V. I.

Lenin

22

To:   HIS MOTHER AND HIS SISTER ANNA

April 17, 1897

Yesterday, Mother dearest, I received three of your letters. Today I collected some detailed information about
the villages we are being sent to (officially I have not yet
been informed of this [8] ). I am going to the village of
Shushinskoye (I think I spelt it wrongly in previous letters—
Shushinskoye). It is a big village with more than fifteen
hundred inhabitants, where there are the volost council,
the office of the Zemstvo assessor (he is the same as a
superintendent of police in Russia, but has greater powers), a
school, etc. The village stands on the right bank of the
Yenisei, fifty-six versts to the south of Minusinsk. Since the
volost authorities are quartered there the post will be
fairly regular—I have heard there is a post twice a week.
You go by steamer to Minusinsk (the steamers do not go further up the Yenisei) and by horse transport the rest
of the way. Today the ice broke on the Yenisei, so in seven
to ten days the steamers will probably begin and I expect
to leave at the end of April or the beginning of May. You
can and should write to my present address, [1] because I
shall leave a request to forward my letters when I go. I
cannot, however, tell you exactly when I shall be going.
Gleb and Basil are going to the village of Tesinskoye, also
the seat of a volost council, etc., thirty-seven versts to the
north of Minusinsk on the River Tuba (a right tributary of
the Yenisei). A telegram about them was sent to the Police

Department today asking for permission for them to travel
at their own expense. I hope the permission will be granted
at the mother’s request, she is ill all the time here, and then
we shall go to Minusinsk together. I shall, therefore, spend
the summer in “Siberian Italy”, as the people here call the
south of Minusinsk District. I cannot yet say whether this
name is deserved or not, but people say that the Krasnoyarsk
region is not so good. The environs along the River Yenisei
of even this town, incidentally, remind me of Zhiguli or of
Swiss scenery; I have recently taken a number of walks (the
days were quite warm here and the roads are already dry)
and have enjoyed them very much. I should have enjoyed them more if it were not for thoughts of our Turukhansk
people and our Minusinsk prisoners. [9]

I live very well here; I have comfortable lodgings, and am
especially pleased with the full board. For my work I have
obtained some books on statistics (I think I have already
written about that [2]

)

but I do not do much work; mostly
I just roam about the place.

Thank Manyasha for her letter; I have given her so much
work now that I am afraid she will get fed up with figures. [10]
My books should be sent to Krasnoyarsk to be delivered to the bearer of the receipt (either by goods train or through
a carrier’s office, whichever is better) and I will then ask
acquaintances to send them on to Minusinsk, and there again I shall have to look for acquaintances—there is no other
way.

Why is Mitya thinking of going where there is plague? [11]
If he is so anxious to travel and practice medicine I am
ready to suggest a place at some resettlement centre. In
Eastern Siberia, for instance. I have heard, incidentally , that a resettlement centre is to be opened in “my” village
of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk District, Yenisei Gubernia....
So he is welcome. We can go shooting together—if only
Siberia can manage to make a sportsman out of me, and if
he does not find work (and shooting) for himself in places
not so far distant.... Ho, ho! If in three weeks and a bit
I have become such a Siberian that I am inviting people
from “Russia”, what shall I be like in three years? All jokes aside, however, I really am surprised at his “plague”
plans; I hope there will not be any plague, and that he
will not have to go there.

Yours,

V. U.

Anyuta,

About books—how to send them, see above. What to send? If I get a fee of some 150
rubles [12] (perhaps in three doses, a teaspoonful every hour—every month, that is),
then you can spend some on books. Then buy me the last three issues of Promysly Vladimirskoi gubernii (3 rubles
75 kopeks), Vliyaniye urozhayev, etc ., by Chuprov and
Posnikov (5 rubles), Ukazatel fabrik i zavodov za 1890 god , St. Petersburg, 1894 (5 rubles?). I will give you further
titles later—depending on the size of the fee, which need
not be sent all at once (to the Schwester , of course).
Write and tell the writer [3] that I should be very glad if
he would let me have part of my fee, and if he would agree
to send me books instead of money—Russian and foreign, some for review and others for myself. He knows the subjects
I am interested in and he could send the books to you. I
should be glad to take all sorts of things for translation and
could distribute them among the people in Minusinsk and
Turukhansk [4] (not very urgent), taking the organisation of
the work upon myself and guaranteeing its timely and correct fulfilment. That, however, is something special, but I
should very much like to arrange for the fees to be paid in
books— only if that will not be too much trouble for the writer [5] (add this, word for word).

I think I shall have to subscribe to journals and newspapers—there probably will not be anything in Shushenskoye.
Depending on available finances, you may subscribe to

Russkiye Vedomosti, Russkoye Bogatstvo, Vestnik Finansov [13] (without any supplements), Archiv für soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik . [14] That makes quite a lot, so they
may be ordered only if there are big receipts. If money is
short, Russkiye Vedomosti will, perhaps, be enough. You
will see for yourself, especially when I write from
Shushenskoye and inform you of my budget. (I believe you are angry
with the écrivain ; when you write to him in my name, do
not show it. I bear no “ rancune ” [6] because of the loss of my
last “literature”. [7]

It was not his fault at all.)

Send my best regards to the
Bulochkins. [15] Why do you not write about them in greater detail? What sort of finale was there? Could there have been none at all? That would
be excellent. If opportunity offers, give my regards to other
acquaintances, the bookseller and others.

V. U.

I hope you will inform me beforehand when you intend to go to the West, so that I shall have time to write to you
and give you many, many things to do for me.

---
Notes:
[1]
I now receive all your letters regularly. The first must have been
lost at the station where there is not much order.— Lenin

[2]
See Letters Nos. 19 and 20.— Ed .

[3]
Here and further the “writer” ( écrivain ) referred to is P. B.
Struve.— Ed .

[4]
etc. Fedoseyev has been sent, I have been told, to the town
of Kirensk in Irkutsk Gubernia.— Lenin

[5]
I rely entirely on his choice, and this method of payment
interests me because it is the only way for me to receive immediately important new publications; the timeliness of articles and reviews
is very important in magazine work. If I must first find out here and
then order by post, the delay will be five weeks, minimum (!!!).— Lenin

[6]
Grudge, malice (Fr.).— Ed .

[7]
It is not known what this refers to.— Ed .

[8]
Lenin did not receive the official order to leave for the village
of Shushenskoye in Minusinsk District until April 24, 1897; it
was then that he received the certificate permitting him to travel
to that place.

[9]
Minusinsk prisoners —V.V. Starkov and G. M. Krzhizhanovsky
who were exiled to Minusinsk District.

Turukhansk people —Y. O. Zederbaum and A. A. Vaneyev who were exiled to Turukhansk

[10]
Lenin apparently gave a detailed list of extracts from various
publications in a previous letter which has been lost; he needed
them for work on his The Development of Capitalism in Russia .

[11]
At that time Dmitry Ulyanov was an undergraduate of the
Faculty of Medicine, Moscow University.

[12]
The fee referred to was probably in payment of his article “A
Characterisation of Economic Romanticism (Sismondi and Our Native
Sismondists)”, the first part of which was published in the April
1897 issue (No. 7) of Novoye Slovo .

[13]
Russkoye Bogatstv (Russian Wealth)—a monthly journal published in St. Petersburg from 1876 to 1918. From the early nineties
it held Narodnik liberal views and in 1906 became an organ of
the Popular Socialist Party.

Vestnik Finansov, Promyshlennosti i Torgovli (The Financial,
Industrial and Commercial Herald)—a weekly published by the
Ministry of Finance; it appeared in St. Petersburg from November
1883 to 1917.

[14]
Archiv für soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik (Social Legislation
and Statistical Archives)—a monthly published from 1888 to
1933 in Berlin, Thüringen and Leipzig.

[15]
The Bulochkins —this refers to Zinaida Pavlovna Nevzorova
(whose nickname was “Bulochka”, Russian for “bread roll”)
and her sisters Sofia and Avgusta; Zinaida and Sofia were arrested
in 1896 in connection with the League of Struggle for the
Emancipation of the Working Class. Apparently Lenin used the surname
“Bulochkin” in the plural to include Nadezhda Krupskaya, who
was arrested on August 12, 1896. “What sort of finale was there?”
means “What sentence was passed on them?”