Written: Written on September 13, 1915
Published:
First published in 1929 in Lenin Miscellany XI.
Sent from Sörenberg to Geneva.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
page 350.
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.
Dear V. K.,
I was away on business for a few days (and only for that period did I ask that everything should be sent to Geneva; now please send everything again—including the booklet— to Sörenberg).
On my arrival I found your letter about Rolland’s articles.[1] I am terribly worried about your not having received them. I sent them to you by letter post two weeks ago, if not more. I have not had any cases before this of unregistered letters being lost in Switzerland. Could there be some mistake? Perhaps someone has received these articles in your absence? Write about this, please. If the answer is that there was not, and could not have been any mistake, and if you do not have the articles, I will naturally do everything possible to get them for you (if I have lost them). I shall either buy this issue, or (if it has been sold out) get it from the library and make a complete copy for you. I am very sorry, and please write to me as soon as possible how matters stand. If you require a copy, how soon? Write frankly.
Regards,
Yours,
Lenin
For some reason I have stopped receiving Zhizn. Is there no exchange? Would you make an inquiry? And what about Vperyod[2]? What news is there of the O.C. miscellany[3] and the Bund publications? Kommunist No. 1–2 has appeared.[4] This is a fact.
[1] A reference to Romain Holland’s articles in Journal de Genève from August to October 1914. The French Government held up the re-issue of these articles, and they were published only in 1915 in the collection, Romain Rolland, Au-dessus de la m&ehat;lée. Paris. Paul Ollendorff; Neuch&ahat;tel, Attinger Frères, 1915.
[2] Vperyod (Forward)—a periodical of the Vperyod group, published in Geneva from August 25,1915 (No. 1) to February 1,1917 (No. 6). Among those who took part in the publication were A. V. Lunacharsky (A. Voinov), P. I. Lebedev (V. Polyansky), and D. Z. Manuilsky (I. Bezrabotny).
[3] A reference to the miscellany The International and the War No. 1, issued by the Secretariat Abroad of the Organising Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. in 1915.
[4] The magazine Kommunist was founded by Lenin and published by the editorial board of Sotsial-Demokrat jointly with G. L. Pyatakov and Yevgenia Bosch, who financed the publication. N. I. Bukharin was also on the editorial board. Only one (double) issue appeared. It carried Lenin’s articles “The Collapse of the Second International”, “The Voice of an Honest French Socialist”, and “Imperialism and Socialism in Italy”.
Lenin expected to turn the magazine into an organ of the Left-wing Social-Democrats, but serious differences soon developed between the Sotsial-Demokrat Editorial Board and Bukharin, Pyatakov and Bosch, which were aggravated after the appearance of the first issue.
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