TO THE BUREAU OF THE CC OF THE RSDLP IN RUSSIA

Lenin

April 16, 1912

Dear Friends,

For God’s sake give us more contacts. Contacts, contacts, contacts, that’s what we haven’t got. 

Without this everything is unstable. Remember that two have already left the scene, there are no 

replacements for them. Without contacts everything will fall to pieces after one or two further arrests. You must without fail set up regional committees (or simply groups of trusted agents), linked up with us, for every region. Without this everything is shaky. As regards publication, you should press on with reprinting the entire resolution about the elections,45 to make it everywhere available in full and among the masses.

As regards the money, it is time to stop being naïve about the Germans. Trotsky is now in full command there, and carrying on a furious struggle. You must send us a mandate to take the matter to the courts, otherwise we shall get nothing. We have already sent the May Day leaflet everywhere. I advise you to publish the appeal to the peasants about the elections as a leaflet (from Rabochaya. 

Gazeta: the peasantry and the elections).† Make sure of republishing the long article from Rabochaya Gazeta. This is an essential supplement to the platform, in which a very important paragraph about socialism has been omitted. Write! Contacts, contacts. Greetings.

P.S. Vorwärts is printing the most brazen lies, as, for example, that all Russia has already declared in favour of the Bundist-Lettish conference. It’s Trotsky and Co. who are writing, and the Germans believe them. Altogether, Trotsky is boss in Vorwärts. The foreign department is controlled by Hilferding, Trotsky’s friend.

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 35, pp. 34-35

* This letter was sent via the Kiev Committee of the RSDLP.—Ed.

† See “The Peasantry and the Elections to the Fourth Duma” (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 17, pp. 529- 3l).—Ed.