Letter to Mikhail Pokrovsky, December 21, 1916

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

December 21, 1916

Dear M.N.,

I have received your postcard, of December 14, 1916. If they write to you that the publisher owes me “in addition to the 500 rubles another 300 rubles”, I must say that I consider he owes me more, because he accepted (1) my work on the agrarian question, Part 1 and (2) my wife’s booklet on an educational subject. And I consider that there is an obligation to pay for what has been accepted, once the manuscript has been delivered.

I wrote about this to Petersburg, but my contacts with Petersburg are exceptionally weak and intolerably slow.

You “thought it possible” to throw out the criticism of Kautsky in my pamphlet.... Sad! Really, really sad. Why? Would it not be better to ask the publishers: print outright, gentlemen, that we—the publishers—have eliminated criticism of a Kautsky. Really, that is how it should have been done.... Of course, I am obliged to submit to the publisher, but let the publisher not be afraid to say what he wants and what he doesn’t want; let the publisher answer for the cuts, not I.

You write: “You won’t thrash me, will you?”, i.e., for agreeing to throw out this criticism?? Alas, alas, we live in too civilised an age to settle questions so simply....

Joking aside, it is sad, devil take it.... Well, I shall settle accounts with Kautsky in another place.

I shake your hand and send my best greetings.

V. Ulyanov