Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Myasnikov[1]
V. I. Lenin
Written: 5 August, 1921
First Published: 1921; Published according to the manuscript
Source: Lenins Collected Works, 1st English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 32,
pages 504-509
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\HTML Markup: David Walters & R. Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute
this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
August 5, 1921
Comrade Myasnikov,
I have only just managed to read both your articles. I am unaware of the nature of the
speeches you made in the Perm (I think it was Perm) organisation and of your conflict
with it. I can say nothing about that; it will be dealt with by the Organisation Bureau,
which, I hear, has appointed a special commission.
My object is a different one: it is to appraise your articles as literary and political
documents.
They are interesting documents.
Your main mistake is, I think, most clearly revealed in the article Vexed Questions. And
I consider it my duty to do all I can to try to convince you.
At the beginning of the article you make a correct application of dialectics. Indeed,
whoever fails to understand the substitution of the slogan of civil peace for the slogan
of civil war lays himself open to ridicule, if nothing worse. In this, you are right.
But precisely because you are right on this point, I am surprised that in drawing your
conclusions, you should have forgotten the dialectics which you yourself had properly
applied.
Freedom of the press, from the monarchists to the anarchists, inclusively . . . . Very
good! But just a minute: every Marxist and every worker who ponders over the four
years experience of our revolution will say, Lets look into this-what sort of freedom of
the press? What for? For which class?
We do not believe in absolutes. We laugh at pure democracy .
The freedom of the press slogan became a great world slogan at the close of the
Middle Ages and remained so up to the nineteenth century. Why? Because it expressed
the ideas of the progressive bourgeoisie, i.e., its struggle against kings and priests,
feudal lords and landowners.
No country in the world has done as much to liberate the masses from the influence of
priests and landowners as the R.S.F.S.R. has done, and is doing. We have been
performing this function of freedom of the press better than anyone else in the world.
All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom
to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake public opinion for the
benefit of the bourgeoisie.
This is a fact.
No one will ever be able to refute it.
And what about us?
Can anyone deny that the bourgeoisie in this country has been defeated, but not
destroyed? That it has gone into hiding? Nobody can deny it.
Freedom of the press in the R.S.F.S.R., which is surrounded by the bourgeois enemies of
the whole world, means freedom of political organisation for the bourgeoisie and its most
loyal servants, the Memisheviks and SocialistRevolutionaries.
It will cost us a supreme effort to extricate ourselves, but we will get out, and have
already begun to do so.
We will extricate oirselves, for, in the main, our policy is a correct one, and takes into
account all the class forces on an international scale. We will extricate ourselves because
we do not try to make our position look better than it is. We realise all the difficulties. We
see all the maladies, and are taking measures to cure them methodically, with
perseverance, and without giving way to panic.
You have allowed panic to get the better of you; panic is a slope-once you stepped on it
you slid down into a position that looks very much as if you are forming a new party, or
are about to commit suicide.
You must not give way to panic.
Is there any isolation of the Communist Party cells from the Party? There is. It is an evil, a
misfortune, a malaise.
It is there. It is a severe ailment.
We can see it.
It must be cured by proletarian and Party measures and not by means of freedom (for
the bourgeoisie).
Much of what you say about reviving the countrys economy, about mechanical ploughs,
etc., about fighting for influence over the peasantry, etc., is true and useful.
Why not bring this out separately? We shall get together and work harmoniously in one
party. The benefits will be great; they will not come all at once, but very slowly.
Revive the Soviets; secure the co-operation of non-Party people; let non-Party people
verify the work of Party members: this is absolutely right. No end of work there, and it
has hardly been started.
Why not amplify this in a practical way? In a pamphlet for the Congress?
Why not take that up?
Why be afraid of spade work (denounce abuses through the Central Control Commission,
or the Party press, Pravda)? Misgivings about slow, difficult and arduous spade work
cause people to give way to panic and to seek an easy way out: freedom of the press
(for the bourgeoisie).
Why should you persist in your mistake-an obvious mistake-in your non-Party, antiproletarian slogan of freedom of the press? Why not take up the less brilliant
(scintillating with bourgeois brilliance) spade work of driving out abuses, combating
them, and helping non-Party people in a practical and business-like way?
Have you ever brought up any particular abuse to the notice of the C.C., and suggested a
definite means of eradicating it?
No, you have not.
Not a single time.
You saw a spate of misfortunes and maladies, gave way to despair and rushed into the
arms of the enemy, the bourgeoisie (freedom of the press for the bourgeoisie). My
advice is: do not give way to despair and panic.
We, and those who sympathise with us, the workers and peasants, still have an immense
reservoir of strength. We still have plenty of health and vigour.
We are not doing enough to cure our ailments.
We are not doing a good job of practising the slogan: promote non-Party people, let nonParty people verify the work of Party members.
But we can, and will, do a hundred times more in this field than we are doing.
I hope that after thinking this over carefully you will not, out of false pride, persist in an
obvious political mistake (freedom of the press), but, pulling yourself together and
overcoming the panic, will get down to practical work: help to establish ties with nonParty people, and help non-Party people to verify the work of Party members.
There is no end o work in this field. Doing this work you can (and should) help to cure the
disease, slowly but surely, instead of chasing after will-o-the-wisps like freedom of the
press.
With communist greetings,
Lenin
Endnotes
[1] Lenin wrote the letter in connection with Myasnikov's article "Vexed Questions", his
memo to the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.) and his speeches in the Petrograd and
Perm Party organisations. Myasnikov had set up an anti-Party group in the Motovilikha
District of Perm Gubernia which fought against Party policy. A Central Committee
commission investigated his activity and proposed his expulsion from the Party for
repeated breaches of discipline and organisation of an anti-Party group contrary to the
resolution "On Party Unity" of the Party's Tenth Congress. His expulsion was approved by
the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.) on February 20, 1922.