V. I.

Lenin

173

To:   HIS SISTER ANNA

November 26, 1908

Dear Anyuta, I had just sent off a “distress” letter to you, when yours
of November 9 arrived to tell me you had received the work intact. I agree that I have been rather nervous both
about sending it off and while I have been waiting. I am
simply scared to death of losing a huge piece of work that
took many months and the delay really does put my nerves
on edge. You did very well to ask for an answer by telegraph.
If it is refused—it must be published immediately through
Bonch. It seems you will not be able to get another publisher. Bonch publishes on credit, through someone else,
somehow, and it is not very likely that I shall receive
anything, but, anyway, publish it he will. [2] I have already
written to two colleagues in St. Petersburg and will write
again. Of course, if anything turns up for you, hand it over,
and, in general, take charge of it yourself, although by all
accounts there is very little chance.

If there is no publisher, send it direct to Bonch immediately; the only thing is he must not give it to anybody to
read and must look after it very carefully! Write to him
about it.

I am sending two corrections, or rather one correction and one addition. On page 60 (at the end of the
“Introduction”), following the words “Valentinov confuses them”
(lines 9-10), cross out everything as far as “we” (the last
line but one) and substitute this:

“ Valentinov confuses them, and while doing so very amusingly tries to console us: ’We would not consider the
“kinship” of Mach to ... a philosophical crime’” [1] (etc., p. 61).

Please put that into the text.

The addition I am sending on a separate sheet which can easily be pasted in. This is a footnote to the last word of
Section 5 (Chapter
Five). [3] I have no copy of this chapter at home and so I cannot tell you the last word, but it doesn’t
matter.

All the best, Yours,

V. Ulyanov

P.S. I am sending your letter to Manyasha in Paris. We have not yet had a letter from her from Paris.

P.S. Please repeat your address; Manyasha took it with her and I am writing from memory.

---
Notes:
[1]
This is how the lower half of p. 60 should read.— Lenin

[2]
It was difficult for V. D. Bonch-Bruyevich to publish the book
at the publishing firm Zhizn i Znaniye (Life and Knowledge) he
organised in 1907 because that firm had not had time to
consolidate its position.

[3]
The manuscript of this “separate sheet” has been lost. The footnote
concerned Erich Becher’s Philosophische Voraussetzungen der exakten Naturwissenschaften . Lpz., 1907, which, as Lenin said
in the note, he read only after he had finished writing the book