Published:
First published in 1929 in the journal Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya No. 8-9.
Sent from Shushenskoye to Podolsk.
Printed from
the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1977,
Moscow,
Volume 37,
pages 256-258.
Translated: The Late George H. Hanna
Transcription\Markup:
D. Moros
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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April 11, 1899
I received Mitya’s parcel on Tuesday, Mother dearest. Send him a big merci for all his trouble. I am pleased with the gun (the weather is bad at present; the usual spring squalls—strong winds from across the Yenisei; so there has been practically no shooting). A charge of 2 3/4 measures seemed too big (the gun kicks) and so I have begun using 2 1/2 measures. I don’t understand how they could have used 3 in the shop! I have not yet been able to observe that the left barrel is better than the right—probably because I fired from too great a distance, 60 paces or so, about 30 sagenes.
If you come here bring some plain black tulle for mosquito nets—I cannot go about here without a net. The locality is rather swampy. And also, please bring me another 200 wads for powder and for shot (similar to those Mitya sent me. There are none to be had here, and they are light and easily packed).
At Easter I intend to make a shooting trip to a much better area.
Many kisses,
Yours,
V. U.
(Next Sunday there will be no post on account of Easter. Then the ice on the Yenisei may begin to move—it usually does soon after the twentieth of April. There may be some interruption of our correspondence; but you should not let that worry you. Last year, I believe, there was practically no interruption.)
I shall send to Mother’s address by the next post an article on Kautsky and Bulgakov. Please send it on to the writer with a request that he inform you immediately whether the editors accept it. I believe it quite possible that they may not do so, because the écrivain is probably on Bulgakov’s side and may find polemics inconvenient, especially sharp polemics. As far as possible I tried to modify my tone but I was unable to speak coolly about that disgustingly professorial and clumsy article, which strikes a terribly dissonant note. I do not, of course, want to restrict the editors’ right to make “corrections”, but there is no need to write about this since it is understood, unless the author makes specific provisos. If they do not accept the article, inform me, please, as quickly as possible and send the article, if you can, to Zhizn or Nauchnoye Obozreniye [Mir Bozhy is hardly likely to accept it]. There has been no information from the writer on literary matters, and we do not hope for any. Meanwhile it is devilishly inconvenient to write without constant and regular communication. A long time ago, in January, I think, I wrote them (or Nadya wrote) that I intended doing an article about Kablukov; they did not inform me that they had another article.[1] You hear nothing about reviews. (The review of Kautsky’s book should be cancelled or sent somewhere else in view of this article against Bulgakov.) You never know what they have and what they have not. It would be a very good thing, if it were possible, to start a correspondence with the Chicagoan, who is in the know and probably has fairly close connections, so that he could answer all questions and in general keep you au courant with journal affairs. I do not know whether this could be done.
How am I to send manuscripts if you (and Mother) go away?[2] In any case, leave the post office an address to which letters and parcels can be forwarded.
Oh, yes—in my article I have referred to my “markets”. If the book does not come out by the time you send on the manuscript, please cross out the footnotes containing such references or write in the manuscript that they should be taken out.[3]
All the best,
V. U.
[1] The letter has been lost.—Ed.
[2] Lenin refers here to the proposed visit of his mother and sister Anna to Shushenskoye.
[3] The article “Capitalism in Agriculture” was published much later (in January and February 1900), when The Development of Capitalism in Russia had already appeared, so the references were not crossed out.
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