ABSTRACT
In April 1912 there was established in St Petersburg a legal Bolshevik paper, Pravda. It is alleged that the paper, whose name was the same as Trotsky's journal, was published to implement the Prague decisions and that it was financed by Tikhomirnov, the son of a millionaire merchant from Kazan who supposedly gave 100,000 roubles. Yet the Prague resolution stressed the need for illegal publications far more strongly than the need for legal ones. No evidence has been produced proving that Lenin guided the establishment of Pravda from Paris. According to the Stalinist version, it was Stalin who arranged the publication, aided by Poletayev, Pokrovsky, two Bolshevik journalists, and other Duma representatives of a more Menshevik orientation. It seems strange that Lenin was not kept informed of Pravda's progress, and that no one attempted to enlist him as chief editor. His first Pravda article, one of no special importance, was published only three weeks after the first issue had appeared.
