Published:
First published in 1929 in the journal Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya No. 5.
Sent to Podolsk.
Printed from
the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1977,
Moscow,
Volume 37,
pages 215-216.
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.
Minusinsk, December 28, 1898
I am writing to you, Mother dearest, from Minusinsk; Nadya and I are here for Christmas and will remain until the first. We are having an excellent time here. This is just the kind of holiday from work that we needed. Among other things we skate very strenuously, sing, and so on.
Yours,
V. U.
I am writing to Anna separately.
Yesterday I got a letter from Manyasha with her new address in Brussels.
I have received your postcard of December 5 and your letter of December 8. Thanks for them. I read a detailed account of the écrivain’slecture in Russkiye Vedomosti. Of course, it was hardly worth while putting forward such new views in a short lecture. The remains of Fedoseyev’s work would be interesting in this respect; I think he held very different views on landowners’ farms before the reform.[3]
(I do not remember whether I informed you that we have received N.Z. up to No. 24 inclusive.)
With regard to Pamyatnaya knizhka Tulskoi gubernii, I wrote that it was for A. Sklyarenko whose address I did not have at the time. I informed you a long time ago that I had received the report of the literacy committee.[1]
I am in agreement with the writer’s advice (to send it to the printer immediately, use the same format and type as Tugan-Baranovsky’s book[4] and not send the proofs here). The type used in that book will be compact enough; it will come to about 500 pages. I have finished another two chapters (V and VI) and chapter five has been rewritten. I hope to finish in January.
Of course, I agree to entrust the second proofs to you and shall be very, very grateful to you for this strenuous and thankless work. I nevertheless think a professional proof-reader is indispensable; in my opinion two rubles a printer’s signature is too little—pay him three rubles or more per signature for the reading of two proofs and take the third (not the second) proof yourself. For misprints send them to me (not one signature but 5-10 at a time). I do not think, however, that it will be very convenient for me to send you the rough copy; I sometimes need to make additions, inserts, etc., and I cannot do this without the rough copy. Could you not pay the proof-reader more and have him send the pages of the fair copy with the proofs? If that is impossible I will, of course, send the rough copy (you can demand it by telegram “send rough copy”).
Yours,
V. U.
I answered immediately on receipt of your letter regarding my consent to Vodovozova’s terms.[2] Blos is being read and you are asked not to take it away. Can you not get it in Moscow?
[1] See Letters Nos. 61 and 64.—Ed.
[3] The lecture referred to was “The Basic Features in the Development of Russian Serf Economy from the Beginning of the 19th Century to 1881”, delivered by P. B. Strove on December 7, 1898 at the Moscow Jurists’ Society. A report of the lecture was published in Russkiye Vedomosti on December 9, 1898.
N. Y. Fedoseyev’s views on the causes of the collapse of serfdom can be assessed only from an article entitled “Historical Information”, published in the newspaper Samarsky Vestnik, January 16 and 17, 1897, and a letter to Andreyevsky headed “Where Did the Russian Working Class Come From and How?” No basic work by N. Y. Fedoseyev on the subject has yet been found.
[4] Lenin here refers to M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky’s book Promyshlenniye krizisy v sovremennoi Anglii, ikh prichiny i vliyaniye narodnuyu zhizn (Industrial Crises in Present-day England, Their Causes and Their Effect on the Life of the People).
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