V. I.

Lenin

20

To:   HIS MOTHER

March 26, 1897

At last, Mother dearest, I have received news of you and am very glad. First, I have received a telegram in
answer to mine. I had inquired at the station but there
was nothing there. The
Schwester [1] found your letter there later, and Anyuta’s must, therefore, have been lost.
Secondly, I got a telegram just after nine yesterday evening
saying they were leaving, was overjoyed about it and ran
headlong to the Schwester to share my joy with her. Now we are
counting the days and are “travelling” by the mailtrain
that left Moscow on the 25th. The last telegram I understood
to mean that they are travelling at their own expense, otherwise it would not have been signed by Gleb. I think he has
also sent a telegram to his mother [4] in Chelyabinsk, otherwise he might travel past her while she is sitting and
waiting for news! (The Schwester’s letter to her was posted not
long ago, so she will probably not yet have left.) I am very
thankful to Manyasha for her letter and for the extracts
from letters received. I am enclosing herewith a reply to
one of those extracts—let Manyasha deal with it as before.
I count on exploiting her further for letter-writing and
even for literary work. You may send me books and letters
here; I don’t know yet when they’ll chase me out and where
to. It would probably be better to send them to the
Schwester , and register the more important ones for there seems to
be a terrible lot of carelessness at the post office here and
letters, apparently, get lost (to that, I suppose, must be
added outside hindrances [2]

).

There is nothing new I can write about myself; my life goes on as usual. I stroll to the library outside town, I stroll
in the neighbourhood, I stroll round to my acquaintances
and sleep enough for two—in short, everything is as it should be.

Yours,

V.U.

I am sending Anyuta a list of those books I should very
much like to obtain and which, it seems, can be bought only
in the St. Petersburg second-hand bookshops, so you will
have to write to the =q director [3] and ask him to do it or get
somebody else to. I am very angry with myself for getting
one name wrong (or rather, one year) in a letter from the
remand prison, and making Anyuta travel about for nothing. Could not a search also be made in the Moscow
libraries? Perhaps they are to be found somewhere.

1. Yezhegodnik Ministerstva finansov , St. Petersburg,
1869, First Issue.

2. Statistichesky vremennik Rossiiskoi imperii , published
by the Central Statistical Committee of the Ministry of the
Interior.

Second Series, Sixth Issue: Materialy dlya statistiki fabrichno-zavodskoi promyshlennosti v Yevropeiskoi Rossii za 1868 god. Edited by I. Bock. St. Petersburg, 1872.

3. Statistichesky atlas glavneishikh otraslei fabrichno-za vodskoi promyshlennosti Yevropeiskoi Rossii s poimennym spiskom fabrik i zavodov. Compiled by D. Timiryazev . Third Issue. St. Petersburg, 1873 (I found the first two
issues here in Yudin’s library. The original price of the three
books was (1) 2 rubles, (2) 1 ruble and (3) 1 ruble 50 kopeks,
but they are not on sale).