Written: Written August 7, 1914
Published:
First published in 1924 in Lenin Miscellany II.
Sent from Poronin to Cracow.
Printed from the telegraph form written in an unknown hand.
Translated from the German.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1977],
Moscow,
Volume 43,
pages 430b-431a.
Translated: Martin Parker and Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2005).
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The local police suspect me of espionage. I lived in Cracow for two years, in Zwiezsynice and 51 Ul. Lubomirskiego. I personally gave information about myself to the commissary of police in Zwiezsynice. I am an emigrant, a Social-Democrat. Please wire Poronin and mayor of Nowy Targ to avoid misunderstanding.
[1] Lenin’s telegram to the Cracow chief of police followed a search of his house in the village of Poronin on August 7, 1914, made on the basis of false information accusing him of being a spy. During the search the gendarme officer took away the manuscript of Lenin’s book on the agrarian question in the belief that the statistical tables given in it represented a coded message, and ordered Lenin to present himself to the military authorities in the town of Nowy Targ the next morning. On arriving there the next day Lenin was arrested and imprisoned. His arrest evoked active protests on the part of progressive elements among the Polish public. The Polish Social-Democrats Jakub Hanecki and S. Bagocki, the Zakopane doctor and one-time member of Narodnaya Volya Dluski, the well-known Polish writers Jan Kasprowicz, Wladyslaw Orkan and others came out in his defence. At the request of Nadezhda Krupskaya, Austrian M.P.s Victor Adler and Herman Diamand, who knew Lenin as a member of the International Socialist Bureau, interceded with the government on his behalf and offered to act as guarantor for him. The charge of espionage was so absurd that the Cracow police admitted that “there is nothing reprehensible here against Ulyanov” and on August 19 he was released.
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