148. TO A. V. LUNACHARSKY (original) (raw)
V. I. Lenin
148
To: A. V. LUNACHARSKY
Written: Written at the end of August 1905
Published: First published in 1934. Sent from Geneva to Italy. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers,1974, Moscow,Volume 34, pages 334-335.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup: D. Moros
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2005).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 An. Vas.,
Your plan for a pamphlet on Three Revolutions pleased me immensely. I’d drop the reply to Plekhanov for the time being if I were you—let that enraged doctrinaire bark away to his heart’s content. To delve specially into philosophy at such a time! You must work as hard as you can for Social-Democracy—don’t forget that you are committed for your entire working time.
As for the Three Revolutions, tackle this straight away. This subject has to be dealt with in a thorough manner. I am sure you could make a success of it. Describe, in a popular way, the tasks of socialism, its essence and the conditions for its realisation. Then—victory in the present revolution, the significance of the peasant movement (a separate chapter), what could_now_ be regarded as complete victory; a provisional government, revolutionary army, uprising—the significance and conditions of new forms of struggle. Revolution a la 1789 and a la_1848. Finally (better to make this the second part and the preceding one—the third), about the bourgeois character of the revolution, more fully about the economic aspect, then thoroughly expose the_Osvobozhdeniye people in all their interests, tactics and political intrigue.
This is a rich theme indeed, and a militant one, against the _Iskra_vulgarisers. Please tackle it at once and take your time over it. It is extremely important to produce a popular thing on this subject, something forceful and pointed.
Now about the split. You misunderstood me. It’s no use your waiting for me, for these are different subjects: one is the history (we shall try to manage that); the other—an outline of their polemical methods. A literary-critical out line on the subject, let us say, of “cheap and shoddy literature”. Here an analysis is to be given in a whole pamphlet of several chapters, with quotations, showing up all this disgusting claptrap of Old Believer, Martov and the rest in their polemic with_Proletary_, as well as the rehash of this theme in “Majority or Minority”, etc. Pillory them for their paltry method of warfare. Make them into a type. Draw a full-length portrait of them by quotations from their own writings! I am sure you’d pull it off, if only you collect a few quotations.
All the very best.
Yours,
Lenin
P.S. I have received the article about Kuzmin-Karavayev. Also the 1848 feuilleton.