 Russell’s precise positions on these matters is not as clear as one might hope and nowhere does he treat them at any length. The few pertinent remarks he does make are either somewhat ambivalent or seem to work against interpreting him as holding strong versions of these theses.  For example, in 1914, in arguing that atomic facts are typically known by direct empirical means rather than by inference, he wrote that “[p]erhaps one atomic fact may sometimes be capable of being inferred from another, though I do not believe this to be the case; but in any case it cannot be inferred from premises no one of which is an atomic fact” (OKEW, 48). Here, Russell expressed doubt about the existence of any relations of logical dependence between atomic propositions, but the fact that he left it as an open possibility makes it seem that he would not consider it a defining feature of an atomic proposition that it must be independent from all others, or a central tenet of logical atomism generally that atomic facts are independent from one another. In 1936 he even went so far as to mock Wittgenstein’s claims that atomic facts are independent of one another, and that all deductions must be formal, by claiming that “no one in fact holds these views, and a philosophy which professes them cannot be wholly sincere” (LE, 319).