Reply to the Article in Leipziger Volkszeitung

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

Leipziger Volkszeitung—a German Social-Democratic daily, published from 1894 to 1933. Until World War I it was the organ of the Left-wing German Social-Democrats. For a number of years it was edited by F. Mehring. Among contributors to the paper were Rosa Luxemburg, and J. Marchlewski.

Lenin’s article was published in the newspaper under the editorial heading: “An objection. Letters to the Editors”.

Leipziger Volkszeitung, issue No. 157 for July 11, 1914, published an article over the signature of Z. L. entitled “On the Question of Unity in Russia”. The writer’s lack of objectivity compels us to draw the attention of the German comrades to certain facts. For the sake of graphic illustration, we quote the following table which was published in Pravda.

Collections for Marxist (Pravdist) and liquidationist newspapers in St. Petersburg from January 1 to May 13, 1914

	Pravdists		Liquidators
	Number of collections	Sum collected	Number of collections	Sum collected
Workers’ groups	2,873	18,934.10	671	5,296.12
Total from non- workers . . . .	713	2,650.01	453	6,759.77
including:
Student and youth groups	54	650.92	45	630.22
Groups of “adher- ents”, “friends”, etc.	42	458.82	54	2.sic450.60
Other groups	33	125.29	30	186.12
Individuals	531	1,046.62	266	1,608.32
Unspecified	43	318.57	24	175.34
From abroad	10	49.79	34	1,709.17
Total . .	3,586	21,584.11	1,124	12,055.89

1. We gave the exact dates for which these figures were calculated (from January 1 to May 13, 1914). The liquidators gave no dates. Would it be honest, in such a case, to compare facts that are incomparable and unauthentic?

2. The liquidators themselves stated and published in the press (Nasha Rabochaya Gazeta No. 34) that all their groups, i. e., not the workers’ groups alone, totalled 948. Our statistics, on the other hand, specified that the figures 2,873 and 671 referred to workers’ groups alone. The total number of groups is given in our table, and that number does not coincide with the number of workers’ groups. Is it honest to pass this over in silence?

3. Our newspaper reported that we gave the contributions made by the workers’ groups for both newspapers and that we had no information about recurrent contributions by the same groups. The information was the same for both news papers. It is absolutely incomprehensible how any honest critic could discover an “error” here!

4. We quoted parallel figures, that is, figures covering the same period for both newspapers, and the information for both papers was tabulated by the same method.

The liquidators quoted no parallel figures at all, thus violating the most elementary and well-known rules of statistical work. Anyone who is interested in this question can easily get both newspapers and verify our information.

We are sure that no open-minded person can call the methods used by the “critic” Z. L. honest.