114. To A. A. PREOBRAZHENSKY

Written in April, prior to 21st, 1905 · First published in 1926 in Lenin Miscellany V. Sent from Geneva to Samara. Printed from the original. · page 156

Dear Comrade,

We received your letter and were very glad to hear from you. Congratulations on overcoming the obstacles raised by the notorious agents appointed to conceal the truth.^[2] Do everything possible to keep in touch with us regularly by letter. This is urgently necessary. As soon as correspondence is arranged, we shall give you some interesting assignments.   At present we are looking forward to the congress. It is to open in a few days. The C.C. and Plekhanov still have not made their position quite clear. It looks as if a split is inevitable. Reply at once if you want to be informed about the congress sooner and more accurately than anyone else.

Best regards,
Yours,
Lenin,
your former village neighbour.^[3] Is that peasant radical^[1] you used to bring to me still alive? What is his stand now? Why don’t you find us contacts with the peasants?

Notes

[1] D. Y. Kislikov.—Ed.

[2] “Overcoming the obstacles”—not allowing the Mensheviks to take over the Bolshevik underground printing shop in Samara which the Menshevik agents of the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P. were bent on doing.

[3] Lenin was a neighbour of A. A. Preobrazhensky’s when he spent the summer months of 1889–93 in Alakayevka. Preobrazhensky stayed a few versts away at the Shornel farmstead.