1912
1. To MAXIM GORKY
Dear A. M.,
We shall shortly send you the resolutions of the Conference.[1] We have finally succeeded—in spite of the liquidationist[2] scoundrels—in reviving the Party and its Central Committee. I hope you will be as glad of this as we are.
Won’t you write a May Day leaflet for us? Or a little leaflet in a similar May Day spirit? Quite a short one, a “heart-warmer”, what do you say? Think of old times, remember 1905, and put down a couple of words, if you have the mind to write. There are two or three illegal printing-presses in Russia, and the Central Committee will republish it, probably, in several tens of thousands of copies. It would be a good thing to gel a revolutionary manifesto like the Tales in Zvezda.[3] T am very, very glad that you are helping Zvezda. We are having a devilish hard job with it—internal and external and financial difficulties are immense—but still we are managing so far.
All the best,
Lenin
P.S.And Sovremennik[4] has had the sense to die, after all! That was a good deed on its part.
[1] Reference is to the resolutions passed by the Sixth (Prague) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. of 1912. The resolutions and “Announcement” concerning the Conference were published in booklet form in Paris in February 1912 by the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P.
[2] Liquidationism—an opportunist trend in the R.S.D.L.P. that emerged in the period of reaction following the defeat of the 1905- 07 revolution. The liquidators demanded liquidation of the illegal revolutionary party of the working class and tried to subordinate the working-class movement to bourgeois interests. The Sixth (Prague) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. expelled the liquidators from the Party.
[3] Zvezda (The Star)—legal Bolshevik newspaper (December 1910- May 5, 1912). In 1911 and 1912 it published seven stories by Gorky from his Tales of Italy series.
[4] Sovremennik (The Contemporary)—literary and political monthly published in St. Petersburg from 1911 to 1915. It was a rallying point for Menshevik liquidators, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Popular Socialists and Left-wing liberals.