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Comrades,

    In connection with the resolution adopted on December 22 by the editorial board of the Central Organ, the representative of the C.C. abroad considers it necessary to point out to the editors the extreme unseemliness of this resolution, which can only be put down to excessive irritation.[233]

    If Lenin, acting not as a C.C. member but as a former editor, expounded something which you thought incorrect, you can thresh this out in the press. Comrade Hans did not conclude on behalf of the C.C. any agreement about non-publication of the negotiations and he could not do so without our knowledge. The editorial board cannot fail to be aware of this. Probably Comrade Hans made a suggestion about non-publication of the negotiations in the event of a formal peace being concluded.

    Not evasively, but quite categorically, the C.C. representative abroad twice informed the editorial board of the C.O. that he permitted Lenin's letter to be published.*

    If the editorial board had not been moved by a spirit of excessive irritation, it would easily have seen how extremely out of place were its remarks about the number of C.C. members living abroad. To this and other unseemly attacks of the editorial board (like the ludicrous charge of some kind of alleged "secret" printing), the C.C. represen-

 
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tative abroad replies merely by a call to remember Party duty and put a stop to acts capable of making literary polemics the occasion for a split.

The Central Committee Representative Abroad 

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  [232] Lenin wrote this letter for Lengnik, the C.C.'s representative abroad.    [p. 213]

  ^[233] This refers to the resolution passed by the editorial board of the new, Menshevik, Iskra concerning the publication as a separate sheet of Lenin's letter "Why I Resigned from the Iskra Editorial Board" (see Vol. 7 of this edition).    [p. 213]