The publication of the Iskra newspaper gave the Russian social-Democrats completely new tasks in organizing its transportation from abroad to Russia. V. I. Lenin and the newspaper's editorial board considered the transportation of illegal literature as one of the most important activities of Iskra groups and social-democratic organizations. In a letter to Iskra agents P. N. Lepeshinsky and P. A. Krasikov, Vladimir Ilyich strongly emphasized:: "The whole nail of our business now is transportation, transportation and transportation. Anyone who wants to help us, let him lie down entirely on it. " 1 The task set out in the letter equally concerned all Iskra fighters operating in Russia at that time. Without the existence of a close connection with the revolutionary social - Democrats and the regular delivery of Iskra to Russia, the newspaper was unable to become the organizational center of Russian Marxist activity that V. I. Lenin sought to make it.

The greatest difficulties in organizing the transportation of Iskra took place in 1901. That was a crucial period when Iskra groups were being formed in Russia, the newspaper's editorial staff was establishing links with local social-democratic organizations and groups, and various options for transporting illegal literature were being worked out. It was necessary to resort to all sorts of methods: to deliver it in suitcases with double bottoms, to transport it with different fellow travelers, to seal it in the bindings of books, to send it in letters, etc. The history of the organization of the relevant transport routes and their activities in 1901-1903 is covered in some detail in the memoirs of the participants of those events and special researchs2 . This essay describes Iskra's use of official mail channels to deliver newspapers to Russia. Of particular interest is the organization of delivery of Iskra in foreign letters, which the editorial board sent to Russia at the established addresses. This problem is still completely untouched in the historical literature, although its study makes it possible to trace Iskra's connections more widely and establish the circle of people who helped the editorial board.

This method of spreading Iskra was inferior in scale to others. However, it had its advantages: it was not particularly dangerous for recipients of literature and did not require large financial expenses. At the same time, its efficiency was great. This largely explains the fact that for almost three years, up to the Second Congress of the RSDLP, the editorial staff of Iskra used this method. Despite a certain risk (the police often opened foreign letters), the Iskra men still regularly forwarded the latest issues of the newspaper in this way. Since this method of delivery was difficult to keep secret for a long time and soon became known to the police department, it was necessary to:-

1 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 46, p. 115.

2 N. K. Krupskaya. Memoirs of Lenin, Moscow, 1957; E. D. Stasova. Memoirs, Moscow, 1969; P. N. Lepeshinsky. At the turn. Ptgr. 1922; V. N. Stepanov. Lenin and the Russian organization "Iskra", 1900-1903. Moscow, 1968; A. F. Malyshev. Activities of Iskra's "socialist post". Leninskaya Iskra and local party organizations in Russia." Perm. 1971; A. G. Veselov, V. I. Lenin and the organization of transportation of Iskra from abroad to Russia by the northern route. Ibid.; M. G. Suslov. Distribution of Lenin's Iskra in the Urals. "V. I. Lenin and local party organizations of Russia". Perm. 1970; M. S. Volin. Leninskaya Iskra (1900-1903). Moscow, 1964; "Leninskaya Iskra". To the 70th anniversary of the publication of the first issue". Moscow, 1970; S. Rozenoer. Illegal transport, Moscow, 1932.

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secure recipients. Then the revolutionary Social-Democrats began to send, together with the newspaper, on behalf of the Society for the Distribution of Literature in Russia, an apology leaflet with the following content:: "We are sending you this item. Sorry to do this without your permission. Russian conditions force us to resort to all sorts of ways to distribute illegal literature, so we use all sorts of addresses, even if they accidentally came to us. " 3
The newspaper's editorial staff assigned its agents the task of selecting reliable recipients. Despite being extremely busy, members of the editorial staff also had to do this work directly. V. N. Rozanov recalled a meeting with Lenin in Smolensk in the summer of 1900, when Vladimir Ilyich instructed him to find people to send them newspapers from abroad .4 The editorial board recommended selecting such recipients who would be beyond the suspicion of the police. Only after making sure of their reliability, they sent a newspaper. In case of failure, the numbers fell, of course, into the hands of the police. So, in June 1901, Colonel Gangardt, the head of the Poltava provincial gendarme Department, was delivered an envelope containing No. 4 Iskra, sent from abroad .5 As noted in the secret report, the envelope was obtained from the apartment of the teacher of the Poltava Cadet corps and the girls ' gymnasium S. G. Frenkel. When comparing the handwriting, the police officers concluded that the address indicated on the letter was written in the handwriting of a former political supervised social democrat who lived in Poltava, who was familiar with Frenkel, but by that time was already abroad, and the letter was sent to them at the address "Poltava, Kuznetskaya, 39 EVB. To Mr. Sergey Grigoryevich Frenkel, teacher of the Cadet corps. Politawa, Russland " 6 , This name appears only once in Iskra's correspondence 7 .

Surveillance of Frenkel allowed the police to trace his connections to Russian political emigrants living abroad. In a gendarme report from Poltava to St. Petersburg (June 1901), it was noted that "on June 15 of this year, Sergei Grigoryevich Frenkel, a teacher of the cadet corps, received No. 5 of the Social-Democratic workers' newspaper Iskra from Charlottenburg (Germany) .8 As soon as the provincial gendarme department opened a case against him, the Poltava Iskra men reported this to the newspaper's editorial office, so that it would stop sending him literature for a while. Having received the news, Krupskaya wrote to the Poltava residents in September 1901: "As far as I remember, no letters were sent to the address of Fr, but probably all the numbers of Iskra were sent. I don't remember exactly whether the 6th number was sent to France. " 9
At the insistence of the gendarme department, Frenkel was dismissed from the service as a politically unreliable person, and the requests of Frenkel and his friends for reinstatement were left without consequences. Among the residents of Poltava who tried to help him, there were several progressive figures, including V. G. Korolenko. His letter, addressed to the literary historian F. D. Batyushkov, dated October 10, 1901, has been preserved. Here is an excerpt from it, a living document of those days: "Dear Fyodor Dmitrievich, Thank you so much for all your efforts on the Serg case. Grig. Frenkel. Although it did not seem to be able to do anything, but this does not reduce in the least

3 TsGAOR USSR, f. DP OO, 1898, d. 14, l. 159i.

4 "Hard labor and exile", 1929, N 3 (52), p. 161.

5 A little earlier, No. 3 of the newspaper was sent to Poltava by the same route.

6 TsGAOR USSR, f. DP OO, 1901, d. 656, l. 2.

7 In April 1901, Lenin sent a letter to S. I. Radchenko in St. Petersburg; the postscript was made by Krupskaya. She asked Radchenko to set up a literary group in the capital to promote Iskra, which would take over sending various literary materials to the newspaper's editorial staff, and recommended Frenkel and Rubakin to join the group. In the letter to ie, the initials of Frenkel were indicated, but the note notes that in this case it was about 3. G. Frenkel. (Lenin's Collection VIII, p. 124),

8 TsGAOR USSR, f. DP OO, 1901, 565, l. 5.

9 " Correspondence of V. I. Lenin and the editorial board of the newspaper Iskra with social-democratic organizations in Russia. 1900-1903". Vol. 1. Moscow, 1969, p. 228. The editorial board of the newspaper demanded strict compliance with the rules of conspiracy. In correspondence, it was strictly forbidden to mention surnames and first names. "Every revolutionary and sympathizer of the revolutionary movement must, in our opinion, absolutely encrypt addresses, names, and secret instructions" (Iskra, No. 13, 1901).

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my appreciation. The times, however: a ridiculous denunciation is enough ...and no one can save a person! Everyone understands that this is an abomination, and yet those in power only wash their hands of it. " 10
In order to receive literature from Poltava, more than a dozen addresses of local residents and various organizations were sent to the newspaper's editorial office. In one of his letters, A. I. Shtessel wrote: "Let Fekla 11 send Iskra in envelopes to the following addresses:: a) Poltava, uyezd zemstvo council (with pharmaceutical companies.); c) Kremenchuk, Kievskaya street, Leyzerzon house, Yudkin square, Ilya Antonovsky " 12 . N. M. Flerov, a member of the Iskra assistance group, worked as the secretary of the district zemstvo council in Poltava. The specified address was used to receive Iskra literature. In addition, Iskra was sent to Poltava to the address of the home teacher E. M. Kolesnikova, as well as an unknown Drofanovsky. In May 1918, Krupskaya instructed M. G. Vecheslov, the head of the Berlin Iskra assistance group, to send No. 4 Iskra to Poltava, Saratov, and other places in Russia at the available addresses and asked them not to forget to enclose apologetic notes. At the same time, she said that the previously existing address of Samoylenko in Poltava should be deleted 13 .

Some addresses failed very quickly. In July 1902, the Iskra editorial office received a message from Poltava: "Let Fekla no longer use Lazarev's address in Poltava" 14 . A little later, L. F. Korshunova informed the editorial board that the addresses intended for forwarding the newspaper were apparently not suitable, since they had never received literature; at the same time, another address was reported: "Sretenskaya, 1, Sofya Viktorovna Meshcherskaya". A little more than two weeks later, the Poltava Iskra fighters were forced to cancel this address as well. In November 1902, Korshunova again asked the newspaper's editorial staff to send Iskra No. 16, at least in two copies: "Here is another address for this: Pochtamtskaya, No. 3, to Semyon Davidovich Andreev" 15 . As it turned out, newspapers were regularly sent, but did not reach their intended destination.

Soon, the police department established even more thorough control over letters coming to Russia from abroad. The relevant services were instructed to strictly monitor international correspondence and open anything that seems suspicious. In large cities of Russia, such letters were viewed by perlustrators, for which "black cabinets"were created. In small towns where there were none, the mail was opened by a special postal official who was in the service of the police. Every letter with dubious content or a letter with "suspicious literature" was reported to the gendarme department. Such mail was usually printed out in the presence of the addressee or given the opportunity to receive it, and then arrested along with incriminating materials. As can be seen from the archive documents, despite strict control, many letters still passed the police. In order to close this source of illegal literature penetration into Russia, the Ministry of Internal Affairs in October 1902 it instructed customs officials to immediately send to the police Department letters that arrived from abroad together with revolutionary publications or contained cipher text .16 At the same time, officials were required to inform the border gendarme service, which attached it to the investigative materials as material evidence, if "political contraband" was detected. Special control was established over letters received through the Volochisk border checkpoint, which was under the jurisdiction of the Kiev Gendarme Police Department of Railways .17
10 V. G. Korolenko. Letters, 1888-1921. Fri. 1922, p. 186.

11 Secret name of the Iskra editorial office.

12 " Correspondence between V. I. Lenin and the editorial board of the Iskra newspaper,..." Vol. 1, p. 477.

13 Ibid., pp. 97, 463.

14 Ibid., vol. 2, Moscow, 1969, p. 126.

15 Ibid., p. 500.

16 TsGAOR USSR, f. DP OO, 1903, 895, ch. 2, ch. 2.

17 The police Department files contain many secret reports and protocols describing what "prohibited materials" were found during customs inspection of mail and to whom they were addressed..

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In 1902-1903, Iskra literature was sent from abroad to more than 20 addresses in the Poltava governorate .18 But the police managed to identify most of the addresses in Poltava where Iskra literature was sent in ordinary envelopes from abroad. When Iskra No. 21 was published with the "Draft program of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party", the editors immediately sent it to all the addresses in Poltava. As reported by the Poltava iskrovtsy, they managed to get only one number, while the rest was seized by the police. Emails sent to the following address were thoroughly checked: "Alexandrovskaya Street, Podolsky haberdashery store, for Levin 3". For a long time, the latest issues of Iskra were sent here, but the letters that arrived at this address were opened and confiscated. In December 1903, the police confiscated a letter containing a copy of the Notice of the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party .19
Some recipients were far removed from revolutionary activities and were not suspected by the police; others, who sympathized with the revolutionary cause, agreed to help the Social Democrats. Thanks to their personal connections, the Iskra-ists were able to find the addresses of "trustworthy" persons and use them in the interests of the revolutionary cause. The Poltava Iskra fighters were looking for any opportunity to obtain illegal literature. Although sometimes it ended in failure, in general, the described method played a useful role.

The Pskov Iskra Assistance Group also had a number of local residents ' addresses where Iskra was received from abroad. In March 1901, I. G. Lehman, on behalf of the editorial board, wrote to Lepeshinsky: "Send addresses for sending illegal goods either simply in envelopes or in book bindings. Then we would immediately send you everything that comes out again. " 20 Unfortunately, it has not yet been possible to determine whether the addresses were sent at that time, and if so, to whom? Several Pskov addresses are known to have been sent to Iskra, but all of them date back to 1902-1903. One of them was the address of the owner of a paint shop, A. A. Daiber. Krasikov sent this address abroad from Pskov on October 10, 1902, and it was used for several months. After Krasikov's departure from Pskov, A. M. Stopani received literature at this address. At the end of November 1902, he asked the editorial board of Iskra to send the newspaper in envelopes with the letterhead of a trading company: ".Be sure to send Iskra to the address "Pskov, A. Daiber paint shop, for Gunther from Vienna" 21 . Krupskaya answered him: "Iskra is sent to Diber's address, but obviously it doesn't reach it." 22 It turned out that the address was checked by the police, and mail was confiscated.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs became interested in the suspicious addressee and demanded to find out his identity, activities and connections 23 . The chief of the Pskov police, Colonel Volsky, in response to a request from St. Petersburg, reported that a bourgeois Dyber kept a paint shop in Pskov, which gave no reason to doubt his political reliability; " in general, the Pskov post and telegraph office contains many foreign letters addressed to various trustworthy and unreliable persons who are not supposed to receive them on summonses, warning about the upcoming opening of correspondence at the post office in the presence of addressees, and at the same time, the other day, the post and telegraph official in charge of the expedition's downtime, Karl Dreyer, received an anonymous letter in the mail, reproduced in block letters,

18 TsGAOR USSR, f. DPOO, 1903, d. 895, part 2, ll. 12 ob., 19, 22, 50, 61, 70 vol., 73, 79 vol., 81, 81 vol., 89; part 7, l. 2. Among such Poltava addresses in the police department listed: Land Bank, Z. I. Zakamennaya; Dvoryanskaya Street, Kubash House, D. Nemets; Metrikin's commercial dress shop, M. Orlov; district zemstvo council, Poltava province, Romny city, Korzhevskaya Street, Savich House; Kobelyansky district, Novye Sanzhary, A. I. Rapp; Kremenchug, tax inspector V. Gadin; Kremenchuk, Kievskaya Street, Yudkin's apartment; Kremenchuk, Khersonskaya Street, tobacco shop, S. Drobkinu; etc.

19 TsGAOR USSR, f. DP 00, 1903, 895, part 2, l. 89.

20 " Correspondence between V. I. Lenin and the editorial board of the Iskra newspaper...", vol. 1, p. 43.

21 Proletarian Revolution, 1928, No. 6, p. 119.

22 Ibid., p. 129.

23 TsGAOR USSR f. DP OO, 1903, 825, part 1, ll. 22-22 vol.

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with a threat,., if he opens foreign letters and draws up acts " 24 . The police were unable to determine who Gunther was who received the letter from Frankfurt with the Iskra numbers. But after the address was "spotted" and eight letters sent to Pskov from abroad were detained, Iskra residents stopped using it.

The address of Pskov merchant I. I. Zhiglevich also functioned. He had a shop in the city and ordered goods abroad for sale in Pskov. The merchant was far from revolutionary activity, but his son A. I. Zhiglevich had an acquaintance with Iskra, including Lepeshinsky. Under the influence of the latter, he made his address available to Iskra. Local authorities have repeatedly reported to the police department about sending foreign letters with prohibited literature addressed to Zhiglevich. So, in the summer of 1902, two closed letters arrived from Germany, which turned out to contain copies of No. 21 Iskra. In September of the same year, Zhiglevich received another letter, which was opened by the police in the presence of the addressee. There was another issue of Iskra with cartoons attached. Zhiglevich Sr. was interrogated. He explained that for many years he had been selling iron products and maintaining trade relations with foreign firms, so his address was known abroad; who and for what purpose sent illegal literature in his name did not know. I. I. Zhiglevich, apparently, really did not know that the "culprit" of the incident was his son.

A little later, Iskrovtsy sent another address for sending literature abroad: "Pskov, corner of Gubernatorskaya and Sergievskaya streets, Geld House, apartment 25, Alexey Vasilyevich Kuzmin." It has not yet been possible to determine who this addressee was or how successfully his address functioned.

The editorial board of the newspaper directed the social-democratic organizations of Russia to regularly and in sufficient numbers send Iskra addresses for sending revolutionary literature to them. In March 1901, Lehman, on behalf of the editorial board, wrote to N. E. Bauman in Moscow: "Send the addresses so that I can send you the new issues of Iskra immediately upon publication, either in envelopes or bound." 25 For a long time, the newspaper's editorial staff did not have reliable addresses in Moscow. Therefore, Lehmann, in a letter to Bauman dated April 3, 1901, again emphasized: "We don't have addresses in Moscow for sending illegal stuff in envelopes, so I can't even supply you with newly issued items."26 During April and July, Bauman failed to find reliable recipients for these purposes. Thus, at the end of May 1901, he stated: "Unfortunately, even now I can't send you addresses for new products. This is one of the most sensitive places. " 27 In August, Iskra's assignment was finally completed, and the newspaper's editorial staff now had the addresses at which literature began to arrive in Moscow .28
According to available data, in 1901-1903, the Social Democrats had 22 addresses in Moscow, where they received Iskra at various times. As for the addresses in the Moscow province, one of them was reported to the editor for this purpose by D. I. Ulyanov. In May 1902, Dmitry Ilyich requested that the latest issues of Iskra be sent in envelopes to the address "Podolsk Zemskaya Pravda" and noted that the previously sent number of Iskra was received 29 . The agents who followed the activities of D. I. Ulyanov, in one of the reports to St. Petersburg, reported:: "Very often I came from Moscow to Podolsk to see the secretary of the Podolsk district zemstvo council

24 Ibid., 825, part 1, ll. 22-22 vol.

25 " Correspondence between V. I. Lenin and the editorial board of the Iskra newspaper...", Vol. I, p. 50,

26 Ibid., pp. 59, 183,

27 Ibid., p. 120.

28 Among the addresses to which Iskra was sent to Moscow, we mention the following: Arbat, Shenyavsky House, Strumillo-Petrashkevich; Devichye Pole, Savvinsky Lane, Savey-Mogilevich Hospital, Popov; Petrovka, editorial office of the newspaper Russkoe Slovo; Trud book warehouse, Skirmunt; Neglinny Proezd, Vinny warehouse of the Crimea; Bolshaya Gruzinskaya, Yeppelman House, Andreev; Trekhprudny Lane, editorial office of the newspaper "Courier" (TsGAOR USSR, f. MOO, 1902, 181, l. 194; "Correspondence of V. I. Lenin and the editorial office of the newspaper "Iskra"...". Vol. 1, pp. 461, 483; vol. 2, p. 456; vol. 3. Moscow, 1970, p. 276,404).

29 " Correspondence of V. I. Lenin and the editorial board of the newspaper Iskra....". Vol. 1, p. 539.

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To Andrey Nilovich Elagin... Why Ulyanov often visited Podolsk remains' unclear ' 30 . Due to the presence of the aforementioned address, it can be concluded that Elagin received Iskra, which was then transmitted to D. I. Ulyanov.

Archival materials show that the Iskra newspaper was sent to Arkhangelsk in 1902 to the address of A. P. Tsykarev, an employee of the state bank . Many years later, the latter told about this: "One day I. P. Lazarev32 came to me and said that he had appeared... with a request to use my address of the Arkhangelsk branch of the State Bank to receive magazines and newspapers from abroad. I agreed. About three or four weeks later, people started coming from abroad... emails with Iskra numbers in them... I passed them on to I. P. Lazarev."33 Iskra was also sent to other people in Arkhangelsk. In February 1902, the police department instructed the chief of the Arkhangelsk provincial Gendarme Department to establish secret surveillance of A. A. Raduszenkovich; attention was drawn to the fact that she received the newspaper Iskra from abroad at two conditional addresses. 34
Krupskaya did a lot of work on finding addresses for sending Iskra to Russia, having developed an extensive correspondence on this issue. Thus, in May 1901, on behalf of the Iskra editorial board, she sent letters to L. M. Knipovich in Astrakhan, K. K. Gazenbush in Samara, I. V. Babushkin in Pokrov, V. A. Noskov in Voronezh, O. A. Engberg in Vyborg, A. I. Piskunov in Nizhny Novgorod, G. I. Okulova in Kiev, and many others iskra residents with a request to find addresses for expelling the newspaper 35 . In the spring of 1901. she strongly recommended that the Iskra agent in Astrakhan, Knipovich, provide addresses "for sending illegal goods in envelopes and bindings, so that all new products can be sent immediately." 36 The instruction of the Iskra editorial board was fulfilled, which can be confirmed by Nadezhda Konstantinovna's letter to Astrakhan, which stated:: "I send it in book No. 4 to N." 37 . Number 4 of Iskra was sent, but it was not yet possible to establish who "N" was.

A. M. Runina, a member of the Astrakhan Iskra group, reported to the editorial office in July 1902 the address of the Petrovsky Society. 38 In September 1902, a letter was delivered to the police, addressed to the "Petrovsky Society", with enclosed No. 24"Iskra" 39 . The head of the local provincial gendarme department informed the police department about this, adding that the" Petrovsky Society " was under special surveillance. In another letter, Knipovich reported to the newspaper's editorial office: "Iskra is obviously being intercepted. After the 20th, she was no longer here. " 40 The editorial staff used the address of P. M. Novikov, assistant director of the Petrovsky Museum, to communicate with Astrakhan. Krupskaya wrote to Runina on August 12, 1902: "We send them to the Petrovsky Museum carefully. Do you get it? " 41 .

The newspaper was sent to Samara in the name of the doctor of the Ulyanov family, Yu. K. Vody. Later, new addresses were transferred to M. I. Ulyanova abroad: "1) Boberman Trading House, underline 2 times; 2) His Grace Bishop of Samara"42 . As a result of an inconsistency (or mistake) in May 1903, Bishop Guriy received three letters with the attached Iskra numbers 43 . The Samara governor was informed about this, but the police failed to identify the real recipient.

30 "Lenin and the Ulyanovs in Podolsk", Moscow, 1967, p. 69.

31 TsGAOR USSR, f. DP OO, 1898, d. 14, vol. 2, l. 13 vol.

32 Lazarev was arrested in Moscow in February 1902 for taking part in the preparation of a student demonstration, and then exiled to Arkhangelsk, where he became an active member of the local committee of the RSDLP.

33 A. G. Veseloe. Under the North star. Arkhangelsk, 1973, pp. 22-23.

34 Ibid., p. 25.

35 " Correspondence between V. I. Lenin and the editorial board of the Iskra newspaper...", vol. 1, p. 89, 95 104, 109, 116, 123, 124.

36 Ibid., p. 66.

37 Ibid., p. 95,

38 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 139.

39 TsGAOR USSR, f. DP OO, 1902, d. 1842, l. 1.

40 " Correspondence between V. I. Lenin and the editorial board of the Iskra newspaper...", vol. 2, p. 324.

41 Ibid., p. 178.

42 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 492.

43 Volzhskaya Kommuna newspaper (Kuibyshev), 8. VI. 1973.

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In January 1902, the St. Petersburg Okhrana compiled a list of 57 relevant addresses. Of these, the police managed to decipher only 3 iskrovskys .

In Perm, in the spring of 1902, envelopes with Iskra were sent from abroad to the consumer shop of F. F. Voskresensky. Similar letters were sent there to I. P. Benediktov and I. A. Vladimirsky. In Alapaevsk, similar letters were sent to the names of Chetvergov and Menshina 45 . During 1901-1902 Iskra was sent to 13 recipients in Yalta, and to 18 addresses in Belarus. It was received in Minsk by Gurevich, D. Bohan, E. Ginblyat; in Gomel - V. M. Plakhov, M. Epshtein; in Polotsk - Sushkevich; in Mogilev - R. A. Shishkin. Yakobson; in the town of Lyady, Mogilev province-Kh. I. Shevelev; in the town of Parichi, Minsk province-R. Ravich; in the town of Cherikov, Mogilev province-S. Viktorov; in Rechitsa - I. Ya. Kramskoy. In addition, the newspaper was sent to Vitebsk, Velizh, Svisloch 46 .

Political exiles occupied a special place among Iskra's recipients. In 1901-03, the authorities sent more than 1.5 thousand political prisoners to Siberia. Many of them managed to keep in touch with their comrades who remained at large. Through correspondence or personal contacts, the JINR obtained illegal literature from various Russian cities and from abroad. In August 1903, the head of the Irkutsk security Department reported to the well-known Colonel Zubatov: "When I review, for example, foreign correspondence addressed to Irkutsk, I almost always have to find two or three envelopes with illegal Iskra literature. "47 In 1902, the Irkutsk police knew first of the three addresses to which the newspaper was sent to the city, and in early 1903 the newspaper was sent to the city of Irkutsk. she identified six other recipients. Among them were political exiles V. Gutovsky and A. Kats48 . Among the addresses where Iskra got there are: Irkutsk, Verkhne-Amurskaya str., 17, G. A. Yachmeneva; Irkutsk Province, Verkholensk, A. Levinzon; Irkutsk Province, Kirensk, Broido 49 .

The newspaper's delivery to Vyatka Province was facilitated by Iskrovtsy who had previously served their exile there (K. E. Bauman, V. V. Borovsky, K. I. Zakharova, I. G. Smidovich, V. V. Kozhevnikov, and others). They sent Iskra to Vyatka, Oryol, Slobodskoy, Sarapul and Yaransk, and generally to the places where the exiles lived. For example, P. I. Stucka, who lived in Slobodsky and Vyatka, received literature from abroad from F. I. Stucka. Rozin, I. Kovalevsky and M. Shour. In a letter dated July 9, 1901, it is indicated that all the numbers of Iskra 50 were sent to Stuchka in Slobodskaya .

Political exiles in Oryol received Iskra from Vorovsky, who had been in exile there since 1898 and then emigrated abroad. Together with him in the colony of exiles was the social Democrat I. I. Ryabkov. Friendly relations were established between them. And in the future they did not stop, which can be confirmed by their correspondence. In order to conceal the letters intended for Vorovsky abroad, Ryabkov addressed them to the Medical School of Geneva, to Antoinette Tolochko, the sister of Vorovsky's wife. In a letter dated March 1, 1902, he wrote:: "Dear Yulia Adamovna and Vaclav Vaclavovich, A heartfelt thank you for the memory... The other day we received the second part of Knowledge 51. Ask for the removal of 15, etc. " 52 . Unfortunately, the other emails were not saved. Therefore, it is not possible to say what kind of assistance Borovsky provided to the Orel exiles later. They kept in touch with Iskra's editorial staff through A. A. Kozhevnikova and V. A. Kozhevnikov,

44 E. R. Olkhovsky. Lenin's Iskra-in St. Petersburg, l. 1975, p. 161.

45 M. G. Suslov. Op. ed., p. 263.

46 V. I, Soloshenko. From the history of the spread of Marxism in Belarus (1883-1904). Minsk. 1963, pp. 53-54.

47 A. N. Meshchersky, N. N. Shcherbakov, V. I. Lenin and the Political exile in Siberia. Irkutsk. 1973, p. 65.

48 Ibid., p. 66.

49 TsGAOR USSR, f. DP OO, 1903, d. 894, part 2, ll. 10 vol., 30 vol.; 1896, d. 14, vol. 2, l. 13.

50 TsGAOR USSR, f. DP OO, 1900, d. 525, ll. 30, 46.

51 The conditional title " Znanie "meant the magazine"Zarya".

52 The request to expel 15, etc., should be understood as a desire to have No. 15 Iskra and subsequent ones (TsGAOR USSR, f. DP OO, 1901, d. 850, t, 15, ch. A, l. 149).

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E. F. Gerbut-Geibovich and other Social Democrats. Instructions on this subject are available in archival documents. In July 1902, the police department, the head of the Vyatka provincial gendarme department, received a message that the political exile V. A. Kozhevnikov was being sent underground literature from abroad to Oryol, including the newspaper Iskra. At the same time, she visited I. L. Bratchikov and K. N. Ukhova. 53 In one of the letters to Vorovsky, the exiles reported: "On February 10, a Heron flew to us in Orlov." The Oryol district police officer reported to his superiors on this matter: "The heron," presumably, is Emilia Fominichna Gerbut-Geibovich, who arrived in Oryol from Poltava on February 10 of this year. " 54 At the end of 1902. she again visited this city, from where she sent letters to the editorial office of Iskra. "Something unpleasant has happened to interesting letters," she wrote. - We only got up to 10 N, and with N 10, only one half. I think they stayed at the border, N 28 we got. In addition, the address of Mr. Kozhevnikov is no longer suitable for use. Please send everything to my address. We received all emails with a German attachment " 55 .

Exiles of the Vologda province also repeatedly appealed to the newspaper's editorial office with a request to send Iskra . Due to the lack of reliable addresses, it was difficult to do this right away. Krupskaya, in a letter dated September 19, 1901, recommended that A. A. Bogdanov obtain addresses to which it would be possible to send the newspaper in envelopes .56 Bogdanov gave the addresses in Vologda of V. A. Zhdanov and A. O. Sopotsko 57 .

Even then, Iskra reached the most remote corners of Russia. M. S. Olminsky, who was serving his exile in Olekminsk (Yakutia), recalled that he also received a newspaper there "in an envelope by mail" 58 .

In the future, envelopes of various trade firms were made to send Iskra to distract the attention of border censorship officers and "black cabinets". An ordinary envelope usually contained one number of Iskra, but it was often necessary to send more. Then several issues of Iskra were used to make bindings for books, albums, etc., which were then sent out. This method was usually used by people who were close to the newspaper's editorial office. In Moscow it was Bauman, in St. Petersburg-I. I. Radchenko and V. N. Shaposhnikova, in Pskov-Lepeshinsky. In bindings, Iskra was sent to many localities in Russia. In the memoirs of D. H. Stucka, the wife of P. I. Stucka, they once received a collection of Shakespeare's works from London: "We didn't understand what it meant. This was followed by an email with a question. "How did you like the binding of Shakespeare's works?" Then they guessed, tore up the cover and found "Social Democrat" in Latvian. Similarly, in the cover of a book or a fashion magazine, he began to send us Iskra from abroad... Kovalevsky"59 .

Iskra addressed several books with special bindings to Bauman in Moscow. Shortly after one of these parcels, he notified the editorial staff of the arrival of the material.: "I received your binding, as well as a letter informing about the binding. Thank you. Only he caused a lot of trouble, despite the fact that I know and have experience with this method b0. We need too good housing conditions to get the contents without delay... Use it as a last resort. " 61 ,

53 V. A. Sobolev. Lenin's Iskra and political exiles of the Vyatka province. "Lenin's Iskra and local Party Organizations in Russia", p. 393.

54 TsGAOR USSR, f. DP OO, 1901, d. 850, t. 15, ch. A, l. 149.

55 " Correspondence between V. I. Lenin and the editorial board of the Iskra newspaper...", vol. 3, p. 301.

56 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 255.

57 Ibid., p. 486.

58 P. U. Petrov. Revolutionary activity of the Bolsheviks in Yakut exile, Moscow, 1964, p. 19.

59 "Memories of D. Stucka about Rainis". "Literary Yearbook". Riga. 1946, p. 23.

60 Krupskaya, in a letter to Radchenko in St. Petersburg, recommended the following method of soaking: the binding is placed in warm water; when the sheets begin to fall behind, carefully tear them off one by one, exposing them to a hot stream from under the samovar; the separated sheets should be wiped with a wet sponge to wipe off the glue, and then, before they are dry, put them on under the press ("Correspondence of V. I. Lenin I., editorial office of the newspaper Iskra...", Vol. 2, p. 193).

61 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 197.

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Based on the preserved correspondence of the Iskra editorial board with like-minded people in Russia, researchers estimate that on the eve of the Second Congress of the RSDLP, the newspaper was received from abroad in more than 145 localities in the country. Recently, it was possible to identify a total of 431 addresses to which the newspaper was sent in envelopes. In reality, these figures were, of course, higher. Among the people who received Iskra, there were representatives of a wide variety of professions: doctors, press workers, zemstvo employees, teachers, lawyers, librarians, railway employees. Accordingly, the police also had numerous facts about the use of official mail by revolutionaries to send illegal literature. In one of the reports to the Special Meeting, it was noted: "In 1902, agent instructions were received that the daughter of an Irkutsk merchant, Anna Isaevna Reichbaum, who arrived in Geneva from St. Petersburg... She began sending revolutionary pamphlets and the Iskra newspaper to her friends, and especially Vasily Timofeyevich Golikov, who lives in Sevastopol, embedding them in the bindings of books allowed by the censorship. "62 On this occasion, several circular instructions were sent to the heads of postal, telegraph and postal institutions. They were charged with the duty to control foreign correspondence; letters that arouse suspicion should be opened in the presence of the addressee. To facilitate the search for such letters, the General Directorate of Posts and Telegraphs in May 1902 sent out a document in which it drew attention to the fact that closed letters from London and Switzerland were sent in yellow and blue envelopes to the chairmen of zemstvo councils, local lawyers, newspaper editors, various officials and individuals. Iskra editors informed readers about the existence of such a regulation in order to warn against the danger of those who used to send literature by mail .63
The autocracy considered the seizure of revolutionary publications as one of the means to prevent anti-government sentiment. Along with the" black offices " and groups of postal officials who were engaged in checking foreign correspondence, other target units were also created. The St. Petersburg-Warsaw Gendarme Railway Department had a special branch of traveling mail at the border station in Verzhbolov. Foreign correspondence that followed this route passed through the hands of the department's employees. The department was particularly active in 1903. The police came to the rescue. One of its officials reported to the Ministry of Internal Affairs that foreign revolutionaries send out underground literature in various envelopes with postmarks and printed addresses of foreign trade firms and institutions, which makes it difficult to identify illegal letters. Having decided to make it easier for officials to work, he handed over to the specified department more than 50 samples of envelopes in which literature was sent to Russia. "I notice," the memo said, " that thanks to the samples, postal officials have begun to delay significantly more letters than before. This procedure is more expedient than opening letters to post offices and offices within the empire, since it is obvious that in any small provincial town postal officials, due to lack of experience and a small number of such letters, will very often pass them without detention, and acquaintance and personal relationships... they will play an important role here. " 64
Iskra's editorial staff constantly improved this method of delivering literature to Russia. The documents clearly show the continuously increasing scale of work carried out by the Iskra-ists on the eve and during the Second Party Congress. According to incomplete data of the police Department, only the postal censorship of Verzhbolov from June 1902 to the autumn of 1903, 1,301 letters from abroad were detained, which contained 860 copies of Iskra and 600 other revolutionary publications .65 If we take into account that in this case we are talking about only one border point and that this number did not include, of course, letters that reached their intended destination, then we can imagine the scale of transportation of illegal publications to Russia by this route.

62 TsGAOR USSR, f. DP OO, 1903, d. 1060, ch. I, l. 15.

63 Iskra Publ., 1903, No. 49.

64 TsGAOR USSR, f. DP OO, 1903, d. 895, ch. 1, l. 6.

65 Ibid., ll. 1, 2, 5, 8, 20, 28, 29, 39, 40, 49, 50.

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