Nice, July 2. 1932

Dear Comrade Nettlau,

I was in bed, but I got up to reply to your last letter. But I will be short because every motion hurts me. I have a big boil or a tumor right under my right chest and yesterday I was in the St. Roch clinique and they burned it out for me.

I have not read the F.A.S for some time. I do not get the paper here at home. They send it to the Amer. Express and I don't go there very often, especially of late since walking has become a very hard thing for me. Emmie has also not been well. And so it happens that some numbers got lost and some accumulate here and it takes time before I get at them. I will, after a while.

But this is what I want to say, dear comrade. You take thing too seriously altogether. Moreover, since you had decided to write for the Probushdeniye, people have a right to criticize you for it if in their opinion your action is wrong. And surely you might have foreseen such developments. For you will remember that about two years ago, when you made the proposition to me to collaborate on the Prob. (you visited me then in Paris,) I mentioned to you that some comrades insist that the Prob. People and the people of the Rassvet are the SAME persons, and that the Rassvet is considered by comrades as a reactionary and monarchist paper. You will remember that I then said that I had no personal opinion on the matter, since I did not know any of those people and I did not read either the Rassvet nor the Prob.

At our interview at that time was also present Yanya, the short, slender, dark haired Russian comrade. He told you at that time just what he and other Russian comrades thought of the Rassvet-Prob. People. You afterwards wrote me that Yanya was a bitter fanatic in this matter, and may be he is. But at any rate you knew what a strong sentiment there existed then already against the Rassvet-Prob. People and their activities.

Then Zubrin wrote about this matter in the F.A.S. I have since "placed" Zubrin. He is a very good old Detroit comrade.

You asked me to protest in the F.A.S. about Zubrin criticizing you for working with the Prob. People. It was announced at the time in the F.A.S. that the Detroit F.A.S group is investigating the Prob. Rassv. Matter, and so I decided that it is best to await the result of their investigation. I so informed you at the time.

Now you tell me that Mratchny has also attacked you on this matter in the F.A.S. I have not seen his article about it. I will look for it after I feel a little better. But I am surprised the way you write me about Mratchny. I happen to know him very well. I met him first in Kharkov, then in prison in Moscow (when I went there to intercede for the release of our people). I have worked together with Mratchny in Berlin on the book of "Letters from Russian Prisons", that was issued by the Roger Baldwin crowd in N.Y. (The international league for the defense of political prisoners). I also worked with with Mratchny in all the Relief organizations that I had organized in Berlin and later in Paris (for the imprisoned comrades in Russia). We also worked