Written: Written May 3, 1913
Published:
First published in 1930 in the journal Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya No. 4.
Sent from Krakow to Feodosia (Crimea).
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1977,
Moscow,
Volume 37,
pages 493-494.
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 3
Dear Maria Alexandrovna,
We have received your postcards and I am very glad to know that you are having a good rest. Here, too, it is real summer. Today we sent our things off to the country. Our new address is
Villa Terezy Skupień,
Poronin,
Galizien,
We shall be leaving in three days. The packing was an awful nuisance but as we are going to Poronin for five months we had to buy everything. I am quite invalided and tire very quickly. I have been going for electric treatment for a whole month, the swelling in my neck has not gone down but my eyes have become more normal and the palpitation is less. Treatment is free here in the nerve clinic and the doctors are very attentive. There is another advantage. While you are waiting your turn, you hear Polish spoken and speak yourself. I certainly want to learn Polish. In summer I shall have spare time and will read Polish books. We shall probably have a help in for four or five hours a day in summer and I shall have less to bother about. Mother did not go to Russia. Partly because of my illness and partly because there was no one to accompany her. But mostly because of my illness. In the last few days she has grown very tired from all the commotion in the house. Volodya has been away and was not home for his birthday or for the holidays. The journey made a good break for him.[1]
I do not yet know whether there is anywhere to bathe in Poronin. Volodya is very fond of bathing—there will be no bath there and he will not be able to take a shower.
I want to get to the country as soon as possible. We live on the outskirts of the town, there are market gardens opposite our windows and the day before yesterday a nightingale was singing, but still it is a town, the children shout, soldiers are riding to and fro and the carts are noisy.
Well, I embrace you and Anya fondly and send regards to all. Is it possible that Anya’s finger still hurts?
Mother sends regards.
Yours,
Nadya
Mother dearest,
I am adding a couple of words to Nadya’s letter. I must apologise for not having written, but I have been away for a couple of days and now we are moving.
Many thanks to Mitya for the letter.[2] I have also received a very long and interesting letter from Mark. I will reply to it from Poronin.
Poronin is the station before Zakopane (a spa). There are direct coaches to Zakopane—from Warsaw second class and from Granice third class.
I embrace you fondly and send best regards to all.
Yours,
V. U.
[1] Lenin’s trip was apparently undertaken in connection with the lecture on “The Social Upswing in Russia and the Tasks of Social-Democracy”, which he delivered on April 26, 1913 in Leipzig.
[2] The letter contained the medical advice given to Lenin by his brother for the treatment of Nadezhda Krupskaya. Lenin’s letter has been lost but its contents are known from a letter written by his mother to her daughter Maria on April 30, 1913. “I have just received a letter from Volodya in which he also wrote to Mitya to inform him that in spite of electric treatment for three weeks, Nadya’s eyes, neck and heart are no better.... Acquaintances advise him to take her to Kocher in Berne, a first-class specialist on such illnesses—it can be cured, they say, but it is dangerous to neglect it, the illness is a serious one and later it will become hopeless.... Volodya is in great difficulty—should they abandon the cottage they have now moved to, which is on a mountain, and there is the excellent mountain air she was told was good for her, or take her to Kocher, who is a surgeon and will probably want to operate; many people say that operations in such cases are difficult and the outcome is doubtful.... So Volodya asks Mitya’s advice.... Mitya was not here when the letter arrived, he came two days later, read the letter, got out his medical books, copied out something from them, consulted someone here and only yesterday sent an answer by registered post.”
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