TO V. A. KARPINSKY (May 23, 1914)

Written after May 23, 1914 · First published in 1930 in Lenin Miscellany XIII. Sent from Poronin to Geneva. Printed from the original. · page 286

Dear Friend,

Many thanks for Volume I of Rubakin. I will return it soon. If it is urgent, drop me a line. I am very glad that you don’t sympathise with Sovremennik: it is a rotten undertaking by a bloc of two lots of scoundrels, the liquidators and the Narodniks. We shall attack it violently. (Mr. Stankevich invited me; I replied: “Because I do not agree in the main, I must decline to be a contributor.”^[1] )

Of course, to earn a living all of us sometimes have to work in bourgeois publications! But Messrs. Martov and Dan have made a “demonstration” of it! Plekhanov, too, is in that disgraceful place!^[2]

I shall be glad to send you the credential of a delegate: do you want it to be legal (how?) or illegal?^[3]

All the best,
Yours,
Lenin

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[1]See p. 276 of this volume.—Ed.

[2] The work of L. Martov, F. Dan and G. Plekhanov in Sovremennik.

[3] V. Karpinsky was delegated to the Vienna International Congress of the Second International (which was not held).