Letter to Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova, October 7, 1915

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Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova,

Shirokaya Street, 48/9, Apt. 24,

Peterburgskaya Storona,

Petrograd,

Russia

Ulianow,

Seidenweg, 4aIII,

Berne

October 7, 1915

Mother dearest,

Nadya and I moved a few days ago to Berne. We wanted to stay longer in Sörenberg,[1] but it was snowing there and the cold was just impossible. This year autumn is very cold, and Sörenberg has a mountain climate. We have found a nice room here with electricity and bath for 30 francs. Nadya has put on quite a lot of weight; the palpitation has gone; she has even been up the mountains—let’s hope there is no recurrence of that thyroid trouble.

How are you all getting on? Have you made good arrangements for the winter? Are you keeping well, and is the apartment warm? We thank Anyuta very, very, very much for the book, for the most interesting collection of pedagogical publications and for the letter.[2] I wrote to her about a publisher and am now awaiting an answer.[3] How is Manyasha? If you can, send her this letter; I should be glad to get a line from her too. Give or send our best regards to Mitya and Mark. I should be very grateful for a subscription to Rech (Anyuta wrote that she intended subscribing). There are not many newspapers, books or pamphlets in Russian, we see very few and thirst for them. Has Anyuta received my list of “the desirable” that I sent her a long time ago? (i.e., desirable Russian books). I send you many kisses and embrace you fondly. Anyuta, too. So does Nadya.

Yours,

V. Ulyanov

  1. ↑ Early in June 1915 Lenin and Krupskaya had left Berne for the mountain village of Sorenberg, where they spent the summer.
  2. ↑ Apparently a letter in invisible ink.—Ed.
  3. ↑ The letter has been lost. Lenin was looking for a publisher for his book New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture. Part One. Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America, written in 1915 (see Collected Works, Vol. 22, pp. 13–102). It was probably about this book that Anna Ulyanova-Yelizarova wrote to her sister Maria on February 27, 1915: "Thanks for trying to find someone for Volodya’s book— because of this I shall postpone the conclusion of an agreement with Bonch (he offers 50 rubles a signature for 3,000 copies).”
    Lenin began his study of U.S. fanning statistics much earlier, as can be seen from his letters to the New York economist I. A. Hourwich on February 27 and to N. N. Nakoryakov on May 18, 1914.
    When Lenin finished work on the book at the end of 1915 he sent the MS to Gorky in Petrograd for the Parus Publishing House (see Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 212). It was eventually published in pamphlet form in 1917 by the Zhizn i Znaniye Publishers.