V. I.   Lenin

TO G. V. PLEKHANOV

Published: First published in 1956 in Kommunist No. 16. Sent from London to Geneva. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 36, page 125.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive.   You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. • README

Dear Georgi Valentinovich,

I was already going to inquire why you were silent, when I received your letter. Your requests will be fulfilled.

Why do you say nothing either (1) about a topic for Iskra or (2) about a feature article on Tarasov^[3]? Did you not get my letter from Berne? Please reply as soon as possible whether you intend to write a leading article for Iskra on this or some similar theme. [As soon as possible, because No. 28 is ready and the setting of No. 29 has begun. In No. 28, there is a leading article by Vera Ivanovna against the S.R.s to show that they are distorting history by their inventions that no politicians were insulted in the period of Narodnaya Volya,^[4] etc. The heading is: “Le mort saisit le vif”.^[1] ]

How are your polemics with “Vladimirov” going? What about your lecture? How are Lalayants’s and the other study groups? What are the Zhizn people^[5] up to?

Best wishes,
Yours,
Lenin

Yes, I almost forgot to say that Lev^[2]

Please forward the enclosed letter by local post.

Notes

[1] “The Dead Seizes the Living.”—Ed.

[2] The phrase is incomplete.—Ed.

[3] G. V. Plekhanov promised to analyse K. Tarasov’s (N. S. Rusanov) article “The Evolution of the Russian Socialist Thinking” published in Vestnik Russkoi Revolutsii (Herald of the Russian Revolution). But he did it not for Iskra, but in his preface to A. Tun’s History of Revolutionary Movements in Russia (1903).

[4] Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will)—a secret political Narodnik terrorist organisation which came into being in August 1879, after the split in the Narodnik Zemlya i Volya (Land and Freedom) society.

[5] Zhizn people—members of the Zhizn (Life) Social-Democratic group.