Published:
First published in 1930 in the journal Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya No. 1.
Sent from Paris to Alupka (Crimea).
Printed from
the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1977,
Moscow,
Volume 37,
pages 430-431.
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
May 26, 1909
Dear Anyuta,
I received your letter a few days after I had sent a letter to Mother in Alupka.
I have received the book and find that it has been nicely published. There were no fewer misprints at the end than at the beginning and the proof-reader’s ignorance of foreign languages is obvious (the English “A New Name for Old Ways of Thinking”[1] has been so distorted that it is ridiculous),[3] but that is an inevitable and insignificant shortcoming. On the whole I am satisfied with it. Everyone complains of the price—and rightly so. In future we shall have a point in the contract about the price as well as the number of copies. I was hard pressed by the publisher and would, in any case, have agreed to any terms, as long as the book was published.
The publisher has not yet sent any money and I am beginning to be afraid that he will swindle us.[4] I have written to Peres. Will you also please write to the publisher—three or four weeks have passed and he promised to pay in a week. (You absolutely must get a promissory note for the remaining sum.) Please send me the five hundred rubles that are in the bank (Crédit Lyonnais, Agence Z, Avenue d’Orléans, 19. Mr. Oulianoff. Current account No. 6420) since I cannot rely on the publisher.
Things are bad here—Spaltung,[2] or rather, there will be one; I hope that in a month or six weeks I shall be able to give you exact information. So far I can do no more than guess.[5]
Manyasha is swotting hard. She is quite well and will probably pass her examinations. What will happen then, I do not know. I think she wants to go home.
We have not yet decided when we shall go to the seaside or where we shall go.[6] But this summer we shall go for certain.
Many kisses for Mother and all the best to you.
Yours,
V. Ulyanov
Dear Anya,
You asked in your last letter why I do not write. All this winter I have been in a state of utter melancholy, the time has been frittered away, I could not work properly and so I was in no fit state to write. If Manyasha had not written about Volodya and Volodya about her I should have given you all the details about them both as I did before, but apart from that there is nothing to write, we are just jogging along. Every time they wrote I told them to give you my regards but I don’t suppose they did. I shall try and write soon, but in the meantime I send many kisses to you and to dear Maria Alexandrovna from myself and from Mother.
Yours,
Nadya
[1] Stepanov apparently did not look at it at all....—Lenin
[3] Lenin was referring to the inaccurate translation of the title of William James’s Pragmatism. A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking that he mentions in Materialism and Empirio-criticism (see Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 342).
[4] Lenin received royalties for his Materialism and Empiric-criticism from Krumbügel in full (see his sister Anna’s letter to the editor of Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya published in No. 2-3 of that journal for 1930).
[5] Lenin refers here to the coming conference of the extended Proletary editorial board; it was called on Lenin’s initiative and took place in Paris from the 21st to the 30th of June (N.S.), 1909. The conference was attended by nine members of the Bolshevik centre—the highest body of the Bolshevik group, elected by the Bolshevik delegates to the 5th (London) Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., and also representatives of the St. Petersburg, Moscow Regional and Urals organisations. The conference proceeded under Lenin’s guidance and his speeches on all the main points on the agenda shaped the character of the conference. The theses put forward by Lenin formed the basis of the decisions adopted by the conference.
The conference roundly condemned otzovism and ultimatumism as harmful and dangerous trends in the working-class movement. A. Bogdanov, leader and inspirer of the otzovists, ultimatumists and God-builders, was expelled from the Bolshevik group.
[6] Lenin spent late July and August on holiday with his family—- his wife (N. K. Krupskaya), her mother (Y. V. Krupskaya) and his sister (M. I. Ulyanova)—in the village of Bombon (Department de Seine-et-Marne) near Paris.
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