V. I.

Lenin

90

To:   HIS MOTHER AND HIS BROTHER

June 20, 1899

I have received your letter of May 31, Mother dearest.
Merci . With regard to the statistical returns—from Tver
and Vyatka—I think I have already written that there is no need to send them all to me ; I am not working on this now
and do not intend to until my term of exile is finished.
If any particular book is needed it will be better for me
to order it separately, otherwise I shall have a mountain
of books to bring back. But you are probably sending only
a few statistical returns. Mikhail Alexandrovich writes that
he does not expect his fiancée until the end of summer.

We do not think it worth while asking for a transfer to
Krasnoyarsk. We have been talking recently with
Yelizaveta Vasilyevna, who is thinking of asking for permission
for me to go with them to Ufa this autumn because of the
difficulty of a winter journey for her and Nadya. If she
carries out her intention I will let you know.

We have been paid our allowances.

We have news from Yermakovskoye that Anatoly is no better.

We have also heard that Lyakhovsky has made a trip to
Chita as a doctor.

It is a pity you are having such bad weather and have no opportunity for a good rest in the country. June has
been rainy here, too.

Life here goes on as usual. I am not working much at present and soon, when the shooting season opens, I shall
probably work even less.

I have received the May issue of Nachalo —pretty badly cut up. I do not think there is anything of particular
interest in it. I am losing all hope of that journal regaining
its health. I have had a letter telling me that the Ministry
of the Interior has demanded that the editors reveal the
names of the authors who wrote in the first and in the April
issues under pseudonyms. It would be interesting to know
whether we have any mutual acquaintances among the “revealed”.

Many kisses for you and regards to all.

Yours,

V. U.

Mitya,

I have seen Nauchnoye Obozreniye No. 5 and find that
Tugan-Baranovsky’s article in it is monstrously foolish and
nonsensical; he has simply arbitrarily introduced changes
into the rate of surplus value in order to “refute” Marx;
he assumes an absurdity—a change in the productivity of
labour without a change in the value of the product. I don’t know whether every such nonsensical article is worth
writing about. Let him first fulfil his promise to develop
it in detail. [2] In general I am becoming a more and more
determined opponent of the latest “critical stream” in
Marxism and of neo-Kantianism (which has produced, incidentally, the idea of separating sociological from economic
laws). The author of Beiträge zur Geschichte des Materialismus [1] is quite right in declaring that neo-Kantianism is a
reactionary theory of the reactionary bourgeoisie and in rebelling
against Bernstein. I am extremely interested in Bogdanov’s
new book ( Osnovniye elementy istoricheskogo vozzreniya na, prirodu , St. Petersburg, 1899) and have ordered it; the
review of it in the May issue of Nachalo was written ridiculously, with pompous phrases but no mention of the real
problem. I am very sorry that I somehow missed the advertisement of the book when it was published. I think it
should be a sensible book and that such a review should not
be left unanswered. [3]

Am very pleased with the gun. We did not shoot much in spring. Soon the real season will begin and I intend to
spend more time shooting this summer.

All the best,

V. U.

Please send me a list of the Zemstvo statistical returns
that have been sent to me—titles and brief contents, i.e.,
tables or tables+text, nothing else.

---
Notes:
[1]
Essays on the History of Materialism by G. V. Plekhanov.— Ed .

[2]
Lenin mentioned Tugan-Baranovsky’s article in a footnote to the
last paragraph of his article “Uncritical Criticism” ( Collected Works , Vol. 3, p. 632) and in a letter to A. N. Potresov dated
June 27, 1899 ( Collected Works , Vol. 34, p. 39).

[3]
The review was that by G-d of A. Bogdanov’s book Osnovniye elementy istoricheskogo vzglyada na prirodu . It is not; known whether
Lenin wrote anything in reply to the review. From his letter