Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - On Organization (1926).pdf/51

. . . . In our opinion, the starting point of all our activities, the first practical step towards creating the organization we desire and the factor which will enable us constantly to develop, to broaden and deepen that organization, is the creation of a national (all-Russian) political newspaper. A paper is what we need above all; without it we cannot systematically carry on that extensive and theoretically sound propaganda and agitation which is the chief and constant duty of the Social Democrats in general, and the essential task of the present moment in particular, when interest in politics and in questions of Socialism has seized upon wide sections of the population. Never before has the need been so strongly felt for supplementing individual agitation in the form of personal influence, local leaflets, pamphlets, etc., by a general and regularly conducted agitation, such as can be carried on only with the assistance of a periodical press. It would be hardly an exaggeration to say that the frequency and regular publication (and distribution) of the paper would serve as an exact measure of the extent