Written: 8 November, 1900. Letter sent from Ufa to Moscow
Published: 1931 in Lenin’s Letters to Relatives Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin
Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1977, Moscow, Volume 37, pages 594-595.
Translated/Edited: George H. Hanna and Robert Daglish.
Transcription/Markup: D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2008. You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as the source/editing/transcription/markup information noted above.
Dear Maria Alexandrovna,
November 8
I received your letter a few days ago and yesterday a letter from Manyasha with newspaper cuttings enclosed; many thanks, I have already read them.
I recently wrote to you, but our letters, as usual, crossed in the post. I am now better, but Mother is still feeling rather bad, first she has palpitation, then she catches cold. We now have an excellent apartment, oven a piano. We have an acquaintance who sings well and we manage some music in the evenings, rather strange music, it is true, for the piano groans, wheezes and rattles, but still it is music. Visitors make Mother tired and I, too, would be glad if they did not come so often; the fact of the matter is that I come home so tired at nine o’clock that there is not much I can do, anyway.
A few days ago I got a letter from Volodya that was two and a half weeks on the way and another that took a fortnight. The letters take a terribly long time to come. Votodya advises me to make a start with my English but I don’t suppose I shall follow his advice. I have arranged with the German to have lessons three times a week and things will go better. Apparently I have been infected by Volodya’s idées fixe—I must master languages at all costs. I now have some other work in addition to my teaching and language lessons and in the spring I will tell you all about it in detail. Only four months are left to March, when I shall come to you and then go on to Volodya. At the moment I am not allowing myself to think deeply on this subject, because if I do the time will drag heavily.
I don’t know what to do about getting to Moscow in spring; I suppose it would be the wrong thing to tender an application beforehand. But why should I start guessing in advance? Spring is a long way off. It is winter here, a good, healthy winter. I hope the time will pass quickly for you until Christmas, and that at Christmas…[The end of the letter has been lost—Editor]