V. I.

Lenin

233

To:   HIS MOTHER AND HIS SISTER ANNA

Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova, Tsarevskaya, 36, Saratov, [1]

Russia

Mother dearest, I received two parcels today. What a mountain of sweets
you sent us! A big merci from us all. Nadya is quite cross
with me because I wrote “about the fish”, and about sweets,
and because I have caused you so much trouble. I did not
expect that everything would be in such gigantic quantities.... The duty on fish is not very high but for sweets it
is quite a lot. And so we are now going to celebrate “New
Year” again!

How are you two managing without Mark? The newspapers say that political exiles may get an amnesty. Let us
wait until
February 21.... [2]

We are having wonderful winter weather without snow.
I have bought some skates and skate with great enthusiasm—
it brings back Simbirsk and Siberia. I have never before
skated abroad.

I embrace you fondly, my dear, and send best regards to Anyuta. So do Y.V. and Nadya.

Yours,

V. Ul.

P.S. The number of our house has been changed, it is now Ulica Lubomirskiego, 49.

Dear Anyuta, I had just written to Mother about the parcels when
the letter from you both arrived. I am glad that Mark is
pleased with his travelling—I hope he will be better off
in Siberia. If you go to see
Mitya [3]

I hope you will call on us—it is almost on your way, the deviation is a very small
one. If you did not have to pay a high stamp duty on passports it would be quite cheap; only those who live near
the frontier can come here without passports, with “half
passes” that cost 30 kopeks.

We live modestly, no changes.... We are drawing up plans for the publication of pamphlets at
Pravda .... [4]
I do not know whether we shall be able to manage it, but
there is a demand for it.

Manyasha writes occasionally. She still has not found any work.

What we are most badly off for here is Russian books!
And there’s nothing we can do about it.

All the best, Yours,

V. U.

---
Notes:
[1]
The address is taken from a copy found, in a dossier of the Police
Department.— Ed .

[2]
Lenin refers to the amnesty granted on the occasion of the
tercentenary of the House of Romanov.— Ed .

[3]
Lenin’s brother Dmitry was at that time employed as public
health officer in Feodosia, Crimea.— Ed .

[4]
Pravda (The Truth)—the legal Bolshevik daily that was launched in St. Petersburg on April 22 (May 5), 1912.

Pravda was under Lenin’s ideological guidance; he wrote for
it almost daily and sent instructions to the editors. Some 270
articles by Lenin were published in Pravda ; Gorky, too, published
his stories in Pravda .

The newspaper was suppressed by the tsarist authorities eight
times but continued to appear under changed names— Rabochaya Pravda, Severnaya Pravda, Pravda Truda, Za Pravdu, Proletarskaya Pravda, Put Pravdy, Rabochy, Trudovaya Pravda (Workers’ Truth, Northern Truth, Truth of Labour, For Truth,
Proletarian Truth, The Path of Truth, The Worker, Labour Truth). Under
these difficult conditions the Bolsheviks succeeded in publishing
636 issues of Pravda in a little over two years. On July 8 (21),
1914, the newspaper was finally suppressed and did not re-appear
until the February bourgeois-democratic revolution in 1917.

Beginning from March 5 (18), 1917, Pravda was published as
the organ of the Central Committee and the Petrograd Committee
of the R.S.D.L.P. On April 5 (18), on his return from abroad,
Lenin joined the editorial board and became its leading figure.
From July to October 1917 Pravda was constantly persecuted by
the counter-revolutionary bourgeois Provisional Government,
and frequently changed its name: Listok Pravdy, Proletary, Rabochy, Rabochy Put (The Pravda Sheet, The Proletarian, The
Worker, The Workers’ Path). On October 27 (November 9),
following the October Revolution, the Central Organ of the Party again
appeared under its old name of Pravda .