V. I.   Lenin

97

To:   HIS MOTHER


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 279-280.
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.


August 25, 1899

Last Sunday we returned home, Mother dearest, and got a letter from Manyasha with newspaper cuttings (a big merci for them), and then Neue Zeit from Anyuta and reprints (2) of my articles against Levitsky.[2] I was particularly glad to receive them. Anyuta wrote that you are still undecided whether to come here or not, and that you would come if you were sure the boat would take you to Minusinsk and back. When we read that, we decided to send you a telegram saying that the boats run until the middle of September (last year a boat took me as far as Minusinsk after the twentieth—of course, it was the last), so you would have time to come if you have fully regained your health and Mitya’s case permits it. I hope you receive the telegram sent on the 22nd in good time. In reply to it we shall await either you in person or a letter. Up to now (for two years) autumn here has been fine, but I don’t know what it will be like this year after a rainy summer.

Of the books sent by Anyuta I am particularly glad to have Mehring; I have just finished reading the second volume and am very, very satisfied. As far as the Credo der Jungen[1] is concerned, I was amazed at the emptiness of the phrases. It is not a Credo but a pitiful collection of words! I intend to write in greater detail about it.
 

The writer’s silence is exasperating. He does not send Webb. He does not publish articles about the “markets”,   and nothing has been seen or heard about the anti-Bulgakov article. I think you should take back all the manuscripts and send them in to editorial offices yourselves so as to get precise and timely answers regarding whether they will be published, and to have direct contact. It is, of course, inconvenient for me to do it myself, but Anyuta could do it, I think, if other affairs do not prevent her from giving her time to it; it would be better to send them direct than to send them through the writer. If he has held up my article against him merely because he has not yet finished his own answer to it—that is simply swinish on his part! It is useless for me to write to him, because he does not answer.

Many kisses for you and regards to all.

Yours,
V. U.


Notes

[1] The creed of the young (Ger.).—Ed.

[2] The two articles mentioned, in which Lenin criticised the views of the liberal Narodnik N. V. Levitsky, have not been found. They were apparently intended for Nachalo. “About a Certain Newspaper Article” is the only article known to have been written by Lenin in the Siberian period about N. Levitsky’s “O nekotorykh   voprosakh, kasayushchikhsya narodnoi zhizni” (Certain Problems Affecting the Life of the People) published in Russkiye Vedomosti on August 30, 1897 (see Collected Works, Vol. 2, pp. 316–22).


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