NICOLAI LENIN
the formation of a workers' party. Comrade Lenin placed himself also at the head of this practical organizing work, and formed the organization committee attached to the "Iskra." And Comrade Lenin, who bore the chief brunt of the literary labor in the "Iskra" and in the theoretical journal "Zarya" (The Dawn), at the same time became the soul of the organization committee.
The wife of Comrade Lenin, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya-Ulyanova, was the secretary of the "Iskra," and secretary of the organization committee. How much our party is indebted to her; of this one might and ought to speak separately. Here I will only say that, in all the work of Comrade Lenin as organizer of our party, a good deal of credit is due to Nadezhda Konstantinova. All written intercourse fell on her. At one time she carried on a correspondence with the whole of Russia.
Who among the older secret workers did not know Nadezhda Konstantinova? To whom did not the receipt of a letter from her mean joy? Who among us thought of her otherwise than with boundless confidence and most tender love?
Martoff in one of his spiteful polemics against Lenin once called Nadezhda Konstantinova "the secretary of the super-centre, Lenin." Well, the whole Russian proletariat is now proud both of its "super-centre," and of his "secretary."
Lenin assiduously, step by step, collected a secret organization, and in 1903 we reached already the third congress of the party. Already in that historic congress, when the party was still united, when in its ranks stood Plekhanoff, Zassulitch, Axelrod, Martoff, Potressoff and others, already it became clear from
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