V. I.

Lenin

35

To:   HIS MOTHER AND HIS SISTERS MARIA AND ANNA

December 21, 1897

I received your letter of December 5 the day before yesterday, Mother dearest. I am very, very glad that there
is a hope of Mitya’s business being cleared up. In any case it
is obvious that it is mainly a misunderstanding and that
there can be no question of anything serious. You ask me
whether I received a package sent on November 16—what package do you mean? If, in general, it is possible to send
things to Minusinsk you should address them to me direct,
because my letters go through Minusinsk Post Office anyway and I have given our postman power of attorney to
collect my mail.

I seem to have got mixed up over all these packages you
have sent or intended to send me. Have you sent anything
to Popova in Krasnoyarsk? I think not, but just in case
I will ask an acquaintance who is going there soon (from
Minusinsk) to make enquiries. [1]

I am in no hurry for books. I now have so many that I cannot manage them all, let alone more.

Yours,

V. U.

Manyasha, I received your postcard of December 2 and the two
Semyonov volumes. Merci for them. I shall send them back soon, not later than a week from now (I am afraid our
postman will not go for the mail at all on Wednesday 24th).

These first two volumes proved to be without interest.
Such things are, of course, inevitable when you order books
you know nothing about, and I was prepared for it beforehand.

I hope at least that we shall not have to pay any fine—
they will extend them for another month.

I did not understand your sentence “To get into the jurists’ library—I asked Kablukov about it—you must be
a,jurist and submit two recommendations from members of the Society of Jurists”. Is that all? You do not have to be a
member of the society yourself? I shall try to get a recommendation through St. Petersburg.

I know for a fact that one does not have to be a jurist
to join the society.

All the best,

V. U.

Anyuta,

Merci for your letter of December 5 and for the list. It
is a pity you took so much trouble copying it a second time.
I seem to have expressed myself badly about the accounts;
it stands to reason that it is of interest to me to know
results—plus or minus so much—and not those details that
caused you so much trouble and nevertheless mean nothing to
me. [2]

It is strange that they do not send me any accounts from
the office of the journal. I am shortly sending something
else [4] there. I shall have to put a note in with it (when I
send the manuscript) asking them to send an account of the
fees and expenditure on the journals, etc. It seems that I
have overstepped the mark through not knowing exactly how much I own.

It seems that there was some misunderstanding between us about my question concerning how the project for the journal got into the hands of our
acquaintance; [5] I understood that it came from you, and now I see quite well that
it did not. It stands to reason that what I said about my
first assumption does not hold now that the opposite has
been proved. Oh, that Yegor! I’ll give him what for.

The photos, including the group, have still not arrived. [6]
I have written to Nadezhda Konstantinovna but have not received a reply. Should I write to Yuly’s sisters?

By the way, I received a letter from Yuly dated October
29 ( sic !). He writes that he lives reasonably well, they
have all moved into one house (this is much more convenient and cheaper and the meals are more easily arranged
at the expense of their one and only “lady”), they have
received their allowances so he is looking and feeling better and is not a bit despondent. Our poet
friend [3] should be coming to me soon for the holidays, if he does not let
me down again. Anatoly is still worried about his wife who has been locked up in Yeniseisk (for three months),
the cells are cold and she has been taken ill. [7] A bad
business! It would have been far better for her to have done
her term in Russia!

Fedoseyev and Lyakhovsky have not written a word.
The devil knows what’s happening where they are.

I should like to have Saint-Simon and also the following
books in French:

K. Marx. Misère de la philosophie . 1896. Paris. 3 frs 50

Fr. Engels. La force et l’ économic dans le développement social .

2 frs 50

K. Marx. Critique de la philosophie du droit de Hegel .1895.

1 fr

all these are from the “bibliothèque socialiste internationale” where Labriola came from.

All the best,

V. U.