V. I.

Lenin

245

KRUPSKAYA AND LENIN TO LENIN’S MOTHER

December 26

Dear Maria Alexandrovna, It is an age since I last wrote to you. In general I have
been conducting a sort of sit-down strike against letterwriting lately. Volodya is partly to blame. He has enticed me
into the “excursionist” party. It is our local joke that we
have a “cinemist” party (of cinema-lovers), an “anticinemist”, or “anti-semitic”, party, and an “excursionist” party,
which is always finding excuses for excursions. Volodya is
a confirmed anti-cinemist and an enthusiastic excursionist.
He has recruited me into his party and so I have no time left
for anything. To make things worse, we are having some wonderfully fine days. With just a light fall of snow—
really excellent. And autumn, too, was fine. After all, what
is there to do in Krakow but go walking. We have no sophisticated amusements of any kind. We did once go to a
concert, a Beethoven quartet, we even clubbed together to buy a season ticket, but for some reason the music made
us terribly miserable, although an acquaintance of ours, [1] an excellent musician, was in ecstasies over it. We do not
want to go to the Polish theatre, the cinema here is quite
absurd—all five-act melodramas.... Volodya and I have decided that after the holidays we will begin a study of the
local University library, for, to our shame, we have never
been there. If there is anything we thirst for here it is good
literature. Volodya has practically learned Nadson and
Nekrasov by heart and an odd volume of Anna Karenina is being read for the hundredth time. We left our literature
(a tiny fraction of what we had in St. Petersburg) in Paris
and here there isn’t a Russian book to be had anywhere.
At times we read with envy the advertisements of secondhand booksellers offering 28 volumes of Uspensky or 10
volumes of Pushkin, etc., etc.

Volodya, as luck would have it, has become a great fiction-lover. And an out-and-out nationalist. You cannot
get him to look at the pictures by Polish artists at any
price but he has picked up, for instance, a catalogue of
the Tretyakov Gallery that some acquaintance had thrown
away and is always burying himself in it.

We are all well. Volodya takes a cold shower every day,
goes for walks and does not suffer from insomnia. He continues praising the local swamp. Mother is often unwell,
first a gumboil, then a cough.... She sends her best regards.
I had a letter from Manyasha, but it was in her usual scrawl
so I understood nothing of it. She should write more often.
I embrace her and you most fondly, wish you good health
and everything of the best. Again I kiss you.

Yours,

Nadya

Many kisses, my dear, I wish you good health and spirits. Very best regards to Manyasha (I wrote to her a few
days ago) and to Anyuta, who is probably with you.

Yours,

V. U.

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Notes:
[1]
Inessa Armand.— Ed .