dear Comrades,

I have received a letter and a “statement” from Comrade Konstantin Sergeyevich, and consider it my duty to give the following reply, which I would ask all members of the St. Petersburg Committee to read. Needless to say, the conflict should be examined, in accordance with the Rules of the Party, by the Central Committee, and I am far from presuming to pass judgement from here. But in view of the reference to the “Lushin letter” as emanating from abroad, I must express my opinion. Lushin is a despicable defector from the Majority to the Minority, offended for not having been invited to the Third Congress. The “Lushin letter” was published by the author (in the press) earlier, before the Third Congress, and contained the absurd charge that the Majority had shown insufficient resolution(!) in fighting the Minority. Comrade Konstantin Sergeyevich made a mistake in signing the letter, but to hold it against him would be the height of unreasonableness. It was a forgivable mistake for a man unfamiliar with the “mores” (or rather lack of mores) of the émigrés. Konstantin Sergeyevich himself dissociated himself at once from this Lushin person. Having known Konstantin Sergeyevich first as a splendid, one of the most valuable correspondents, and then having met him personally in Geneva, I must commend him as a worker, and resolutely object to the “Lushin letter” being used against him.