Letter to Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova, February 14, 1908

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February 14, 1908

Dear Manyasha,

I recently wrote to you about some translations. I should now like to add that I have read Ergänzungsheft No. 1 to Neue Zeit—an article by Kautsky “Nationalität und Internationalität”. I remember you said you receive Neue Zeit, so I shall not send it from here (give me an address to which I can send foreign books and articles, in case I need it). In my opinion this is a thing that can be published legally and is really worth translating. Propose it to the publisher (36 pages). The best thing of all would be to publish it (it is a criticism of Bauer) with the book by Otto Bauer, Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie (Anya probably has this book since she translated one chapter of it).

One of my colleagues here wants someone to ask the publisher whether he would undertake to publish Huschke’s Landwirtschaftliche Reinertragsberechnungen, which I quoted in Part I of my Agrarian Question.[1] If an opportunity occurs, ask the publisher and I will promise to write a preface. But if the truth be told, it is too highly specialised a book....

I had a talk with the Director of the Police Department yesterday about my Acte de mariage. It seems that it is necessary. Ask some lawyer of your acquaintance to think of some other way of getting a copy from Krasnoyarsk (because probably no great hopes are to be placed in “palm oil”). There does exist some (legal) procedure which makes it possible to obtain proof of marriage. Cannot Yelizaveta Vasilyevna apply to a justice of the peace or to the relevant authority in St. Petersburg and demand from him an instruction to issue a certificate to her requiring the Krasnoyarsk church authorities to supply her with a copy of the marriage lines (either for legal action against her daughter, or in connection with the disposal of an inheritance, etc.). Is it not possible by some such means to obtain the certificate or a copy of it? Ask a lawyer.

How is everybody? Have Mother and Anyuta fully recovered?

Yours,

V. Ulyanov

P.S. Very, very many thanks for the minutes of the Third Duma. I ask you most urgently to continue sending them, to send more often and to send them together with bills and questions.

  1. ↑ This book is quoted in Lenin’s “The Agrarian Question and the ’Critics of Marx”’ (see Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 179). Letter No. 161