eral, with a strict consistency that would have done honour to Boris Krichevsky himself; and he refers to matters like the city councils, city hospitals, city schools, and demands that labour newspapers generally deal with these municipal affairs. This demand is an excellent one in itself, but it serves as a remarkable illustration of the empty abstraction which too frequently characterises discussions about local newspapers. First of all, if indeed newspapers appeared "in every place where any number of workers are gathered" with such detailed information on municipal affairs as Svoboda desires, it would, under our Russian conditions, inevitably lead to striving for small reform, to a weakening of the consciousness of the importance of an All-Russian revolutionary attack upon the tsarist autocracy, and would strengthen that extremely virile tendency, which has already become notorious by the famous remark about revolutionists who talk more about non-existent parliaments, and too little about existing city councils, and which has not been uprooted hut rather temporarily suppressed. We say "inevitably," deliberately, in order to emphasise that Svoboda obviously does not want this but the contrary to happen. But good intentions are not enough. In order that municipal affairs may be dealt with in the proper perspective, in relation to the whole of our work, this perspective must be clearly conceived from the very outset; it must be firmly established, not only by argument, but by numerous examples in order that it may acquire the firmness of a tradition. This is far from being the case with us yet. And yet this must be done from the very outset, before we can even think and talk about an extensive local press.
Secondly, in order to be able to write well and interestingly about municipal affairs, one must know these questions not only from books, but from practical experience. And there are hardly any Social-Democrats anywhere in Russia who possess this knowledge. In order to be able to write in newspapers (not in popular pamphlets) about municipal and state affairs, one must have fresh and multifarious material collected and worked up by able journalists. And in order to be able to collect and work up such material, we must have something more than the "primitive democracy" of a primitive circle, in which everybody does everything and all entertain one another by playing at referendums. For this it is necessary to have a staff of expert writers, expert correspondents, an army of Social-Democratic reporters, that has established contacts far and
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