Published:
First published in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXI.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1976],
Moscow,
Volume 35,
page 368.
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 Comrades,
I have received your paper numbered 24962 with an extract from the resolution of the Presidium of October 7.
In all conscience I must say that this resolution is so politically illiterate and so stupid that it makes one sick. “...The Presidium is obliged to disclaim responsibility....” That is how capricious young ladies behave, not grown-up politicians. You will not free yourselves of responsibility, but increase it threefold.
If the Commissariat of Public Education does not reply to you and does not fulfil its duty towards you, then you are obliged to complain, and with documents. You are not, children, are you, that you can’t understand this?
When did you complain? Where is the copy? Where are the documents and the proofs?
Both the whole Presidium and Vinogradov, in my opinion, ought to be sent to prison for a week for inactivity.
If the Commissariat of Public Education “does not produce the busts” (when did you demand them? From whom? The copy and the document? When did you complain?), you should have fought for your rights. But “to disclaim responsibility” is the way of capricious young ladies and stupid Russian intellectuals.
Forgive this frank expression of my opinion, and accept communist greetings from one who hopes that you will get your lesson in prison for inaction in authority, and from one who is profoundly indignant at your behaviour.
October 13, 1918
V. I. Lenin in the Kremlin courtyard during convalescence after the attempt on his life. October 1918
[1] Lenin was prompted to write this letter by the decision of the Presidium of the Moscow Soviet of October 7, 1918, in which the loaders of the Soviet attempted to avoid responsibility for not carrying out the decree of the Council of People’s Commissars on setting up in Moscow monuments to outstanding figures in the revolutionary movement and the world of culture.
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