Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/157

 strive to "draw a line" even through the countryside, but there are almost no bricklayers there, and we are obliged to encourage every one to send us information concerning even the most common facts in the hope that this will increase the number of our contributors in this field and will train us all at least to select the really most outstanding facts. But the material upon which we can train is so scanty that unless we collect it from all parts of Russia we will have very little to train upon at all. No doubt, one who possesses at least as much capacity as an agitator and as much knowledge of the life of the vagrant as apparently Nadezhdin has, could render priceless service to the movement by carrying on agitation among the unemployed—but such a one would be simply burying his talents if he failed to inform all Russian comrades of every step he took in his work, in order that others, who, in the mass, as yet lack the ability to undertake new kinds of work, may learn from his example.

Absolutely everybody now talks about the importance of unity, about the necessity for "rallying and organising," but the majority of us lack a definite idea of where to begin and how to bring about this unification. Every one will probably agree that if we "unite" say, the district circles in a given city, it will be necessary to have for this purpose common institutions, i. e., not merely a common title of "League" but genuinely common work, exchange of material, experience, and forces, distribution of functions, not only in the given districts but in a whole city, according to special tasks. Every one will agree that a big secret apparatus will not pay its way (if one may employ a commercial expression) "with the resources" (in material and man power, of course) of a single district and that a single district will not provide sufficient scope for a specialist to develop his talents. But the same thing applies to the unification of a number of cities, because even such a field, like a single locality, will prove, and has already proved in the history of our Social-Democratic movement, to be too restricted: we have already dealt with this in detail above, in connection with political agitation and organisational work. We must first and foremost widen the field, establish real contacts between the cities, on the basis of regular, common work; for diffusion restricts the activities of our people who are "stuck in a hole" (to use the expression employed by a correspondent to Iskra), not knowing what is happening in the world; they have no one to learn from, do not