V. I.

Lenin

31

To:   HIS MOTHER

September 30

I am writing to you from Tesinskoye, Mother dearest, as I promised. I arrived here yesterday evening. It took
us a long time to get here because there were three of us
(Basil, I and a boy I took with me) with our luggage on
a one-horse cart, and the horse a lazy one at that.

The Tes people [1] are well fixed up. They have an excellent flat in a big two-storey house (in Shusha there are no
such houses), the best in the village. They have the entire
top floor, four good rooms with a kitchen and an entrance
hall. The rooms are big, light, and clean with high ceilings and the furniture is good—in short, an excellent
apartment for six rubles a month. Gleb now has a job of some
sort. Thanks to this they have been able to manage and the
financial crisis is over—there was, however, a time when
things were tight. A. M. has taken a job as a nurse in the
village of Sagaiskoye, several dozen versts from here in the
same district. She will probably not keep the job for long
because her health will certainly not permit her to continue
such work and she is expected to return in a month. Gleb
does not look too well, he is always poorly and gets irritable. Basil is flourishing. E.E. feels quite at home in the
family and is doing all the household chores; she had a hard
time in the summer and even now it is not easy for her, as
she has to do all the work herself. It is impossible to find
servants here. In summer you cannot get anyone, even temporarily. At the moment there is a woman who comes in
and helps with the work.

We all went shooting together today. The weather is excellent and we are enjoying ourselves. I have permission
for five days and will leave on Friday or Saturday—straight
back to Shusha, about 70 versts from here.

I received a letter from Mark quite a while ago (dated
September 12). I am awaiting news of how he finished up
his “liquidator’s trip” to Kazan. He wrote to me, among
other things, about a dog. In Shusha I have a mongrel pup
and hope to have it as a gun dog next year. It would cost a mint
of money to bring a dog here from Russia. He also asks about my book—it is still frozen. When I get back to
Shusha I hope to get down to work more seriously and will then
write in greater detail. Kisses for you and Manyasha.

Your,

V. U.

Everybody here also says that I have put on a lot of weight this summer, am sunburned and look like a real
Siberian. That is what shooting and village life do for you!
All the Petersburg ailments have been shaken off!

All the people in Tes send you, it goes without saying,
lots of greetings.

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Notes:
[1]
G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, his mother, and V. V. Starkov.— Ed .