Date: 1913-09-30
Source: ru:PSS/v48

Source: PSS, Volume 48

to Capri? The Germans have superb sanatoria—such as those in St. Blasien, near the Swiss border—where even severe pulmonary ailments can be treated and cured, achieving complete cicatrization; patients are nourished to optimal health, then systematically exposed to cold, hardened against common colds, and ultimately released as fit, capable workers.

And you plan to return to Russia after Capri, in winter???? I fear deeply that this will harm your health and undermine your ability to work. Are there truly first-rate physicians in Italy?

Honestly, why don’t you visit a top-notch physician in Switzerland* or Germany—and devote about two months to serious treatment in a fine sanatorium? To squander public funds needlessly—by falling ill and compromising your capacity to work—is utterly unacceptable in every respect.

I’ve heard (from the editor of “Prosvetshchenie,”** who had met Ladyzhnikov) that you’re dissatisfied with “Pravda.” Is it the dryness? That’s true—but this shortcoming is not easily remedied overnight. There simply aren’t enough people available. After a year of painstaking effort since the paper’s inception, we’ve managed only to achieve a reasonably acceptable editorial standard in Petrograd.

(I’ve forwarded your letter to “Prosvetshchenie.”)
Please write to me about your plans and your health. I earnestly urge you to take your treatment seriously—by Jove, it really is possible to fully recover; to let things drag on is nothing short of outrageous and downright criminal.

Yours, Lenin

P.S. We’ve had, and will continue to have, a good readership—at least in part. Have you seen “Nash Put’”?

How’s the success going? It’s already the second newspaper. Let’s launch a third—one for the South.

Address: Ulianow, Poronin (Galicia), Austria. (In winter, I’ll be in Kraków, at Lubomirskiego 51.)

* I can obtain the names and addresses if needed.

** We’re talking about M. A. Savelyev. Ed.

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Sent to the island of Capri, Italy

First published in 1924

In Lenin’s Collected Works, Volume I

Printed from the manuscript