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Bolshevik leadership Correspondence. 1912-1927
Collection of documents 1996.
Compiled by: A.V.Kvashonkin, L.P.Kosheleva, L.A.Rogovaya, O.V.Khlevnyuk.
No. 5
S. Spandaryan, I. V. Stalin - V. I. Lenin
February 27 [1915]
27/II
Hello, dear Vladimir Ilyich! one
Now Joseph is visiting me and I wanted to send you our greetings. How do you live? What are you doing? What is the mood? Write what you can. We want a living word. We will be expecting a letter from you.
Suren
Greetings to Nadezhda Konstantinovna 2 and Grigory 3 , and in general to all friends.
My greetings to you, dear Ilyich, warm, warm greetings! Greetings to Zinoviev, greetings to Nadezhda Konstantinovna! How are you, how is your health? I live as before, I chew bread, I live half the term. It's boring, but there's nothing you can do about it. And how are your affairs? Yours must be more fun... I recently read Kropotkin's articles4 - an old fool, completely out of his mind. I also read Plekhanov's article in Rech 5 - an incorrigible old babbler! Ehma... And what about the liquidators with their deputies, agents of a free economic society? There is no one to beat them, damn me! Do they really go unpunished? Rejoice us and tell us that soon there will be an organ where they will be whipped in the face, yes, in order, but tirelessly 6 .
If you decide to write, write to the following address: Tur[ukhan] region (Yenisei province), Monastyrskoye village, Suren Spandaryan.
Your Koba
Timothy asks to convey his sour greetings to Ged, Samba and Vandervelde in their glorious, hehe, ministerial posts 7 .
RTSKHIDNI. F. 558. On. 1. D. 53. L. 1-3. Autographs. "Proletarian Revolution". 1936. No. 7. S. 167.
Notes:
1 . The letter was written from Turukhansk exile during the period of Stalin's visit to Spandaryan, who was exiled there, and sent to Switzerland. Stalin had known Spandarian since 1907 through his work in the illegal Bolshevik newspaper Baku Proletary.
2 . Krupskaya.
3 . Zinoviev.
4 . Probably, we are talking about Kropotkin's article "Letters on Contemporary Events", published in the newspaper "Russian Vedomosti" in Nos. 206 and 229 of September 7 (20) and October 5 (15), 1914.
5 . Apparently, this refers to Plekhanov's Open Letter to the Editorial Office of the Rech newspaper, published on October 2 (15), 1914. Rech is the printed organ of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Russia.
6 . On November 1, 1914, in Geneva, after a significant break, No. 33 of the Bolshevik newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat, edited by Lenin, came out. By the time the letter was written, Stalin had not yet received any issues of the newspaper.
7 . European socialists who entered the governments of their countries.