Written: Written January 15, 1903
Published:
First published in 1928.
Sent from London to St. Petersburg.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1974,
Moscow,
Volume 34,
pages 131-132.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
D. Moros
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2005).
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
We have received (from somewhere abroad) a new Bouncer document, dated October 1902, a programme and principles of organisation—muddled and pernicious. We are devilishly vexed and offended at your failure to send us immediately and directly (in two copies to different addresses) all the St. Petersburg productions. It is Simply outrageous that up to now we have not had the first leaflet of the Bouncer people (the July “protest” against the recognition of Iskra) and only learnt about it from Otkliki![1] Surely it is not difficult to send leaflets when all letters arrive quite all right! More outrageous still is the fact that you hold up your replies so long. Ignat has told us that his leaflet replying to the Bouncer drivel was written a long time ago, but that you held it up and substituted another one, longer, feebler and more watered-down, only in the end to publish none at all! If it couldn’t be published, surely it could have been sent here in a letter!
For Christ’s sake, explain what is the matter; is it due to sheer bungling oversight on the part of someone in the Committee (or of the whole Committee?) or to deliberate opposition and intrigue within the Committee?
We cannot rid ourselves of the impression inevitably created by all this: namely, that the Bouncers are steadily ousting you, deceiving you and before long will kick you out altogether.
We would strongly advise electing Bogdan in place of the missing member of the Organising Commmittee from St. Petersburg[2] he fully deserves it. And in general, apparently, things will never advance an inch without professional revolutionaries.
[1] Lenin refers to the two leaflets (that of September and October) of the Workers’ Organisation Committee quoted in the article “The St. Petersburg Split” published in Iskra No. 30, for December 15, 1902.
The September leaflet was previously published in the “Supplement” to Otkliki (Comments) No. 1, December 1902, issued by the Svoboda group in Geneva.
[2] Krasnukha V. P., the St. Petersburg member of the O.C., was arrested in November 1902.
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