In *Rech* they said about the novel that it is an imitation of Dostoevsky and that there is good in it.

In my opinion, there is imitation, and a most vile imitation of a most vile Dostoevsky.

Of course, in life, all those “horrors” that Vinnichenko describes happen singly. But to combine them all together and in such a way means to daub horrors, to frighten both one’s own imagination and the reader, to “beat down” oneself and him.

I once had to spend a night with a comrade who was ill (with delirium tremens)—and once to “persuade” a comrade who had attempted suicide (after the attempt) and who later, several years afterwards, did end by suicide. Both memories are à la Vinnichenko. But in both cases these were small fragments of the lives of both comrades. And this pretentious, double-dyed fool Vinnichenko, admiring himself, made of this a collection of sheer horrors—a sort of “two-penny horrors.”

Brrr… Muck, nonsense, annoying that I wasted time reading it.

P. S. How is your summer arrangements getting on?

Yours, V. I.

Franchement, continuez vous a vous facher ou non?*

(Austria-Hungary, now Yugoslavia)

in the 4th edition of the Works

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Written in June, prior to the 5th, 1914.

Sent from Poronin to Lovran

First published in 1950.

V. I. Lenin, Vol. 35

Printed according to the manuscript.