Letter to Anna Ulyanova, November 26, 1908

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Author(s) Lenin
Written 26 November 1908


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First published in 1930 in the journal Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya No. 1. Sent from Geneva to Moscow. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1977, Moscow, Volume 37, pages 398-399
Collection(s): Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya
Keywords : Anna Ulyanova, Letter

November 26, 1908

Dear Anyuta,

I had just sent off a “distress” letter to you, when yours of November 9 arrived to tell me you had received the work intact. I agree that I have been rather nervous both about sending it off and while I have been waiting. I am simply scared to death of losing a huge piece of work that took many months and the delay really does put my nerves on edge. You did very well to ask for an answer by telegraph. If it is refused—it must be published immediately through Bonch. It seems you will not be able to get another publisher. Bonch publishes on credit, through someone else, somehow, and it is not very likely that I shall receive anything, but, anyway, publish it he will.[1] I have already written to two colleagues in St. Petersburg and will write again. Of course, if anything turns up for you, hand it over, and, in general, take charge of it yourself, although by all accounts there is very little chance.

If there is no publisher, send it direct to Bonch immediately; the only thing is he must not give it to anybody to read and must look after it very carefully! Write to him about it.

I am sending two corrections, or rather one correction and one addition. On page 60 (at the end of the “Introduction”), following the words “Valentinov confuses them” (lines 9-10), cross out everything as far as “we” (the last line but one) and substitute this:

“Valentinov confuses them, and while doing so very amusingly tries to console us: ’We would not consider the “kinship” of Mach to ... a philosophical crime’”[2] (etc., p. 61).

Please put that into the text.

The addition I am sending on a separate sheet which can easily be pasted in. This is a footnote to the last word of Section 5 (Chapter Five).[3] I have no copy of this chapter at home and so I cannot tell you the last word, but it doesn’t matter.

All the best,

Yours,

V. Ulyanov

P.S. I am sending your letter to Manyasha in Paris. We have not yet had a letter from her from Paris.

P.S. Please repeat your address; Manyasha took it with her and I am writing from memory.

  1. ↑ It was difficult for V. D. Bonch-Bruyevich to publish the book at the publishing firm Zhizn i Znaniye (Life and Knowledge) he organised in 1907 because that firm had not had time to consolidate its position.
  2. ↑ This is how the lower half of p. 60 should read.—Lenin
  3. ↑ The manuscript of this “separate sheet” has been lost. The footnote concerned Erich Becher’s Philosophische Voraussetzungen der exakten Naturwissenschaften. Lpz., 1907, which, as Lenin said in the note, he read only after he had finished writing the book (see Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 290).
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