More than 70 years ago, in December 1900, the first issue of the all-Russian illegal Marxist newspaper Iskra, founded and directed by V. I. Lenin, was published. The newspaper played a prominent role in the creation of a new type of Marxist party, the party of the working class. The newspaper's distributors and correspondents in Russia were its agents, professional revolutionaries, and advanced workers. They formed the backbone of the Russian organization Iskra, which became the basis of the Proletarian party. The Iskra editorial office, the leading center of the Iskra organization, which was located first in Munich, then in London and Geneva, corresponded extensively with the newspaper's agents and support groups, with social - democratic committees in Russia, and with like - minded people abroad. This correspondence formed a unique archive, carefully preserved by Iskra's editorial secretary N. K. Krupskaya. The archive documents reveal the outstanding role of V. I. Lenin in the formation of the Iskra organization in Russia. "..."Iskra, "wrote Vladimir Ilyich," put forward a whole organizational plan, and systematically and steadily carried out this plan for three years. " 1The main provisions of the program of action outlined by V. I. Lenin were formulated by him in the leading article of the May issue of Iskra for 1901 - " Where to start?": on the nature and main content of political agitation, on organizational tasks and the plan for building a militant all-Russian Marxist party. 2 V. I. Lenin considered the article "Where to start?" only as an outline of a rough organizational plan, but the plan itself was described in detail in the book "What to Do? Urgent questions of our movement", which played a prominent role in the struggle for the revolutionary Marxist party of the working class of Russia. Iskra's editorial correspondence contains the most interesting information about the book's creation, distribution, and enormous impact on the development of the revol ... Читать далее