V. I.   Lenin

1908

158

To:   HIS SISTER MARIA


Published: First published in 1929 in the journal Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya No. 11. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1977, Moscow, Volume 37, pages 372-373.
Translated: The Late George H. Hanna
Transcription\Markup: D. Moros
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive.   You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
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Her Excellency Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova,
Pavlovskaya Street, 6, Apt. 16,
Peterburgskaya Storona,
St. Petersburg,
Russia

January 14, 1908

Dear Manyasha,

I am sending you the copy of Obrazovaniye[4] that I brought with me by mistake. I don’t think I owe you any more books, do I? If I do, please let me know.

We have been hanging about in this damned Geneva for several days now[5].... It is an awful hole, but there is nothing we can do. We shall get used to it. How are you? Are you freezing? Is Mother well? Please kiss her for me and give my regards to Anyuta, and to Mitya, too, if he has not yet left.

Yesterday I wrote to Lev Borisovich about an article[1] and asked him to obtain for me the minutes of the Third Duma (the officially published verbatim reports and also the announcements, questions and bills brought before the Duma). These can only be obtained through acquaintances. Please make an effort to see that someone agrees to get them for me, and send them all, missing nothing. Please send me also all the trade union journals that are still being published in Russia (in St. Petersburg, and Moscow as well) —buy them immediately. From the sum I am to receive from the publisher on January 4, please get 50 rubles from   Yelizaveta Vasilyevna and send me everything new that the Mensheviks publish (if they do) and so on. I have ordered Tovarishch (Nash Vek)[6] for myself from January 1 and will also keep track of new publications. If L.B. is too lazy or too busy to write, please find out his answer (to my questions) and let me know. By the way, I need an answer about Granat (History of Russia); has a contract for my article[7] been concluded with him or has it fallen through? Let L.B. reconnoitre and inform you.

All the very best,
Yours,
V. Ulyanov

Tournez s’il vous plait.[2]

Have you sent my papers and Nadya’s? If not, please send them as soon as possible by registered post. I need my papers in order to get my permis d’établissement.[3]

My address: VI. Oulianoff. 17. Rue des deux Ponts. 17. (Chez Küpfer) Geneve.


Notes

[1] This letter has been lost.—Ed.

[2] Please turn over (Fr.).—Ed. —Lenin

[3] Residence permit (Fr.).—Ed.

[4] Obrazovaniye (Education)—a monthly literary, popular scientific, social and political journal published legally in St. Petersburg from 1892 to 1909. Articles by Social-Democrats were published in the journal between 1902 and 1908.

[5] After the defeat of the First Russian Revolution, Lenin was hunted by the tsarist police and had to leave Kuokkala in November 1907 and move to Oggelby (near Helsingfors). In accordance with the decision of the Bolshevik centre to transfer the publication of the newspaper Proletary to Geneva, Lenin left Oggelby. He stayed in Stockholm for a few days and arrived in Geneva on January 7, 1908. This was his second period of exile abroad, which lasted until April 1917.

[6] Tovarishch (Comrade)—a bourgeois daily published in St. Petersburg from March 15 (28), 1906 to December 30, 1907 (January 12, 1908), actually as the organ of the Left Cadets. Nash Vek (Our Age) was published in January 1908 in place of Tovarishch.

[7] The article referred to is Lenin’s “The Agrarian Question in Russia Towards the Close of the Nineteenth Century”, which he wrote for the Granat Brothers Encyclopaedic Dictionary. Because of the censorship the article could not be published at that time. It first appeared in 1918 in pamphlet form (see Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 69–147).


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