Published: First published in Pravda No. 51, March 2, 1924. Sent from Cracow to Capri. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [1976], Moscow, Volume 35, pages 121-124.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive. You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit âMarxists Internet Archiveâ as your source. ⢠README
Dear A. M.,
Whatever are you doing? This is simply terrible, it really is!
Yesterday I read your reply in Rech to the âhowlingâ over Dostoyevsky,[1] and was preparing to rejoice, but today the liquidatorsâ paper arrives, and in it there is a paragraph of your article which was not in Rech.
This paragraph runs as follows:
âAnd âgod-seekingâ should be for the time beingâ (only for the time being?) âput asideâit is a useless occupation: itâs no use seeking where there is nothing to be found. Unless you sow, you cannot reap. You have no God, you have not yetâ (yet!) âcreated him. Gods are not soughtâthey are created; people do not invent life, they create it.â
So it turns out that you are against âgod-seekingâ only âfor the time beingâ!! It turns out that you are against god-seeking only in order to replace it by god-building!!
Well, isnât it horrible that such a thing should appear in your article?
God-seeking differs from god-building or god-creating or god-making, etc., no more than a yellow devil differs from a blue devil. To talk about god-seeking, not in order to declare against all devils and gods, against every ideological necrophily (all worship of a divinity is necrophilyâbe it the cleanest, most ideal, not sought-out but built-up divinity, itâs all the same), but to prefer a blue devil to a yellow one is a hundred times worse than not saying anything about it at all.
In the freest countries, in countries where it is quite out of place to appeal âto democracy, to the people, to public opinion and scienceâ, in such countries (America, Switzerland and so forth) particular zeal is applied to render the people and the workers obtuse with just this very idea of a clean, spiritual, built-up god. Just because any religious idea, any idea of any god at all, any flirtation even with a god, is the most inexpressible foulness, particularly tolerantly (and often even favourably) accepted by the democratic bourgeoisieâfor that very reason it is the most dangerous foulness, the most shameful âinfectionâ. A million physical sins, dirty tricks, acts of violence and infections are much more easily discovered by the crowd, and therefore are much less dangerous, than the nubile, spiritual idea of god, dressed up in the most attractive âideologicalâ costumes. The Catholic priest corrupting young girls (about, whom I have just read by chance in a German newspaper) is much less dangerous, precisely to âdemocracyâ, than a priest without his robes, a priest without crude religion, an ideologically equipped and democratic priest preaching the creation and the invention of a god. For it is easy to expose, condemn and expel the first priest, while the second cannot be expelled so simply; to expose the latter is 1,000 times more difficult, and not a single âfrail and pitifully waveringâ philistine will agree to âcondemnâ him.
And you, knowing the âfrailty and pitiful waveringâ of the (Russian: why Russian? Is the Italian any better??) philistine soul, confuse that soul with the sweetest of poisons, most effectively disguised in lollipops and all kinds of gaily-coloured wrappings!!
Really, it is terrible.
âEnough of self-humiliation, which is our substitute for self-criticism.â
And isnât god-building the worst form of selfâ humiliation?? Everyone who sets about building up a God, or who even merely tolerates such activity, humiliates himself in the worst possible way, because instead of âdeedsâ he is actually engaged in self-contemplation, self-admiration and, moreover, such a man âcontemplatesâ the dirtiest, most stupid, most slavish features or traits of his âegoâ, deified by god-building.
From the point of view, not of the individual, but of society, all god-building is precisely the fond selfâ contemplation of the thick-wilted philistine, the frail man in the street, the dreamy âself-humiliationâ of I he vulgar petty bourgeois, âexhausted and in despairâ (as yon condescended to say very truly about the soul: only yon should have said, not âthe Russianâ, but the petty-bourgeois, for the Jewish, the Italian, the English varieties are all one and the same devil; stinking philistinism everywhere is equally disgustingâbut âdemocratic philistinismâ, occupied in ideological necrophily, is particularly disgusting).
Reading your article over and over again, and trying to discover where this slip of your tongue could come from, I am at a loss. What does it mean? A relic of the â Confessionâ, which you yourself did not approve?? Or its echo??
Or something different: for example, an unsuccessful attempt to bend back to the viewpoint of democracy in general, instead of the viewpoint of the proletariat? Perhaps it was in order to talk with âdemocracy in generalâ that you decided (excuse the expression) to indulge in baby-talk? Perhaps it was âfor a popular expositionâ to the philistines that you decided to accept for a moment their, the philistinesâ, prejudices??
But then that is a wrong approach, in all senses and in all respects!
I wrote above that in democratic countries it would be quite out of place for a proletarian writer to appeal âto democracy, to the people, to public opinion and scienceâ. Well, but what about us in Russia?? Such an appeal is not quite appropriate, because it also in some ways flatters the prejudices of the philistines. A kind of general appeal, general to the point of vaguenessâeven Izgoyev of Russkaya Mysl[2] will sign it with both hands. Why then select watchwords which you distinguish perfectly well from those of Izgoyev, but which the reader will not be able to distinguish?? Why throw a democratic veil over the question for the reader, instead of clearly distinguishing the petty bourgeois (frail, pitifully wavering, exhausted, despairing, self-contemplating, god-contemplating, god-building, god-indulging, self-humiliating, uncomprehendingly-anarchisticâ wonderful word!!âet cetera, et cetera)
âfrom the proletarians (who know how to be of good cheer not only in words, and who are able to distinguish the âscience and public opinionâ of the bourgeoisie from their own, bourgeois democracy from proletarian democracy)?
Why do you do this?
Itâs damnably disappointing.
Yours,
V. I.
P.S. We sent you the novel by registered book post. Did you receive it?
P.P.S. Get as good medical treatment as you can, please, so that you can travel in the winter, without colds (itâs dangerous in the winter).
Yours,
V. Ulyanov
Notes
[1] Leninâs letter was prompted by the appearance in Russkoye Slovo (Russian Word) No. 219, September 22, 1913, of an article by Gorky âOn the Karamazov Attitudeâ, protesting against the Moscow Art Theatreâs staging of Dostoyevskyâs reactionary novel The Possessed. The bourgeois press came to the defence of the play and Gorky replied with another article âOnce Again on the Karamazov Attitudeâ, which was published in No. 248 of Russkoye Slovo, October 27, 1913.
Large sections of the article, but without the concluding para graph, were reprinted on October 28 (November 40) in Rech No. 295. The next day Gorkyâs article, including the final paragraph, which Lenin quotes in full in his letter, was reprinted in the liquidatorsâ Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta No. 69.
[2] Russkaya Mysl (Russian Thought)âliterary-political magazine that was published in Moscow from 1880 to 1918. After the 1905 revolution it became the organ of the Right wing of the Constitutional-Democratic (Cadet) Party. Izgoyev, A.S., a bourgeois journalist, was one of the ideologists of this party.