V. I.

Lenin

Dear Alexei Maximych, I am sending you today by registered book-post the
beginning of a novel which is to go into Prosveshcheniye . We
think that you will not object. But if, by any chance, you
should, cable to Prosveshcheniye : “Postpone Voitinsky” or
“ Don’t carry Voitinsky’s novel”. [1]

The news that you are being given a new kind of treatment
by “a Bolshevik”, even if a former one, has really worried
me. The saints preserve us from comrade-doctors in general,
and Bolshevik-doctors in particular! Really and truly, in
99 cases out of 100 the comrade-doctors are “asses”, as a
good doctor once said to me. I assure you that you should
consult (except on minor complaints) only first-class men.
It is terrible to try out on yourself the inventions of a
Bolshevik! The only reassuring thing is the supervision of
professors in Naples, if these professors really know their
business.... You know, if you do go in winter, in any case
call on some first-class doctors in Switzerland and in
Vienna —there will be no excuse for not doing so! How do
you feel now?

Yours,
N. Lenin

P.S. Over here things are not at all bad; in St. Petersburg,
the workers are organising on party lines in all the legal
societies, including the sick benefit societies. There were
some interesting and practical lads here, too.

My address: Wl. Ulianow. Ulica Lubomirskiego. 51.
Kraków . Krakau ( Galizien ).

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Notes:
[1]
An extract from V. Voitinsky’s novel The Waves , entitled “A
Ray of Light in the Night”, was published in Prosveshcheniye
No. 4, 1914. But Lenin’s letter of mid-November 1913 to A. M.
Gorky (see p. 266 of this volume) shows that Gorky was against the
publication of Voitinsky’s novel in Prosveshcheniye . That is why
it is not quite clear whether the reference is to The Waves or to
another of Voitinsky’s manuscripts.