V. I.   Lenin

1915

255

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 524-525.
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.README


Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova,
Kostomarovsky Street, 15, Apt. 336,
Syromyatniki,
Moscow,
Russia

Uljanow,
Distelweg, 11,
Berne (Switzerland)

February 9, 1915

Dear Manyasha,

I have received two pamphlets from you—by Oganovsky and Maslov. Many thanks! They are both rotten opportunists of the most harmful type (can there be anybody in agreement with them and with Plekhanov? It could not be worse). It is, however, extremely useful to know what they are writing. I shall therefore be extremely grateful if you send me things of this sort and also clippings from newspapers (and magazines) dealing with similar subjects. A long time ago (in the August or September issues), Y. Smirnov, for instance, wrote something extremely shallow in Russkiye Vedomosti about voting for credits, etc. I saw that, but I know nothing further about the literary activities of this man and others like him.

Here we are well off for foreign newspapers and books in the libraries. We are living fairly well. Berne is a small and dull but quite civilised town. Y.V. is ill with influenza.

There is a growth in the anti-chauvinist mood among the Germans; there has been a split in Stuttgart and in Frankfurt am Main.[3] An anti-chauvinist publication Lichtstrahlen[4] is appearing in Berlin.

If it will not be too much trouble, and if you should happen to be somewhere near (please do not go there specially   as there is absolutely no hurry) please find out from the Granats who accepted my article for the Encyclopaedic Dictionary, whether they sent the fee to M.T. Yelizarov (as I asked),[1] and whether it is possible to obtain some more work there for the Encyclopaedic Dictionary. I have written to the secretary[2] about this but he has not answered me.

Wishing you all the best—regards from me and from Nadya.

Yours,
V. Ulyanov


Notes

[1] The article was entitled “Karl Marx” and the fee for it was handed to Lenin’s sister Maria, personally.—Ed. —Lenin

[2] Collected Works, Vol. 36, p. 317.—Ed.

[3] Lenin here refers to the split in the German Social-Democratic Party between the majority, the opportunist Centrists who followed Kautsky, and the radical Left wing.

[4] Lichtstrahlen (Rays of Light)—a monthly journal published by Left Social-Democrats (the International Socialists of Germany) under the editorship of J. Borhardt. It was published irregularly from 1913 to 1921 in Berlin.


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