Lenin Collected Works/Volume 37

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Preface by Progress Publishers

This volume contains 274 personal letters, telegrams and notes from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin to his relatives. They were written between 1893 and 1922, to his mother, Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova, his sisters, Anna and Maria, his brother, Dmitry, his brother-in-law, Mark Timofeyevich Yelizarov (husband of Anna Ulyanova), and his wife, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya.

Many of these letters were published in the journal Proletarskaya Revolyatsiya for the years 1924, 1929 and 1930 and in Lenin Miscellanies Nos. III, XXIV, XXV, XXXV; separate editions of the Letters to Relatives, edited by Lenin’s sisters, were published in 1930, 1931 and 1934.

The Preface to the 1930 edition by Maria Ulyanova and the article by Anna Ulyanova-Yelizarova, “Apropos of Lenin’s Letters to Relatives”, which formed the preface to the 1931 and 1934 editions, discuss the content and significance of the letters; these two articles precede the letters in the present volume.

Lenin wrote to his mother and to other relatives at least once in every week or ten days. The longer intervals between letters in this volume show that a considerable number of letters have been lost. Most of Lenin’s letters were written before the revolution, a time when his relatives were subjected to frequent house searches and arrests. Many of his letters fell into the hands of the secret police and bear traces of their examination—passages of interest to the police are underlined in red pencil, etc. Some of the letters seized during searches were not returned, some were found after the revolution in police dossiers; only odd pages of some letters have survived. Many letters were lost during the First World War (1914-1917), when letters from abroad were subjected to a particularly strict scrutiny by the censors.

The periods best represented are the late nineties, when Lenin was writing his Economic Studies and Essays and The Development of Capitalism in Russia, and the years 1908-09 when he was preparing his Materialism and Empirio criticism; in these years Lenin’s letters concerned the despatch to him of the literature he needed, and contained instructions on how the books should be published and on correction of the proofs.

Almost all the letters are printed from the originals; in a few cases, however, they have been printed from copies in the files of the Police Department in the form (in full or as extracts) in which they were found there.

Eleven of the letters were published for the first time in the Fourth Russian Edition of the Collected Works, from which the translation of this volume has been made (these letters are marked with an asterisk in the table of contents).

In the letter to his mother dated July 1, 1912, Lenin mentions that he is moving from Paris to Krakow. This change of address was necessary to bring him closer to St. Petersburg, the centre of the working-class movement, so that he could improve contacts with Pravda and with the Bolshevik group in the Fourth Duma, and carry out the day-to-day work involved in his guidance of the Party organisations. In his letter of July 15, 1919, addressed to the propaganda boat Krasnaya Zvezda, Lenin informed his wife of the situation obtaining on the Eastern Front—the capture of Yekaterinburg (now Sverdlovsk)—and also of the great change then taking place in the South.

Among the items first published in the Fourth Edition are some brief notes addressed to his wife and to his sister Maria between 1919 and 1922.

Fifty-four letters addressed by Lenin’s wife to his mother and sisters are given as an Appendix to this volume; these letters describe Lenin’s way of life when he was in exile in Siberia and when he was living abroad and help to elucidate certain facts mentioned in Lenin’s letters; eight of Krupskaya’s letters were published for the first time in the Fourth Russian Edition of the Collected Works. These are also marked with an asterisk in the table of contents. Letters written jointly by Lenin and his wife are contained in the body of the volume.

The items are arranged chronologically; letters posted in Russia are dated according to the Old Style, those from abroad according to the New Style; the editors have added dates at the end of undated letters. The source and destination of the letter and, where necessary, the date are indicated by the editors at the end of each letter; below this, information is given on where the letter was first published in Russian. It should be borne in mind that the note on printing given on the right of the page refers always to the Russian original, not to the translation.

The volume is furnished with a name index, a list of literature mentioned in the letters, and explanatory notes.

The illustrations include photographs of Lenin’s relatives and some of the places where he lived. Facsimiles of two of Lenin’s letters are also given.

 

Preface to Letters To Relatives (1930 Edition)

The letters in this collection are addressed mainly to Lenin’s mother, Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova, and to me and cover the period from 1894 to 1917, i.e., they begin from the first years of Lenin’s revolutionary activities and continue up to his return to Russia after the February Revolution. It was in this period, almost a quarter of a century, that our Party emerged and took shape. Through out this remarkable period of twenty-five years, Vladimir Ilyich stood at the head of the Party, guiding and nurturing it. His entire life was one of revolutionary struggle and his private life was part of that struggle, part of his labour on behalf of the cause of the proletariat.

We have a complete edition of Lenin’s Collected Works and a fairly extensive literature on Leninism (works of scientific research and popular writings) but Lenin the man, with his brilliant, all-round individuality, has been but little described or, rather, has scarcely been described at all.

The letters here offered to the reader to some extent fill this gap. They enable the reader to form to some extent a picture of Lenin’s life, his habits, inclinations, attitude to people, etc. We say here “to some extent”, mainly because the collection of letters to his relatives in this period is far from complete. During the frequent moves from town to town, the numerous house searches and arrests to which first one, then another member of our family was subjected, many of the letters fell into the hands of the police and were not returned or were lost in some other way. There were also frequent cases of letters going astray in the post, especially during the imperialist war. For this reason one and the same question is repeated in a number of successive letters. These letters, furthermore, bear the imprint of police conditions in tsarist times. It is true that all our official correspondence (all communications concerning revolutionary events, party life, etc.) was conducted secretly, in invisible ink and usually in books and journals, sent through other, “clean” addresses. Our personal lives were so closely bound up with revolutionary work that our legal, personal correspondence no doubt suffered badly and we cut it down because of police conditions. Vladimir Ilyich had good reason to write to me, when I was in exile in Vologda, that “as far as letter-writing is concerned—At is very difficult in our situation (in yours and mine especially) to carry on the correspondence one would like”.[Letter No. 252.—Ed.]

This applied equally to all our family and not only to me, because Vladimir Ilyich was not only a blood relation but was related to us by his views and convictions. All the family (including Anna’s husband, Mark Yelizarov) were at that time Social-Democrats, supported the revolutionary wing of the Party, took a greater or lesser part in revolutionary activities, were keenly interested in the life of the Party and were delighted at its successes and grieved by its failures. Even our mother, who was born in 1835 and who was over sixty at the end of the century, when house searches and arrests became particularly frequent, showed full sympathy for our revolutionary activities. All the legal correspondence of revolutionaries was examined by the police and recourse had to be made to various hints, secret signs, etc., in some way to touch upon questions that interested us, confirm the receipt of some illegal letter, make enquiries about acquaintances and so on.

The reader will notice that letters sent by Vladimir Ilyich to his mother, sisters or brother contain scarcely any names, because the use of names might involve those mentioned in unpleasantness. It stands to reason that we had not the slightest desire to do anything that would, at best, make things unpleasant for someone. The names and surnames that do, on rare occasions, occur in Vladimir Ilyich’s letters are those of comrades and friends whose connection with us was in any case known to the police owing to various circumstances (exile together on the same charge, attendance at the same educational establishment, etc.) or had to do with purely business matters (names of publishers, booksellers, etc.). To avoid mentioning the names of any body living in more or less legal conditions about whom Vladimir Ilyich wanted to tell us something, to whom he wanted to send regards, etc., he made frequent use in his letters of nicknames and explanations connected with facts or events known to us. Vladimir Ilyich called Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov, for instance, “the historian” (in view of his writings on history); at one time he carried on a lively correspondence with him through my sister and me.

When he sent greetings to V. V. Vorovsky, who was in exile in Vologda at the same time as I, Vladimir Ilyich wrote “Greetings to Polish friends, and I hope they help you in every way.”[Letter No. 237.—Ed.] By “China traveller” he meant A. P. Sklyarenko, who was employed on the railway in Manchuria at the time, and “the gentleman we went boating with last year"[Letters Nos. 114 and 130.—Ed.] was V. A. Levitsky, etc.

The despatch of underground publications, secret correspondence, books containing letters in invisible ink, etc., had to be referred to in Aesopian language, etc.

At the end of December 1900 I gave G. B. Krasin, who was going abroad, the Manifesto of the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries to take to Vladimir Ilyich; for purposes of secrecy I concealed it in an album of photographs. Vladimir Ilyich was very pleased with this package and wrote in a letter dated January 16, 1901, “many thanks to Manyasha for the books she sent, and especially for the unusually beautiful and interesting photographs from our cousin in Vienna; I should like to receive such gifts more often”.[Letter No. 120.—Ed.]

Iskra and other underground publications were sent to Russia in envelopes to “clean”, legal addresses. We also used these addresses to obtain literature for ourselves. Information concerning such packages was sometimes contained in legal letters to enable us to make enquiries of the addressee in good time. Information of this kind seems to be contained in Vladimir Ilyich’s statement (letter of December 14, 1900), “I remember that I sent you the things that interested you on the ninth.” And in her letter of February 8, 1916, Nadezhda Konstantinovna wrote, “Volodya was very pleased with your big letter. Perhaps you will write again.”[Letter No. 117 and Krupskaya’s Letter No. 54.—Ed.] Since our legal letters were never exceptionally long and during the imperialist war, when this letter was written, we corresponded mainly by postcard, even registered postcards, and since many letters were lost in transit, the words quoted apparently refer to an illegal letter concealed in a book.

When Vladimir Ilyich was first living abroad in 1900 and still did not know whether his stay would be more or less permanent, he did not give us his private address; when he was living in Switzerland or in Munich we wrote to him in Paris or Prague for reasons of secrecy. In his letter of March 2, 1901, for instance, he sent us his new address, adding “I have moved together with my landlord”.[Letter No. 125.—Ed.] Franz Modráček, to whose address we sent our letters, actually did move at that time to a new apartment, but Vladimir Ilyich remained in Munich in the old one.

___

Characteristic of Vladimir Ilyich were his great punctuality and thoroughness and his strict economy in spending money, especially on himself. Vladimir Ilyich probably inherited these qualities from our mother, whom he resembled in many ways. Our mother was of German descent on her mother’s side and these qualities were deeply ingrained in her character.

Vladimir Ilyich’s carefulness with money and his frugality in spending it on himself can be seen from his letter of October 5, 1895.

“I am now, for the first time in St. Petersburg, keeping a cash-book to see how much I actually spend. It turned out that for the month August 28 to September 27 I spent altogether 54 rubles 30 kopeks, not including payment for things (about 10 rubles) and expenses for a court case (also about 10 rubles) which I shall probably conduct. It is true that part of this 54 rubles was spent on things that do not have to be bought every month (galoshes, clothes, books, an abacus, etc.), but even discounting that (16 rubles), the expenditure is still excessive—38 rubles in a month. Obviously I have not been living carefully; in one month I have spent a ruble and 36 kopeks on the horse trains, for instance. When I get used to the place I shall probably spend less.”

He really did live economically, especially when he was not earning anything and had recourse to “philanthropy”, as he called his mother’s financial aid. He economised to such an extent that he did not even subscribe to Russkiye Vedomosti for himself when he was living in St. Peters burg in 1893, but read the paper in the Public Library when it was “two weeks old”. “When I get a job here perhaps I will subscribe to it,” he wrote to me.[Letter No. 2.—Ed.]

Vladimir Ilyich retained this trait all his life and it made itself felt, not only in Russia when he was not earning anything and when he was abroad and could not find a publisher for his literary works (one has only to recall that The Agrarian Question was lying about for ten whole years and saw the light of day only in 1917) and was thus in a critical position (see, for instance, his letter to Comrade Shlyapnikov of September 1916[Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 236.—Ed.]), but also when he was materially well provided for, i.e., after the 1917 Revolution.

There was one thing, however, that Vladimir Ilyich found it difficult to economise on—books. He needed them for his work, so that he could keep himself up-to-date on foreign and Russian politics, economics, etc.

“To my great horror,” he wrote in a letter to his mother, sent from Berlin August 29, 1895, “I see that I am again in financial ’difficulties‘; the ’temptation’ to buy books, etc., is so great that the devil alone knows where the money goes.”[Letter No. 10.—Ed.] Even in this, however, he tried to cut down, mainly by going to work in libraries, especially as they provided him with a quieter working atmosphere when he was abroad—there was none of the hubbub and endless, wearisome talk that was so typical of the exiles, who were bored by surroundings unusual and alien to them, and who liked to unburden themselves in conversation.

Vladimir Ilyich used libraries not only when he was living abroad but also in Russia. In a letter to his mother from St. Petersburg he wrote that he was satisfied with his new room, which was “not far from the centre (only some 15 minutes’ walk from the library)”.[Letter No. 1.—Ed.] Passing through Moscow on his way to his place of exile he even made use of the few days he was in the city to work in the library of the Rumyantsev Museum. When he was living in Krasnoyarsk and had to await the start of the navigation season to continue his way to Minusinsk Uyezd, he worked in Yudin’s library, and had to walk about 5 versts every day to do so.

During the period of banishment, when there was no possibility of using a library, Vladimir Ilyich tried to make up for this by asking us to arrange for library books to be sent him by post. A few experiments of this sort were made but too much time was wasted (about a month there and back) and library books were issued for a restricted period.

Vladimir Ilyich resorted to this method at a later date, too. In a letter to his sister Anna dated February 11, 1914, he wrote: “With regard to the summaries of crime statistics for 1905-1908, I would ask you not to buy them (there is no need, they are expensive) but to get them from a library (either the Bar Council or the Duma Library) and send them for a month.”

When he was living abroad Vladimir Ilyich also made constant use of libraries. In Berlin he worked in the Imperial Library. In Geneva there was his favourite “club” (Société de lecture), where he had to become a member and pay certain dues—very small ones, to be sure—in order to work in the “club’s” library. In Paris he worked in the Bibliothéque nationale, although he complained that it was “badly organised”; in London he worked in the British Museum. And only when he was living in Munich did he complain that “there is no library here”; in Krakow, too, he made but little use of the library. In his letter to me of April 22, 1914 he wrote that “here (in Krakow. — M.U.) the library is a bad one and extremely inconvenient, although I scarcely ever have to go there....” His work for the newspaper (Pravda), all sorts of dealings with comrades, who came to Krakow in greater numbers than to France or Switzerland, his guidance of the activities of the Social-Democratic group in the Duma, Party conferences and meetings, etc., required so much effort that there was little time left for scientific studies. Even then, however, Vladimir Ilyich “often thought of Geneva, where work went better, the library was convenient, and life was less nerve-racking and time-wasting”.[Letter No. 252.—Ed.]

After his arrest in Galicia at the beginning of the imperialist war Vladimir Ilyich again went to Switzerland; from there he wrote “the libraries here are good, and I have made quite decent arrangements as far as the use of books is concerned. It is even pleasant to read after my daily news paper work”.[Letter No. 254.—Ed.] Later he went with his wife from Berne to Zurich in order, among other things, “to work in the libraries here” (continuing, however, the same intensive Party political work, as his correspondence in that period with Comrades Karpinsky and Ravich, just published in Lenin Miscellany XI, clearly illustrates) which, according to him, were “much better than those in Berne”. But although Vladimir Ilyich was better off abroad as regards the reading of foreign books, journals and newspapers— he visited libraries for this purpose—the shortage of Russian books made itself sharply felt. “I can easily get German books here, there is no shortage of them-. But there is a shortage of Russian books,” he wrote in a letter dated April 2, 1902.[Letter No. 137.—Ed.] “I see very few new books”, he wrote on April 6, 1900. There is no doubt that Vladimir Ilyich’s work was greatly hampered by his frequently not having the necessary book to hand when he lived abroad. This is why his letters to his relatives frequently contained requests for certain books that he needed for his work (statistics, books on the agrarian question, on philosophy, etc.) and also new publications, journals and fiction. And again, it is possible to judge, to some extent, what branches of knowledge he was interested in and needed literature about at any given time, and for which writings he used them.

Among this literature considerable attention was paid to various statistical returns.

From his works, and from the rough copies, notes and calculations that preceded those works we see clearly what great importance Vladimir Ilyich attached to statistics, to “precise facts, indisputable facts”.[Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 272.—Ed.] His unfinished and as yet unpublished article “Statistics and Sociology” by P. Piryuchev (a new pen-name that Vladimir Ilyich adopted to facilitate the publication of this work) is typical in this respect; it is devoted to the question of “the role and significance of national movements, the relationship between the national and the international”.[Ibid., p. 271.—Ed.]

The following passage is from this article: “The most widely used, and most fallacious, method in the realm of social phenomena is to tear out individual minor facts and juggle with examples. Selecting chance examples presents no difficulty at all, but is of no value, or of purely negative value, for in each individual case everything hinges on the historically concrete situation. Facts, if we take them in their totality, in their interconnection, are not only stub born things, but undoubtedly proof-bearing things. Minor facts, if taken out of their totality, out of their interconnection, if they are arbitrarily selected and torn out of context, are merely things for juggling with, or even worse.... We must seek to build a reliable foundation of precise and indisputable facts that can be set against any of the general’ or ’example-based’ arguments now so grossly misused in certain countries. And if it is to be a real foundation, we must take not individual facts, but the sum total of facts, without a single exception, relating to the question under discussion. Otherwise there will be the inevitable, and fully justified, suspicion that the facts were selected or compiled arbitrarily, that instead of historical phenomena being presented in objective interconnection and inter dependence and treated as a whole, we are presenting a ’subjective’ concoction to justify what might prove to be a dirty business. This does happen ... and more often than one might think.”[Ibid., pp. 272-73.—Ed.]

In 1902, Vladimir Ilyich asked for “all the statistics”, from among the books he had had with him in Siberia, to be sent to him abroad, for, as he said in a letter dated April 2, 1902, “I am beginning to miss these things”. Later, in order to get statistical material from various towns and to get it more regularly, Vladimir Ilyich wrote a special appeal to statisticians participating in the Congress of Doctors and Naturalists (there was a sub-section for statisticians at this congress) held in Moscow in the winter of 1909. A number of provincial statisticians responded and in a letter dated January 2, 1910, Vladimir Ilyich wrote, “I have also received a letter about statistics from Ryazan—it is splendid that I shall probably be getting help from many people."[Letter No. 200.—Ed.]

In 1908, when Vladimir Ilyich was working on his Materialism and Empirio-criticism, he ordered a book by Professor Chelpanov about Avenarius and his school, the book Immanent Philosophy and others. He wrote to me about this work of his, “I have been doing a lot of work on the Machists and I think I have sorted out all their inexpressible vulgarities (and those of ’empirio-monism’ as well).”[Letter No. 166.—Ed.]

When Vladimir Ilyich inquired whether his manuscript about the latest form of capitalism (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism)[Collected Works, Vol. 22, pp. 185-304.—Ed.] had been received he wrote, “I regard this work on economics as being of exceptionally great importance and would especially like to see it in print in full” (letter of October 22, 1916).[Letter No. 260.—Ed.] As we know, this wish was not fulfilled (although Vladimir Ilyich “did his utmost to adapt himself to the ’restrictions‘”, as he wrote in a letter to M. N. Pokrovskyon July 2, 1916);[Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 227.—Ed.] Vladimir Ilyich’s work underwent a large number of changes and many cuts were made, and only ten years later was it published in its original form.

From Vladimir Ilyich’s letters to his relatives we see in what connection he set about writing his (as yet unpublished) article “The Capitalist System of Modern Agriculture”.[Collected Works, Vol. 46, pp. 423-46.—Ed.] In a letter dated October 22, 1916, he wrote to me, “You write that the publisher wants to put out The Agrarian Question as a book and not as a pamphlet. I under stand that to mean that I must send him the continuation (i.e., in addition to what I have written about America I must write what I have promised about Germany). I will start on this as soon as I have finished what I have to write to cover the advance received from the old publisher.”[Letter No. 260.—Ed.] The manuscript of this work, which is now in the possession of the Institute, is unfinished; apparently the revolution “hindered” Vladimir Ilyich and he could not finish it.

The letters here presented to the reader give something of a picture of the conditions under which Vladimir Ilyich carried on his literary work, and also of those trials he had to undergo to publish the results of that work. I am refer ring here to what he published legally. Vladimir Ilyich worked in unfavourable conditions throughout the entire pre-revolutionary period (with the exception of the period of the first revolution and the Zvezda and Pravda period— 1912-14—when he was able to contribute to the legal press and when we had, for a short time, at least, our own legal publishers); this was while he was abroad and experienced, for instance, a great shortage of Russian books and other material needed for his work.

Censorship conditions also created considerable difficulty; Vladimir Ilyich’s articles were cut and distorted (like his article “Uncritical Criticism”, for instance) or were confiscated (The Agrarian Question, Vol. II), and so on and so forth. Great difficulties were also caused by lack of contact with Russia, because of which it was frequently impossible to establish direct communications with publishers, etc. Typical of the situation are his frequent attempts to obtain work for Granat’s Encyclopaedic Dictionary. “I would like to get some work for the Encyclopaedic Dictionary,” he wrote to me in his letter of December 22, 1914, “but it is probably not easy to arrange unless you have an opportunity to meet the secretary of the editorial board."[Letter No. 254.—Ed.] Vladimir Ilyich had no such opportunity, and when he applied directly to the Granat office he either received no answer at all, or received one only after a considerable delay. “Is it possible to obtain some more work for the Encyclopaedic Dictionary?” he wrote to me in 1915. “I have written to the secretary about this but he has not answered me.” “In this place, unfortunately, I am cut off from all contact with publishers,” he wrote in 1912.[Letter No. 230.—Ed.]

If it had not been for the great help from comrades and relatives in seeking publishers, reading the proofs of his works, etc., there would have been even greater difficulties in getting his writings published. But we, his sisters and brother, were not always in a position to help him in these matters, especially when we were in prison or in exile. In 1904, for instance, he asked mother to give him the address of Anna’s husband, Mark Timofeyevich, for whom he had some “literary business” (letter of January 20, 1904).[Letter No. 150.—Ed.]

Vladimir Ilyich, however, not only had the ability to work systematically, persistently and fruitfully, he also had the ability to rest—when the opportunity offered. For him the best form of rest was out in the open, close to nature and away from people. “Here (in Stjernsund in Finland, where he was resting after returning “terribly tired” from the Fifth Party Congress.—M.U.) you can have a wonderful rest, swimming, walking, no people and no work. No people and no work—that is the best thing for me.”[Letter No. 155.—Ed.] He enjoyed a really excellent rest there, where Lidiya Mikhailovna Knipovich surrounded him with exceptional care and attention, and he recalled it in a letter to me when I had just got over a bad attack of enteric fever. “Now would be the time to send you to Stjernsund,” he wrote.[Letter No. 164.—Ed.]

Vladimir Ilyich was extremely fond of nature and in his letters one constantly comes across references to the beauties of nature, no matter where he happens to be. “The scenery here is splendid, I am enjoying it all the time. The Alps began immediately after the little German station I wrote to you from; then came the lakes and I could not tear myself away from the window of the railway carriage,” he wrote to mother when he was on his way to Switzerland in 1895. And again he wrote to mother, “I take walks— walking is not at all bad here at present and, it seems, there are plenty of nice places in Pskov (and also in its environs).” From abroad he wrote, “I saw Anyuta a few days ago, took a trip on a very beautiful lake with her and enjoyed the wonderful views and the good weather.” “A few days ago I had a wonderful outing to Salève with Nadya and a friend. Down below in Geneva it was all mist and gloom, but up on the mountain (about 4,000 feet above sea level) there was glorious sunshine, snow, tobogganing— altogether a good Russian winter’s day. And at the foot of the mountain—la mer du brouillard, a veritable sea of mist and clouds, concealing everything except the mountains jutting up through it, and only the highest at that. Even little Salève (nearly 3,000 feet) was wrapped in mist.” “Nadya and I have travelled and walked round a great deal of the surrounding country and have found some very nice places,” we read in a letter dated September 27, 1902. Vladimir Ilyich was probably right when he wrote, “We are the only people among the comrades here who are exploring every bit of the surrounding country. We discover various ’rural’ paths, we know all the places nearby and intend to go further afield.”[Letters Nos. 6,103, 110, 149, 142, 148.—Ed.]

If they were unable to get out of town for the summer and drop straight into “rural life” (“we get up early and go to bed almost with the roosters”),[Letter No. 237.—Ed.] Vladimir Ilyich and Nadezhda Konstantinovna, when they were living in Switzerland, sometimes went walking in the mountains. There is a description of one such journey in a letter Nadezhda Konstantinovna wrote to my mother on July 2, 1904. “It is already a week since we got away from Geneva and are now resting in the full sense of the word. We have left our work and our worries in Geneva and here we sleep ten hours a day, and go swimming and walking—Volodya does not even read the newspapers properly; we took a minimum of books with us, and even those we are sending back to Geneva tomorrow, unread, while we ourselves shall don our rucksacks at four in the morning and set out for a two weeks’ walking tour in the mountains. We shall go to Interlaken and from there to Lucerne. We are reading Baedeker and planning our journey carefully.... Volodya and I have made an agreement not to talk about our work—work, he says, is not a bear and will not escape to the woods—not even to mention it, and, as far as possible, not to think about it.”[Letter No. 151.—Ed.]

Such journeys, however, were rare and were undertaken only when work and the factional squabbling had had too bad an effect on health and on nerves, as was the case in the winter of 1903-04 after the Second Party Congress and the split. As a rule, if Vladimir Ilyich went to the country for the summer, he continued his work there, whenever it was possible, after a few days’ complete rest. If it was impossible to get out of town, or if such trips were too short, they made excursions to the country, sometimes to the mountains, on foot or on their bicycles, usually on Sundays. “Quite unintentionally we are taking to foreign ways and arrange our outings on Sundays of all days, though that is the worst time because everywhere is crowded,” Lenin wrote in a letter to his mother (March 29, 1903).[Letter No. 148.—Ed.] On such outings they usually took sandwiches with them instead? of having lunch and set off for the whole day. No wonder Vladimir Ilyich and Nadezhda Konstantinovna belonged to the “excursionist” party while other comrades formed the “cinemist” party (those who liked the cinema), as they jokingly called themselves.

Vladimir Ilyich was, indeed, not very fond of the different amusements in which other comrades found relaxation after hard work. I do not think he ever went to the cinema, especially when he was living abroad, and he visited theatres only on rare occasions. He went to see The Weavers when he was in Berlin on his first trip abroad, and he went to the theatre when he was living abroad in exile, mostly, however, when he was living there “somewhat alone” (i.e., without his family), or when he happened to be in a big city on business after a period of intensive work and he took advantage of the trip to “snap out of himself”. The theatres abroad gave Vladimir Ilyich little satisfaction (at times he and Nadezhda Konstantinovna left the theatre after the first act , on which occasions their comrades jokingly accused them of wasting money), and of the plays he saw in the later period, only The Living Corpse created an impression on him. He liked the Moscow Art Theatre very much, however; he had been there with Lalayants (“Columbus”) before he went abroad, when he was staying in Moscow, and in a letter to his mother in February 1901 he said that “he still remembers with pleasure” that visit to the theatre. But what we would like would be to visit the Russian Art Theatre and see The Lower Depths,”[Letter No. 146.—Ed.] we read in his letter of February 4, 1903. He did not manage to see The Lower Depths until many years later, when he was living in Moscow after the revolution.

His visits to concerts were also relatively rare, although he loved music. “We recently went to our first concert this winter”, we read in the same letter, “and were very pleased with it—especially Chaikovsky’s latest symphony (Symphonie pathetique).” “I was at the opera a few days ago and heard La Juive with the greatest pleasure; I had heard it once in Kazan (when Zakrzhevsky sang)—that must be thirteen years ago, and some of the tunes have remained in my memory,” he wrote to mother on February 9, 19O1.[Letter No. 422.—Ed.] After wards he often whistled those tunes (he had his own peculiar way of whistling through his teeth). Later, during his life abroad, Vladimir Ilyich rarely visited concerts or operas. Music had too powerful an effect on his nerves, and when they were upset, as was often the case in the turmoil of life among the émigrés abroad, it affected him badly. Vladimir Ilyich was always very busy and his budget was a modest one and this had its effect on his secluded (as far as amusements were concerned) way of life.

Vladimir Ilyich paid relatively little attention to the various sights: “I have little taste for such things in general and in most cases have seen them only by accident. In general, I much prefer Wandering around and seeing the evening amusements and pastimes of the people to visiting museums, theatres, shopping centres, etc.”[Letter No. 40.—Ed.] Vladimir Ilyich usually did his “wandering around” in the evenings when he was living in Berlin in 1895, and this enabled him to study “the Berlin mores and listen to German speech”.[Ibid.] It was not, however, only when he was in Berlin on his first trip abroad that he made a study of customs; there are quite a number of passages in his letters to his relatives which show that when he was living in Paris, or was there on a short trip, he found pleasure in examining the local way of life and he remarked the free and easy manner of the public in the streets and on the boulevards. “Paris is a very inconvenient town for a man of modest means to live in, and very tiring,” he wrote after spending a few days in that city. “But there is no better and more lively town to stay in for a short time, just for a visit, for an outing.”[Letter No. 249.—Ed.] Vladimir Ilyich also studied Czech life when he was passing through Czechoslovakia and was sorry that he had not learned the Czech language; he gave a lively description of the manners and customs of the Galician peasants that he had an opportunity of observing when he was living in Galicia, and of the carnival in the Munich streets with its battles of confetti and streamers, etc. He loved life in all its forms and had a rare talent for observing and studying it on a broad scale.

The letters published here give a picture of Vladimir Ilyich’s attitude towards his relatives and, to some extent, his feelings for people in general. How, much care and attention is displayed in those letters! Vladimir Ilyich was greatly attached to his relatives, especially to mother, and in all his letters, in those addressed to other members of our family as well as to mother, there is always a note of solicitude for her, the wish that things should go better for her and that she should have a more peaceful and comfortable life. His letters are full of questions about health, whether good arrangements have been made for an apartment, whether it is not cold. “I am worried that your apartment is so cold; what will it be like in winter if the temperature is only 12° now? You must not catch cold.... Is there nothing you can do? Perhaps you should put in a small stove,” he wrote in a letter to his mother in 1909.[Letter No. 198.—Ed.] These letters contain a great deal of advice to “have a good rest in sum mer”, “run about less, rest more and keep well”, etc.

Vladimir Ilyich was particularly attentive to his mother at those times when some misfortune overtook her, and misfortunes were many in her life. First one, then another member of our family was arrested and exiled, sometimes several of us were arrested at the same time and she, though advanced in years, had to go again and again to prisons to visit her family and take things to them, to sit for hours in the waiting-rooms of the gendarmerie and the secret police, and was often left completely alone with her heart aching for her children who had been deprived of their liberty. How worried Vladimir Ilyich was at such times, and how heavily the lack of personal contact with his mother weighed upon him, can be seen from his letter of September 1, 1901. At that time my brother-in-law, Mark Yelizarov, and I were in prison, my sister Anna was abroad and could not return to Russia because she would have been arrested on the same charge, and our brother Dmitry could not remain with mother because he had to graduate from the University of Yuriev. She was left alone in the same way in a strange town in 1904 when my sister, my brother Dmitry and I were arrested on charges connected with the Kiev Party Committee and the Central Committee.

Vladimir Ilyich always wanted mother to live with him, and he frequently invited her to do so. This was difficult to arrange, however, because mother was always with those of her children who were particularly in need of her help, and in Russia that help was needed almost always by those who had fallen into the hands of the police. And so it turned out that each time Vladimir Ilyich was living in exile abroad, both the first and the second time, she was able to stay abroad only for a very short while to see him. In 1902, she lived for about a month with Vladimir Ilyich and our sister Anna at Loguivy in the north of France. The second time, and this was the last time she was to see her son, was in Stockholm, where she and I went in 1910 specially to visit him. Vladimir Ilyich always provided her with detailed itineraries for such trips and advised her to stop the night in hotels in order not to overtire herself with the journey. It was also in Stockholm that mother for the first and last time heard Vladimir Ilyich speak in public; it was at a meeting of worker exiles. When we left, Vladimir Ilyich accompanied us to the boat—he could not go aboard the vessel because it belonged to a Russian company and he might have been arrested on it—and I still remember the expression on his face as he stood there looking at mother. How much pain there was in his face! He seemed to feel that this was the last time he would see her. And so it was. Vladimir Ilyich did not see any of his relatives again until he came to Russia after the February Revolution, and mother died shortly before it, in July 1916. We did not receive the first letter Vladimir Ilyich wrote when he had news of mother’s death. The next letter has not survived either, but from what I remember of it it showed what a heavy loss it was to him, how much pain it caused him, and how tender he was to all of us, who were also distressed by our loss.

Vladimir Ilyich also devoted considerable attention to us, his sisters and brother, and to Mark Yelizarov; he was always interested to know how we were getting on, whether we were earning anything, whether we had had good holidays, etc. He tried to get books for us to translate and sometimes sent foreign books to us for that purpose, showed an interest in what we read and studied, invited us to stay with him, and so on. Vladimir Ilyich also displayed a great interest in his comrades, inquired how they were getting on and tried to help them materially as well. He undertook to write prefaces for his comrades’ translations, so as to make it easier for them to get the books published and thus have an opportunity of earning something.

Comrades who are unacquainted with life in exile abroad and with the way legal correspondence was carried on under tsarism may think it strange that Vladimir Ilyich frequently says in his letters that he is “living very quietly”, “peacefully”, “modestly” and so on in periods such as that of the imperialist war, for instance, when it is obvious from literature and from his underground correspondence that he was displaying tremendous energy in the struggle against the chauvinism that was influencing most of the Social-Democratic parties. It must not be forgotten that at that time Vladimir Ilyich could only make his voice heard in the press, and then only in a publication that appeared once in several weeks or even in several months, and which (like pamphlets) it was difficult to send from place to place; he could also speak at small meetings of exiles abroad or at small study circles for foreign workers. It stands to reason that such opportunities were far too little for Vladimir Ilyich; Nadezhda Krupskaya said that at the beginning of the revolution in Russia he created the impression of a lion trying to break out of its cage—was not his former life in exile abroad and out of contact with Russia, and especially during the imperialist war, a cage that greatly restricted him, that did not permit him to branch out and could not satisfy him, the natural leader, the voice of the people? He was eager for work on a broader scale, his was truly the eagerness of the caged lion, and he had to work hard at persuading two or three comrades to obtain access to broader masses. And for a nature like his was not “sleepy Berne” really too “quiet” and movement there too “gradual”?...

In his legal correspondence there are only occasional glimpses of his fury against “disgusting opportunists of the most dangerous type” and against “extreme vulgarities about voting for credits”, etc. Here he was hampered by the censor and one has only to see which phrases from his letters (see Appendix, pp. 553-54) “attracted the attention” of the gendarmes and secret police and which became “material evidence”, to understand that both he and his relatives were at that time in a situation in which it .was very difficult “to carry on the correspondence one would like”.[Letter No. 252.—Ed.]

We had good reason to make the proviso at the beginning of this preface that Vladimir Ilyich’s letters to his relatives are of significance and interest mainly because they provide a picture of him as a man (of course that picture is far from complete and, owing to conditions of police surveillance, somewhat one-sided). In this respect, it seems to me, they constitute a valuable contribution to the literature on Vladimir Ilyich, and one can only regret that so many letters to relatives and to comrades have been lost. There are other documents, especially his rich literary legacy, which speak of Lenin as the leader, the politician, the scholar.

Vladimir Ilyich’s second period of exile abroad was particularly burdensome to him. When he arrived in Geneva after having lived in and near St. Petersburg, it was especially painful to return to the old ash-heap. “We have been hanging about this damned Geneva for several days now,” he said in a letter to me on January 14, 1908. “It is an awful hole, but there is nothing we can do. We shall get used to it.”[Letter No. 158.—Ed.] With his customary persistence and energy he got down to work, because he could “get used to” any conditions. “The only unpleasant thing was the actual moving, which was a change for the worse. That, however, was inevitable,” he wrote in the next letter to mother.[Letter No. 159.—Ed.] And this change from better to worse, this absence of the literature he needed for his work and of new books and newspapers made itself particularly felt at this time because in St. Petersburg he had been able to read all the newspapers and journals and keep up-to-date on books. And he asked us to obtain for him “the minutes of the Third Duma (the officially published verbatim reports and also the announcements, questions and bills brought before the Duma)”, and to “send them all, missing nothing”. He was also interested in the “programmes, announcements and leaflets of the Octobrists, the Rights, the Cossack group, etc.” He was deprived of these necessary documents, whereas in the Duma “all these ’bits of paper’ probably lie about on the floor and nobody picks them up”. He also asked us to send him “everything new that the Mensheviks publish”,[Letters Nos. 158, 162, 158.—Ed.] trade union journals that had survived the debacle, etc.

During his life in exile abroad Vladimir Ilyich felt the shortage, not only of books (although we tried to provide him with at least the most interesting books that appeared on the market), but also of Russian newspapers. Things were particularly bad in this respect during the imperialist war when at times Vladimir Ilyich had no Russian papers at all. “Please send Russian newspapers once a week after you have read them, because I have none at all,” he wrote in a letter dated September 20, 1916.[Letter No. 259.—Ed.]

Vladimir Ilyich was also in dire need of an income, especially during his last years abroad. “There will soon be an end to all our old sources of subsistence and the question of earning something is becoming acute,” wrote Nadezhda Krupskaya on December 14, 1915. She said that Vladimir Ilyich was “seriously troubled” because he was very conscientious where money was concerned or in accepting help from anybody, whoever it might be. “I shall get down to writing something or other, because prices have risen so hellishly that life has become devilishly difficult,” he wrote on September 20, 1916.

Just a few months before the February Revolution, in the autumn of 1916, Vladimir Ilyich had to look for books to translate and to correspond with publishers about getting them published. How unproductive a use for his labour it would have been if he had been compelled to spend his time translating, but this, too, was eventually “hindered” by the revolution.

Such were the conditions under which he lived abroad shortly before the revolution: lack of contact with Russia and the masses of working people, whom he was always trying so hard to exercise a direct influence over, the difficult living conditions in exile abroad—although energy and persistence were never lacking—so it is no wonder that his “nerves were on edge” and his whole organism seriously undermined.

His reporting of Nadezhda Konstantinovna’s joke that he “must have been ’pensioned off‘”[Letter No. 262.—Ed.] touches a bitter note in the letter of February 15, 1917.

After this letter in which the difficult conditions in which Vladimir Ilyich was forced to live in pre-revolutionary times could be seen behind the jokes, came the glad tidings by telegraph, “Arriving Monday 11 p.m. inform Pravda”.[Telegram No. 264.—Ed.]

That was the end of his period of exile, and also the end of his correspondence with his relatives.

I received only two tiny notes from Vladimir Ilyich after this,[Letters Nos. 265 and 266.—Ed.] they were as short as his underground existence in Finland in the days of Kerensky and Kornilov on the eve of the Great October Revolution.

M. Ulyanova

 

Apropos of Lenin’s Letters To Relatives

This article was written by Lenin’s sister Anna Ilyinichna Ulyanova-Yelizarova for the collection of Letters to Relatives published in 1931 and 1934.—Ed.

A man’s private correspondence is important in the compilation of his biography and in revealing him as an individual because it shows him in his day-to-day life, shows his relations with people and thus throws light on certain aspects of his character that are shown insufficiently or not at all by his scientific or public activities; in any case private correspondence adds new lines to the depiction of his character. Although Vladimir Ilyich’s letters are, as a rule, very brief, condensed, and devoid of any effusiveness, which he never liked, any more than he liked other forms of verbosity; although behind the letters one feels the man of action accustomed to grudge the time he devotes to anything personal, they nevertheless reflect in some degree the character of the writer.

It should not be forgotten that the correspondence was carried on under conditions of tsarist censorship, when one had always to be prepared for the letters to be read by the police, with the result that they had to be particularly brief and condensed. “It is very difficult ... to carry on the correspondence one would like,”[Letter No. 252.—Ed.] Vladimir Ilyich wrote to Maria. Letters in invisible ink allowed of greater freedom; in these, in addition to purely business matters, one came across accounts of the latest Party news, of congresses and conferences,and precise characterisations—in two or three words—of people, parties and trends given by Vladimir Ilyich, the sharp, decisive expressions he used in ordinary, free conversation. Such letters, however, had to be destroyed immediately they had been read, so, of course, not a single one of them has been preserved. They were written between the lines of other letters or, more frequently, between the lines of a book or journal or some reprint or other. And when Vladimir Ilyich acknowledged the receipt of books and wrote that some diary of the Congress of Technicians or reprint from the archives was “very interesting and thank Anyuta very much for it”[Letter No. 42.—Ed.] that meant, of course, that the secret letter had been received. Nor did I keep letters that were written in ordinary ink but were not sent to my own address; among such were, for instance, the letters I received in 1913-14 at the office of the journal Prosveshcheniye under an agreed-upon pseudonym. And it was not always convenient to keep letters sent to my private address—I recall a couple that Vladimir Ilyich himself asked me to destroy.

As far as concerns the letters in this collection, it must be said that although they were written to people close to the writer and consequently contain much that has to do with the family alone and has little general interest, the addressees were people close to Vladimir Ilyich not only by blood but also in their convictions; he was also writing to them on business, so that the legal letters were often supplementary to the others and, therefore, formed a link in the whole chain of correspondence. Vladimir Ilyich, of course, did not write to mother on business matters, but at t~e same time he had nothing to hide from her, knowing that she was fully in sympathy with his revolutionary efforts and all his work. The result was that a letter addressed to one member of the family was, more often than not, intended for all. Requests to us, his sisters, brother and brother-in- law, were often contained in letters to our mother; as a rule they were read by all members of the family and were often forwarded to those living in other towns.

The significance of Vladimir Ilyich’s letters to his relatives naturally becomes all the greater for their having been written in the quarter of a century in which our Party, the party that Vladimir Ilyich did so much to build, emerged and took shape.

The most intensive and substantial correspondence belongs to the 1897-99 and 1908-09 periods, in which two big books by Vladimir Ilyich—The Development of Capitalism in Russia and Materialism and Empirio-criticism—were published, because these letters contained business requests connected with the two publications, with the reading of the proofs, etc. Quite apart from this, the letters of the first of these two periods are fuller and more frequent since they were written when Vladimir Ilyich was in exile in Siberia, a condition that makes even the most restrained people turn to letter-writing because of the involuntary seclusion and the lack of contact with the life of the outside world. The letters written by Vladimir Ilyich in this period, especially the more detailed ones addressed to mother, give us an excellent picture of the conditions under which he lived, his inclinations and habits—in these letters he stands out, if one may put it so, in clearest relief as a person.

Furthermore—and this is most important—in his letters from exile Vladimir Ilyich showed that he was not cut off from life, for in them he touched upon questions of Marxist theory and practice that were the most vital questions of the day. We see from the letters—although it occurs in a veiled form, the only possible form—his attitude to members of the Emancipation of Labour group, to Plekhanov and Axelrod, his complete agreement with them and his profound respect for them, his contact with them both through letters and through the talks I conducted with them on his instructions during my trip abroad in 1897. In these letters Vladimir Ilyich stated emphatically that “the isolation from political life” of which Axelrod had given warning must not on any account be permitted. “I believe the author to be wholly and a thousand times right, especially against narrow adherents of ‘economics’”,[Collected Works, Vol. 34. p. 26.—Ed.] meaning Masby and Co., the editors of the newspaper Samarsky Vestnik, who had accused the journal Novoye Slovo, headed by Struve, of liberalism and sympathy for the bourgeoisie. At that time Vladimir Ilyich considered it a matter of current importance not to confine propaganda and agitation to the economic struggle alone. “It is important that the illusion should not be allowed to develop that anything can be achieved by the struggle against the factory-owners alone,” he said to me shortly before his arrest. “From the very outset the political consciousness of the workers must be aroused.” It was for this reason that Vladimir Ilyich, in complete agreement with the Emancipation of Labour group, took the side of Struve in his differences with the Samarsky Vestnik writers, as Fedoseyev and Martov also did, and wrote to Maslov and Co. in Struve’s defence. One of the letters from Vladimir Ilyich (according to Maslov) was written in a militant tone and concluded with the words: “If you want war, let it be war”. In 1899, Vladimir Ilyich on several occasions spoke against the Samarans in his letters.

“As far as the Samarans are concerned, I doubt very much whether they have said anything sensible (I have already had a letter about the accusation of ‘bourgeois sympathies’)”—letter of February 13, 1899.[Letter No. 76.—Ed.] Concerning the review of Gvozdyov’s book he wrote: “I did not enjoy writing the review. I did not like the book—nothing new, generalities, an impossible style in places....” “It would be very useful and very interesting to talk on this subject (on the article about the heritage.—A.Y.) to people who do not limit themselves to Gvozdyov’s theories (have you read his book about kulaks? I think it is very, very weak).”[Letters Nos. 74 and 79.—Ed.]

Vladimir Ilyich continued his struggle against “economism” in agreement with Axelrod and Plekhanov, who in 1895, at the time of Vladimir Ilyich’s first trip abroad, insisted on the need to get away from the disputes between study circles and the Narodniks, to break down the isolation and go over to the organisation of a political party of Social-Democrats; he noted, however, another extreme in Axelrod’s new pamphlet (on the relationship between liberal and socialist democracy in Russia). Vladimir Ilyich showed that the author did not stress the class character of the movement sufficiently, that he was too kindly towards the Frondist agrarians and should have spoken of using them but not of supporting them.

In these letters we find some expression of Vladimir Ilyich’s indignation at the revisionist trend then emerging—Bernstein’s book, articles by German revisionists in Neue Zeit and Bulgakov’s article. In respect of the last-named he wrote, “Bulgakov simply made me mad; such nonsense, such utter nonsense, and such eternal professorial pretentiousness—what the devil is this?!...” “Kautsky he distorts outright.... I am thinking of writing ‘about Kautsky’s book’” (against Bernstein.—A.Y.)—see letter of May 1, 1899.[Letters Nos. 85 and 87.—Ed.]

About Bernstein he wrote the following: “Nadya and I started reading Bernstein’s book immediately; we have read more than a half and its contents astonish us more and more as we go on. It is unbelievably weak theoretically- mere repetition of someone else’s ideas. There are phrases about criticism but no attempt at serious independent criticism. In effect, it is opportunism ... and cowardly opportunism at that, since Bernstein does not want to attack the programme directly .... Bernstein’s statement that many Russians agree with him ... made us very indignant. We people here must indeed be getting ‘old’ and must be ‘lagging behind the new words’ ... copied from Bernstein. I shall soon be writing to Anynta on this subject in detail.”

Ilyich asked his sister Maria to get him reports of the Han over Party Congress (letter of August 22, 1899) that was to be held in October. The chief issue at the Hanover Congress, of course, was that of Bernstein. When Vladimir Ilyich sent his review of Bulgakov’s article to Novoye Slovo (it was published in Nauchnoye Obozreniye) he wrote, “Of course, polemics among one’s own people are unpleasant and I tried to tone the article down, but to keep quiet about differences is not only unpleasant, it is downright harmful—and, furthermore, one cannot keep quiet about the chief differences between ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘criticism’ that have come to the fore in German and Russian Marxism”.[Letter No. 87.—Ed.]

Tugan-Baranovsky also made Vladimir Ilyich indignant (letter of June 20, 1899). “I have seen Nauchnoye Obozreniye No. 5, and find that Tugan-Baranovsky’s article in it is monstrously foolish and nonsensical; he has simply arbitrarily introduced changes into the rate of surplus value in order to ‘refute’ Marx; he assumes an absurdity—a change in the productivity of labour without a change in the value of the product. I do not know whether every such nonsensical article is worth writing about. Let him first fulfil his promise to develop it in detail. In general, I am becoming a more and more determined opponent of the latest ‘critical stream’ in Marxism and of neo-Kantianism (which has produced, incidentally, the idea of separating sociological from economic laws). The author of Beiträge zur Geschichte des Materialismus is quite right in declaring that neo-Kantianism is a reactionary theory of the reactionary bourgeoisie and in rebelling against Bernstein.”[Letter No. 90.—Ed.]

Vladimir Ilyich’s second article—“Once More on the Theory of Realisation”[Collected Works, Vol. 4, pp. 74-93.—Ed.]--was directed mainly against Struve, whose sympathy for revisionism was becoming more and more obvious. It is true that at this time Vladimir Ilyich’s criticism was still of a friendly nature since he was criticising one of his own side.

“I am now finishing an article in reply to Struve. It seems to me he has got things badly mixed up and his article may cause a good deal of misunderstanding among supporters and malicious glee among opponents” (March 7).[Letter No. 80.—Ed.]

There gradually arose, however, misgivings of a more serious nature that come out more markedly in the letters to Potresov written in the same year (Lenin Miscellany IV). He also wrote that he had begun studying philosophy from the few philosophical books in his possession.

“Volodya is busy reading all kinds of philosophy (that is now his official occupation)—Holbach, Helvétius, etc.,” Nadezhda Krupskaya wrote in a letter to our mother on June 20, 1899.[Krupskaya’s Letter No. 16.—Ed.]

And lastly there was the document known as the Credo, probably the biggest political fact of the period, and the reply[Collected Works, Vol. 4, pp. 167-82.—Ed.] to it compiled by 17 Social-Democrats; this is also mentioned in the letters.

“I shall write to Anyuta soon about the Credo (which interests and exasperates me and everybody else) in detail.” (August 1, 1899.)[Letter No. 92.—Ed.]

“As far as the Credo der Jungen 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.” (August 25, 1899.)[Letter No. 97.—Ed.]

I had sent this document to Vladimir Ilyich and quite by chance given it this name. I had not regarded it as being of any particular significance and in a letter in invisible ink I had said as briefly as possible “I am sending you a Credo of the young.”

Later, when the name had come to be accepted and there was talk about an “Anti-Credo”, I was worried about having exaggerated the importance of the document with this incorrect name, and wrote to Vladimir Ilyich about it in invisible ink. It seems this place in the letter remained unread because when he returned from exile I told him the document had not been the “symbol of faith” of any group of the young but came from the pen of two authors, Kuskova and Prokopovich, and that I had given it the name of Credo myself; Vladimir Ilyich was surprised and asked: “You did?” But then, after a short silence, he said in any case it had been necessary to reply to it. And that is how the document went the rounds under that name.

Thus we see that in his letters to his relatives sent from his place of exile, Vladimir Ilyich reacted to all the most urgent questions of the Party life of that time; there are signs in these letters of the main course he was mapping out, the course that was to avoid the narrowness of economism and also the threatening danger of diffusion that lay in offering favours to the liberals, and also the purely intellectualist attraction to revisionism and criticism for criticism’s sake. While still in exile he was already selecting his comrades for the future Party organisation and for “undisguised literature”; he wrote to Potresov about the need for this and naming for it, of all his comrades in exile, only Martov, “the only one who really took all this (the interests of a journal, of the Party) seriously to heart”. He drew up a plan for Iskra.

In Vladimir Ilyich’s letters for the 1908-09 period— the time when his Materialism and Empirio-criticism was being published—there are also statements on general matters, especially on the subject of his book, although such statements are fewer than in the letters sent from Siberia which were, in general, much more detailed. The attempts to revise the philosophical aspect of Marxism (they were headed by Bogdanov and Lunacharsky in Russia) made Vladimir Ilyich no less indignant than Bernstein’s politico-economic revision. We saw that when he was still in Siberia this neo-Kantian trend in Marxism aroused in him the desire to undertake the study of philosophy. In the years of reaction following our first revolution the “god seeker” trend made him take up philosophical studies seriously and write a book analysing this deviation from Marxism.

“My illness has held up my work on philosophy very badly,” he wrote to his sister Maria on July 13, 1908. “I am now almost well again and will most certainly write the book. I have been doing a lot of work on the Machists and I think I have sorted out all their inexpressible vulgarities (and those of ‘empirio-monism’ as well).”[Letter No. 166.—Ed.]

Vladimir Ilyich was terribly indignant at “popovshchina”, a word he used for all kinds of god-seeking and all other attempts at dragging religious views into Marxism in some form or another. Because of the censorship he pro posed changing the word “popovshchina” into “fideism”, with a footnote explaining it (fideism is a doctrine which substitutes faith for knowledge, or which generally attaches significance to faith).[Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 19.—Ed.]

That is how it appeared in the book. In the manuscript, the phrase to which this footnote was added read as follows: “Supported by all these supposedly recent doctrines, our destroyers of dialectical materialism proceed fearlessly to downright popovshchina (clearest of all in the case of Lunacharsky, but by no means in his case alone!)”. And Vladimir Ilyich came down very heavily on these “destroyers”; he asked me not to tone down anything concerning them and I had difficulty in getting him to agree to a certain toning down for the sake of the censorship.

“‘Mentally projected god’ will have to be changed to ‘mentally projected for himself—well, to use a mild expression—religious conceptions’ or something of the sort”.[Letter No. 175.—Ed.]

In the manuscript this phrase had the following wording: “People can think and mentally project for themselves any kind of hell, all sorts of devils. Lunacharsky even mentally projected for himself a god.” When there was no question of censorship he wrote to me: “Please do not tone down anything in the places against Bogdanov, Lunacharshy and Co. They must not be toned down. You have deleted the passage about Chernov being a ‘more honest’ opponent than they, which is a great pity. The shade of meaning you have given is not the one I want. There is now no overall consistency in my accusations. The crux of the issue is that our Machists are dishonest, mean-spirited, cowardly enemies of Marxism in philosophy.” Further he said: “Please do not tone down the places against Bogdanov and Lunacharsky’s popovshchina. We have completely broken off relations with them. There is no reason for toning them down, it is not worth the trouble.” (March 9, 1909.)

“Especially—do not throw out Purishkevich,” he wrote on March 21, “and the others in the section on the criticism of Kantianism!”[See Letters Nos. 183, 182, 184.—Ed.]

Vladimir Ilyich compared the Machists to Purishkevich because the latter had once said that he criticised the Cadets more consistently and with greater determination than the Marxists did, and the Machists assured us that they criticised Kant more consistently and with greater determination than the Marxists did. But, Mr. Purishkevich, Vladimir Ilyich said to him, “it must not be forgotten that you criticised the Constitutional-Democrats for being excessively democratic while we criticised them for being insufficiently democratic. The Machists criticise Kant for being too much of a materialist, we criticise him for not being enough of a materialist. The Machists criticise Kant from the right, we from the left.” (Works, Vol. XIII, p. 163.)[Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 199.—Ed.]

When he later sent a supplement to Chapter Four, Section One, “From What Angle Did N. G. Chernyshevsky Criticise Kantianism?” Vladimir Ilyich wrote: “I regard it as extremely important to counterpose Chernyshevsky to the Machists.”[Letter No. 185.—Ed.] Vladimir Ilyich mentioned the political aspect of the differences known in those days as the differences with the Vperyod group in only a couple of words in his legal letters. “Things are bad here—Spaltung (split.--A.Y.), 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” (May 26).[Letter No. 191.—Ed.] Details of this split were given in the “Report on the Extended Editorial Board of Proletary” and in the appended resolutions: 5. The Break-away of Comrade Maximov (Bogdanov) and 4. The Party School Being Set Up Abroad at X—(Capri), for which the extended editorial board declared it could bear no responsibility “in view of the fact that the initiators and organisers of the school are one and all representatives of otzovism, ultimatumism and god-building” (June 1909, Works, Vol. XIV, pp. 89-103).[Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 425-51.—Ed.]

Social affairs are touched upon still more scantily in the letters of the following years, which were, in general, fewer.

The first years of the second exile abroad were particularly dull and miserable and were a sad experience for Vladimir Ilyich. I saw that for myself when I visited him in Paris in the autumn of 1911. He seemed to be less vivacious than usual. One day when we were out walking together he said to me: “I wonder if I shall manage to live to the next revolution.” The sad expression on his face reminded me of the photograph of him taken in 1895 by the secret police. The time was one of profound reaction. Only a few signs of a renascence were to be seen—the publication of Zvezda and Mysl, for example.

A note of pleasure resounded in his letter of January 3, 1911. “Yesterday I received Zvezda No. I from Russia and today Mysl No. 1. That is something to cheer me up!... It really is a pleasure!”[Letter No. 215.—Ed.]

His depression was deepened, of course, by the “bitter squabbles”, which had a bad effect on work; Vladimir Ilyich wrote about this in 1910, having in mind the differences that existed between the CC Bureau Abroad and the Vperyod group. He referred to “a period so full of squabbles” in his letter of January 3,1911, and apologised to my husband for his unpunctuality in answering letters.

It can be seen from his letters that Vladimir Ilyich’s mood greatly improved after he moved to Krakow in the autumn of 1912. He wrote that he felt better than in Paris, he was resting his nerves, there was more literary work and fewer squabbles. The work for Pravda, the improved situation in working-class circles and in revolutionary work naturally had a beneficial effect on Vladimir Ilyich. There was a noticeable lessening of the squabbles, so much so that Gorky, Vladimir Ilyich wrote, was less unfriendly towards us. It will be remembered that it was shortly after this that Gorky became one of the editors of the Bolshevik journal Prosveshcheniye.

Vladimir Ilyich wrote of the proposal for Pravda to publish pamphlets; he said that he was seeing more people from Russia and seemed to feel closer to Russia; he invited my husband, Mark Yelizarov, to the health resort at Zakopane, saying that trains went there direct from War saw; he also invited me, hinting that people living in the frontier zone could make the journey for thirty kopeks.

In general he was pleased with Krakow and wrote that he was not thinking of moving anywhere “unless the war chases us away, but I do not greatly believe in the war”.[Letter No. 229.—Ed.]

I moved to St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1913 where I was employed by the Bolshevik journal Prosveshcheniye, the journal Rabotnitsa and also Pravda. In addition to the letters in invisible ink, I had at that time a considerable correspondence with Vladimir Ilyich on literary matters; they were addressed to the office of Prosveshcheniye in the name of Andrei Nikolayevich. Out of this official correspondence I have so far been able to recover only two letters that had been copied by the police and which are not included in this collection of letters to relatives.

During the war, of course, letters were fewer and many of them were lost. The few that were preserved, even the postcards, touch upon questions that were most painful for Vladimir Ilyich. A postcard dated February 1, 1910 said, “We have been having ‘stormy’ times lately, but they have ended with an attempt at peace with the Mensheviks—yes, yes, strange as it may seem; we have closed down the factional newspaper and are trying harder to promote unity. We shall see whether it can be done....”[Letter No. 204.—Ed.]

The postcard of March 24, 1912 says, “. . .there is more bickering and abuse of each other than there has been for a long time—there has probably never been so much before. All the groups and sub-groups have joined forces against the last conference and those who organised it, so that matters even went as far as fisticuffs at meetings here.”[Letter No. 222.—Ed.]

In his letter of November 14, 1914 he wrote, “It is very sad to watch the growth of chauvinism in a number of countries and to see such treacherous acts as those of the German (and not only the German) Marxists or pseudo-Marxists.... It stands to reason that the liberals are praising Plekhanov again; he has fully deserved that shameful punishment.... I have seen the disgraceful, shameless issue of Sovremenny Mir.... Shame! Shame!”

Official correspondence in invisible ink became more intensive in those years, when all correspondence with the Central Committee was greatly reduced, and in the only postcard from Vladimir Ilyich that has been preserved for the year 1915 he thanked me “very, very, very much for the book, for the most interesting collection of pedagogical publications and for the letter”. The collection of pedagogical publications was “interesting”, of course, on account of what was written between the lines in invisible ink.

In Vladimir Ilyich’s letters to his relatives, therefore, we see his comments on the struggle for the correct under standing of Marxism and for its correct application at the various stages of development of the proletarian movement which he conducted throughout his life.

___

Now let me try to draw some conclusions on the basis of these letters, to show in brief those aspects of Vladimir Ilyich’s personality, the features of his character, that, in my opinion, stand out in his letters to his relatives.

The first thing we notice (and this has been mentioned in the reviews of the letters published in part in Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya) is the permanence of his attachment, his enduring, unchanging attitude towards the same people in the course of many long years. It is true that these are his immediate relatives, but the permanence of his affection, the steadiness and stability of his character are clearly delineated in these letters. We can also see from the same letters the permanence of his conviction and his faith in his cause; in Vladimir Ilyich’s letters to people who were close to him, such people as one could be most out spoken with, there is not the slightest vacillation or doubt, not the slightest tendency to veer in any other direction.

Nor do we see any traces of whining and despondency in him—such behaviour is, in general, not in keeping with his character—or any complaints about his position, be it in prison, in exile in Siberia or abroad, or even any sour note in his descriptions. Of course, this was also because most of the letters were addressed to mother, who had suffered so much on account of her children, a fact of which Vladimir Ilyich, who deeply loved and respected his mother, was profoundly aware. He felt that his own personal activities were causing his mother a great deal of worry and pain and as far as lay in his power he tried to make things easier for her.

His energy could be felt in letters to other members of the family as well, even to those who were at various times living apart from mother. I remember, for instance, the letters he wrote me between 1900 and 1902, when I was living abroad, and which I naturally had to destroy before I returned to Russia. I remember that his letters were always refreshing and an antidote to all depression and nervousness; they inspired enthusiasm and made one pull oneself together morally. His self-confidence did not, how ever, crush one; it gave one energy and an urge to greater self-fulfilment; his witty jokes filled one with the joy of living and this was the best lubrication for any kind of work. His letters display a great sensitiveness to the mood of the other person and friendly, comradely attention to him—this can be seen in his solicitude for his mother and other members of the family and his solicitude for his comrades—his questions and tales about them when he was in prison, in exile or abroad (see, for example, the letters of March 15 and April 5, 1897).

At the same time one notices the simplicity and the natural manner of Vladimir Ilyich, his great modesty, the complete absence not only of conceit and boastfulness but of any attempt to play up the services he had rendered or to show off; and this was in his youth, when some sort of showing off is natural in a talented person. For a long time he would not agree to call his big, fundamental monograph The Development of Capitalism in Russia, which, he said, “is too bold, too broad and promises too much ... and should be more modest” (February 13, 1899) and the argument that the book would sell better with that title he “did not like” either (January 10, 1899).[See Letters Nos. 76 and 69.—Ed.]

All the labour that he devoted to the study of material for his book on philosophy and other works while in prison, in exile and later when he was abroad, the writing of legal and illegal pamphlets and articles, many of which were lost—all this labour he regarded as something perfectly natural and normal. Here his tremendous industry, his natural restraint and his tenacity in carrying through what ever he had undertaken are also apparent. The time limits fixed for The Development of Capitalism in Russia or for certain chapters of the book were, as a rule, kept to, as can be seen from the letters printed below.

Since he was exacting to himself he was naturally exacting to others. He always gave many instructions and insisted on their being carried out; he trained everybody who at any time worked with him in the accuracy and thoroughness that was his own. Vladimir Ilyich was always displeased with unpunctuality, with delays in work, in carrying out instructions or in answering letters. In his letters sent from exile he inveighs against Struve for his slackness in answering; in the letters of 1908-09 he expresses his displeasure with Comrade Skvortsov-Stepanov for his careless reading of the proofs of Materialism and Empirio-criticism, which he had undertaken to correct, and so on.

From Vladimir Ilyich’s letters we can also see his great modesty and his complete lack of fastidiousness in life, his ability to be content with little; no matter what conditions fate provided for him he always wrote that he needed nothing and was eating well—whether it was in Siberia where he had to provide everything for himself out of an allowance of eight rubles a month, or when he was living abroad and we were able to check up on him during our rare visits and were always able to prove that he had far from enough to eat. He was always worried by the fact that his circumstances forced him to accept financial aid from mother longer than is usual, instead of helping her. On October 5, 1893, he wrote, “... The expenditure is still excessive—38 rubles in a month. Obviously I have not been living carefully; in one month I have spent a ruble and 36 kopeks on the horse trains, for instance. When I get used to the place I shall probably spend less.”[Letter No. 1.—Ed.] Later, too, he was worried and asked mother not to send him money and not to save money from her pension when he heard that this was what she wanted to do on learning of his straitened circumstances from a letter sent to someone else (letter of January 19, 1911).

He was also embarrassed at having to take money from the Party, when his income from writing was not enough to live on. With some bitterness Vladimir Ilyich related Nadezhda Krupskaya’s joke that he “must have been ‘pensioned off’”, when money came to him from Russia (February 15, 1917).[Letter No. 262.—Ed.]

For reasons of economy Vladimir Ilyich tried wherever possible to use books from libraries. He spent next to nothing on amusements; visits to theatres and concerts were so rare that they could not affect his budget (see letter of February 9, 1901). Vladimir Ilyich, indeed, preferred the open air to social forms of recreation, where there were a lot of people. “Here,” he wrote from Stjernsund (Finland) on his return from the Fifth Party Congress, “you can have a wonderful rest, swimming, walking, no people and no work. No people and no work—that is the best thing for me (June 27, 1907). The walk is a pleasure although I have to walk about 5 versts a day, an hour’s walk, he wrote from Siberia in 1897.[Letters Nos. 155 and 19.—Ed.]

With their rucksacks on their backs, he and his wife would wander over the mountain slopes and passes of Switzerland. He climbed in the Alps and when he lived near Krakow he went climbing in the Tatras. It was not only such outstanding beauties of nature that attracted him; he rode or walked round the environs of big cities such as London or Munich. “We are the only people among the comrades here who are exploring every bit of the surrounding country. We discover various ‘rural’ paths, we know all the places nearby and intend to go further afield.”[Letter No. 448.—Ed.] “We find the road to out-of-the-way places to which none of the exiles ever go.” He was interested in sport—shooting, skating, cycling and chess, and engaged in these amusements with all the ingenuousness of a youth or even a boy.

He describes some of his mountain trips very vividly, if briefly—the trip to Saliéve near Geneva, for instance, or his Shu-shu-shu in Siberia.

In the letters there is also evidence of Vladimir Ilyich’s ability to make the most of the present moment; in prison, in exile and in the worst times abroad he delved into scientific and theoretical problems, erected and strengthened, so to speak, the scientific buttresses of the cause to which he devoted his life—work for the proletarian revolution—at times when fate decreed that he must remain more or less aloof from direct participation. And when life brought him into greater contact with people—in the country, travelling, in trains—he showed his ability to take in reality, to understand the masses, to rise to generalisations from minor facts and to determine and consolidate the line that leads from theory and the general ideals of life to life as it really is and back again. He showed his ability to gather impressions from everywhere, from all conversations, from letters. We see how Vladimir Ilyich hungered after ordinary letters that simply drew a picture of the life around one with out setting out to achieve any general aims, how hungry he was for them and asked for them to be sent more often.

And, lastly, we see in these letters Vladimir Ilyich’s ability to maintain his composure and equilibrium both in prison and after (see the letter with his advice to our sister Maria, May 19, 1901), how, after imprisonment or various social and political disturbances that had undermined this equilibrium, he would make determined efforts to return to normal. He realised that this equilibrium was essential for the mental or political work that was the aim of his life. For the same reason he spent the whole three years of his exile in Shushenskoye, never asking for a transfer to a town in the way most exiles did. He wrote that temporary visits to the town were better than permanent residence there. Speaking of the suicide of Fedoseyev he wrote, “For people in exile, these ‘exile scandals’ are the worst thing of all.” “No, don’t wish me comrades from among the intellectuals in Shushenskoye—I’d rather not!” (January 24, 1898).[Letters Nos. 53 and 38.—Ed.]

In bringing to a close this brief indication of the traits and peculiarities in the character of Vladimir Ilyich which, in my opinion, are shown by the letters to his relatives published below, I hope that they will help the reader to gain a clearer picture and a closer understanding of Vladimir Ilyich as a person.

A. Ulyanova-Yelizarova

 

1893

1. To his mother October 6	65
2. To his sister Maria October	67

1894

3. To his sister Maria December 13	68
4. To his sister Maria December 24	70

1895

5. To his mother May 14	72
6. To his mother May 20	73
7. To his mother June 8	74
8. To his mother July 18	75
9. To his mother August 10	77
10. To his mother August 29	78
11. To his mother September 7	80
12. To his mother December 5	81

1896

13. To A. K. Chebotaryova January 2	82
14. To his sister Anna January 12	85
15. To his sister Anna January 14	87
16. To his sister Anna January 16	89

1897

17. To his mother March 2	91
18. To his sister Maria March 10	94
19. To his mother March 15 and 16	95
20. To his mother March 26	97
21. To his mother April 5	99
22. To his mother and his sister Anna April 17	101
23. To his mother May 7	105
24. To his mother and his sister Maria May 18	106
25. To his mother and his sister Anna May 25	111
26. To his mother and his sister Anna June 8	116
27. To his brother-in-law Mark Yelizarov June 15.	118
28. To his mother and his sister Maria July 19	120
29. To his mother August 17	123
30. To his brother-in-law and his sister Maria September 7	126
31. To his mother September 30	128
32. To his mother October 12	130
33. To his mother and his sister Maria October 19	133
34. To his mother and his sisters Maria and Anna December 10	135
35. To his mother and his sisters Maria and Anna December 21	138
36. To his mother and his sister Maria December 27	141

1898

37. To his mother and his brother-in-law January 4	143
38. To his mother and his sister Anna January 24	146
39. To his mother February 7	150
40. To his mother and his brother-in-law February 14	155
41. To his brother-in-law February 18	158
42. To his mother and his sister Maria February 24	160
43. To his mother and his brother-in-law March 1	163
44. To his mother and his sister Anna March 8	165
45. To his mother March 14	167
46. To his brother-in-law March 28	169
47. To his mother May 10	171
48. To his mother May 17	173
49. To his mother June 7	174
50. To his mother June 14	176
51. To his sister Anna July 15	178
52. To his mother August 2	181
53. To his mother and his sister Anna August 16.	184
54. To his mother August 26	186
55. To his mother September 16	188
56. To his mother October 11	190
57. To his mother November 1	192
58. To his sister Anna Written between November 7 and 11	193
59. To his sister Maria November 11	196
60. To his mother and his sister Anna November 15	198
61. To his mother and his sister Anna November 22	200
62. To his mother and his brother November 28	203
63. To his mother, his sister Anna and his brother-in-law December 6	205
64. To his mother and his sister Anna December 12	209
65. Krupskaya and Lenin to Lenin’s mother December 20	212
66. To his sister Maria December 22 and 28	214
67. To his mother and his sister Anna December 28	215

1899

68. To his mother January 3	217
69. To his mother January 10	218
70. To his mother January 17	220
71. To his sister Maria January 24	222
72. To his brother January 26	224
73. To his mother January 30	228
74. To his mother February 3	230
75. To his mother February 7	233
76. To his sister Anna February 13	235
77. To his mother February 21	238
78. To his mother and his sister Anna February 28	239
79. To his brother-in-law February 28	241
80. To his mother March 7	243
81. Krupskaya and Lenin to Lenin’s sister Maria March 7	245
82. To his mother and his sister Anna March 17	247
83. Krupskaya and Lenin to Lenin’s sister Maria March 17	250
84. To his mother March 21	252
85. To his mother and his sister Anna April 4	253
86. To his mother and his sister Anna April 11	256
87. To his mother and his sister Anna May 1	259
88. To his mother and his sister Anna May 9	262
89. To his sister Anna and his mother May 29 and 30	264
90. To his mother and his brother June 20	266
91. To his mother July 11	269
92. To his mother August 1	270
93. To his mother and his sister Maria August 7	271
94. To his mother August 15	273
95. To his mother August 22	274
96. Krupskaya and Lenin to Lenin’s sister Maria August 22	276
97. To his mother August 25	279
98. To his mother September 1	281
99. To his mother September 11	283
100. To his mother October 17	284

1900

101. Krupskaya and Lenin to Lenin’s mother January 19	286
102. To his mother March 15	288
103. To his mother April 6	289
104. To his mother April 26	291
105. To his mother April 30	292
106. To his mother May 5	293
107. To his mother May 10	295
108. To his mother May 18	296
109. To his mother July 2	297
110. To his mother August 31	298
111. To his mother September 7	299
112. To his mother September 19	300
113. To his mother October 3	302
114. To his sister Maria November 6 and 7	303
115. To his sister Maria November 29	305
116. To his mother December 6	306
117. To his sister Maria December 14	308
118. To his mother December 26	310

1901

119. To his mother January 1	312
120. To his mother January 16	313
121. To his mother January 27	315
122. To his mother February 9	317
123. To his mother February 20	319
124. To his mother February 27	321
125. To his mother March 2	322
126. To his mother March 4	323
127. To his mother May 19	325
128. To his sister Maria May 19	327
129. To his mother June 7	329
130. To his mother July 1	331
131. To his mother July 17	332
132. To his mother August 3	333
133. To his mother September 1	334
134. To his mother September 21	336

1902

135. To his mother February 26	338
136. To his mother March 24	339
137. To his mother April 2	341
138. To his sister Anna April 10	343
139. To his mother May 8	344
140. To his mother June 7	346
141. To his mother September 14	348
142. To his mother September 27	349
143. To his mother November 9	350
144. To his mother December 17	352
145. To his mother December 26	354

1903

146. To his mother February 4	355
147. To his mother February 22	356
148. To his mother March 29	358

1904

149. To his mother January 8	359
150. To his mother January 20	360
151. Krupskaya and Lenin to Lenin’s mother July 2	361
152. To his mother July 7 or 8	363
153. To his mother and his sister Maria July 16	364
154. To his mother August 28	365

1907

155. Lenin and Krupskaya to Lenin’s mother June 27	366
156. Lenin and Krupskaya to Lenin’s sister Maria End of June	368
157. To his mother October 15	370

1908

158. To his sister Maria January 14	372
159. Lenin and Krupskaya to Lenin’s mother January 22	374
160. To his sister Maria February 7	376
161. To his sister Maria February 14	378
162. To his sister Maria February 17	380
163. To his sister Anna March 10	382
164. To his sister Maria Written between April 19 and 23	383
165. To his mother June 20	384
166. To his sister Maria July 13	386
167. To his sister Maria August 9	388
168. To his mother Summer	389
169. To his mother September 30	390
170. To his sister Anna October 27	392
171. To his sister Anna November 8	395
172. To his mother November 17	396
173. To his sister Anna November 26	398
174. To his mother December 10	400
175. To his sister Anna December 19	402
176. To his sister Anna December 24	404

1909

177. To his sister Anna February 6	406
178. To his sister Anna February 16 or 17	407
179. To his sister Anna February 17 or 18	408
180. To his sister Anna February 23	410
181. To his sister Anna March 2	412
182. To his sister Anna March 9	413
183. To his sister Anna March 12	415
184. To his sister Anna March 21 and 22	417
185. To his sister Anna March 23 or 24	419
186. To his sister Anna March 26	421
187. To his sister Anna April	422
188. To his sister Anna April 6	424
189. To his sister Anna April 8	426
190. To his mother May 21	428
191. Lenin and Krupskaya to Lenin’s sister Anna May 26	430
192. To his brother Late June-early July	432
193. To his mother July 19	434
194. To his mother August 24	436
195. To his mother October 25	438
196. To his mother November 4	439
197. To his sister Maria December 3 or 4	440
198. To his mother December 7 or 8	442
199. To his sister Maria December 10 or 11	443

1910

200. To his sister Maria January 2	445
201. To his sister Maria Early January	447
202. To his sister Maria January 12	448
203. To his sister Maria January 30 or 31	449
204. To his sister Anna February 1	451
205. To his brother February 13	452
206. To his mother February 13	454
207. To his brother February 17	455
208. To his mother April 10	456
209. Lenin and Krupskaya to Lenin’s sister Anna May 2	458
210. To his mother June 18	460
211. To his sister Maria June 18	461
212. To his mother July 1	462
213. To his sister Maria July 28	463
214. To his mother September 4	464

1911

215. To his brother-in-law January 3	465
216. To his mother January 19	467
217. To his mother April 8	469
218. To his mother August 20	470
219. To his sister Maria August 20	471
220. To his mother September 28	472

1912

221. To his mother March 8 or 9	473
222. To his sister Anna March 24	474
223. To his mother April 7	475
224. To his mother May 27	476
225. To his mother June 2	477
* 226. To his mother July 1	479
227. To his sister Maria End of November	481
228. To his sister Anna Autumn	482
229. To his mother December 21 or 22	483
230. To his sister Maria December 24 or 25	485
231. To his sister Maria December 28	487

1913

232. To his mother January 3	488
233. To his mother and his sister Anna February 24	489
234. To his sister Anna March 18	491
* 235. To his sister Maria First half of April	492
236. Krupskaya and Lenin to Lenin’s mother May 3	493
237. To his sister Maria May 12 or 13	495
* 238. Krupskaya and Lenin to Lenin’s mother May 25	497
* 239. To his sister Maria June 18	499
240. To his mother June 24	500
241. To his mother June 28 or 29	501
242. To his mother July 26	502
243. To his sister Maria November 12 or 13	504
244. To his sister Maria December 21	506
245. Krupskaya and Lenin to Lenin’s mother December 26	507

1914

* 246. Krupskaya and Lenin to Lenin’s mother January 7	509
247. To his sister Anna February 11	511
248. To his sister Maria February 16	513
249. To his mother February 21	514
* 250. Krupskaya and Lenin to Lenin’s mother March 16	515
251. To his mother April 10	517
252. To his sister Maria April 22	518
253. To his sister Anna November 14	520
254. To his sister Maria December 22	522

1915

255. To his sister Maria February 9	524
256. To his mother October 7	526

1916

257. To his sister Maria February 20	528
258. To his mother March 12	529
259. To his brother-in-law September 20	530
260. To his sister Maria October 22	531
261. To his sister Maria November 26	533

1917

262. To his sister Maria February 15	535
263. To his brother-in-law February 18 or 19	537
264. Telegram to his sisters Maria and Anna April 2	539
265. To his sister Maria August	540
266. To his sister Maria End of August-September	541

1919

267. Telegram to his wife July 2	542
268. To his wife July 9	543
269. Telegram to his wife July 10	545
* 270. To his wife July 15	546
* 271. To his sister Maria and his wife 1919 or 1920	547

1921

* 272. To his sister Maria

548

1922

* 273. To his sister Anna End of 1922	549
* 274. To his sister Maria	550

APPENDICES

I.

Entries Concerning Letters From Lenin To His Relatives (From the Files of the Moscow Gendarmerie)

553

II. Letters Written By Nadezhda Krupskaya :

1898

1. To Lenin’s mother and his sister Maria. February 15	555
2. To Lenin’s sister Maria. March 6	557
3. To Lenin’s mother. May 10	558
4. To Lenin’s mother. June 14	559
5. To Lenin’s sister Anna. August 9	561
6. To Lenin’s mother. August 26	562
7. To Lenin’s sister Maria. September 11	563
8. To Lenin’s mother. September 27	566
9. To Lenin’s mother. October 14	569
10. To Lenin’s sister Maria. November 11	571
11. To Lenin’s sister Anna. November 22	572

1899

12. To Lenin’s mother. January 10	574
13. To Lenin’s mother. January 17	575
14. To Lenin’s sister Maria. January 24	576
* 15. To Lenin’s mother. April 4	578
16. To Lenin’s mother. June 20	579
17. To Lenin’s mother. July 3	581
18. To Lenin’s mother. October 17	582

1900

19. To Lenin’s sister Maria. March 28	583
20. To Lenin’s sister Maria. March 30	585
21. To Lenin’s mother. July 26	586
22. To Lenin’s sister Maria. July 26	588
23. To Lenin’s mother. August 26	589
24. To Lenin’s sister Maria. September 11	590
25. To Lenin’s mother. October 1	592
26. To Lenin’s mother. November 8	594
27. To Lenin’s sister Maria. December 2	595
28. To Lenin’s mother and his sister Maria. December 22	596

1901

29. To Lenin’s sister Maria. February 2	598
30. To Lenin’s sister Maria. February 12	600
31. To Lenin’s mother. June 11	601
32. To Lenin’s mother. July 16	602
33. To Lenin’s mother. August 2	603

1902

34. To Lenin’s mother. September 27

604

1903

* 35. To Lenin’s mother. March 4

605

1904

36. To Lenin’s mother. January 15

607

1909

37. To Lenin’s mother. Written in the twenties of December

608 e

1910

* 38. To Lenin’s sister Anna. August 24

609

1911

* 39. To Lenin’s mother. August 26	610
* 40. To Lenin’s sister Maria. September 21	611

1912

41. To Lenin’s sister Anna. March 9	612
42. To Lenin’s mother. May 27	613

1913

43. To Lenin’s mother and his sister Anna. January 4	614
44. To Lenin’s mother and his sister Anna. February 24	615
45. To Lenin’s mother. March 18	615
* 46. To Lenin’s sister Maria. April 10	617

1914

* 47. To Lenin’s sister Anna. January 31	618
48. To Lenin’s sister Anna. February 11	619
49. To Lenin’s mother. April 15	621
50. To Lenin’s mother. June 8	621

1915

51. To Lenin’s mother. September 24	622
* 52 To Lenin’s mother. October 11	623
53. To Lenin’s sister Maria. December 14	624

1916

54. To Lenin’s sister Maria. February 8

626