Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

361IVAN VASILYEVICH BABUSHKINAN OBITUARYWe are living in accursed conditions when it is possiblefor such things as the following to happen: a prominent Partyworker, the pride of the Party, a comrade who unselfishlydevoted his life to the cause of the working class, disappearswithout a trace. Even his nearest relatives, like his wifeor his mother, his most intimate comrades do not know foryears what has become of him: whether he is pining somewherein penal servitude, whether he has perished in someprison or has died the death of a hero in battle with the enemy.Such was the case with Ivan Vasilyevich, who was shot byRennenkampf. We learned about his death only quiterecently.The name of Ivan Vasilyevich is near and dear not onlyto Social-Democrats. All who knew him loved and respectedhim for his energy, his avoidance of phrase-mongering, hisprofound and staunch revolutionary spirit and fervent devotionto the cause. A St. Petersburg worker, in 1895 with agroup of other class-conscious workers, he was very active inthe district beyond the Nevskaya Zastava among the workersof the Semyannikov and Alexandrov factories and the GlassWorks, forming circles, organising libraries and studyingvery hard himself all the time.All his thoughts were fixed on one thing—how to widenthe scope of the work. He took an active part in drawing upthe first agitational leaflet put out in St. Petersburg in theautumn of 1894, a leaflet addressed to the Semyannikovworkers, and he distributed it himself. When the League ofStruggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class wasformed in St. Petersburg, Ivan Vasilyevich became one of itsmost active members and worked in it until he was arrested.The idea of starting a political newspaper abroad to promote