V. I.

Lenin

268

To:   HIS WIFE [2]

July 9, 1919

Nadya dearest, I was very glad to hear from you. I sent a telegram to
Kazan and, as I got no answer, sent another to Nizhny, and from there I today received a reply to the effect that
the Krasnaya Zvezda is supposed to arrive in Kazan on
July 8 and stay there for not less than 24 hours. In that
telegram I asked whether it would be possible to give Gorky
a cabin on Krasnaya Zvezda . He is arriving here tomorrow
and I want very much to drag him out of Petrograd, where
he has exhausted his nerves and gone sour. I hope you and
the other comrades will be glad to have Gorky travelling
with you. He is really a very nice chap, a bit capricious,
but that is nothing.

I read the letters asking for help that sometimes come for you and try to do what I can.

Mitya has left for Kiev; the Crimea, it seems, is again
in the hands of the Whites.

There is nothing new here; on Sundays we take a holiday
at “our” country house. [3] Trotsky is better; he has left
for the South and I hope he will manage all right. I am
expecting an improvement from the substitution of Kamenev
(from the Eastern Front) for Vatsetis.

We are giving Pokrovsky (M.N.) [1] two months’ leave for a rest; we want to appoint Lyudmila Rudolfovna
Menzhinskaya as deputy commissar in his place (although it
is not yet definite), but not Pozner.

I embrace you fondly and ask you to write and to telegraph
more often.

Yours,

V. Ulyanov

N.B. Obey the doctor’s advice: eat and sleep more, then
you will be fully fit for work by winter.

---
Notes:
[1]
M. N. Pokrovsky was at that time Deputy People’s Commissar
of Education of the R.S.F.S.R.— Ed .

[2]
Krupskaya has the following to say about her correspondence
with Lenin: “The letter of July 9, 1919 is the only private letter
from Vladimir Ilyich that I still have. We did not live much apart.
We carried on a considerable correspondence when Ilyich was in
prison and during his first year of exile, when he was alone, also
during my stay, in Ufa. In those days we wrote mostly in
invisible ink and letters were destroyed as soon as they had been read.

In 1919 I travelled on the propaganda vessel Krasnaya Zvezda
for about two months. It was difficult to correspond in this period
because of the constant movement of the vessel. But even those
few letters I received from Ilyich were all, except one, destroyed,
following the habit of underground work acquired in the past.”
Another letter and a telegram sent by Lenin to the propaganda
ship were discovered later (see Letter No. 270 and Telegram No.
269).

[3]
Lenin here refers to Gorki, near Moscow, where he spent any
leisure time he had. Lenin first went there on September 24 or
25, 1918. At first he spent his days off there but later, on the
insistence of his doctors, he lived there for some time, although
even during this period of rest he continued working hard.

Towards the end of 1921 Lenin’s health deteriorated seriously.
On December 6 he was granted leave of absence and spent the
time in Gorki. During his illness (May 23-October 2, 1922) he lived
in Gorki and went there on a visit for a few days in early
December. From May 15, 1923 to his death on January 21, 1924, Lenin
lived in Gorki, leaving there only on rare occasions.

The place is now called Gorki Leninskiye and a Lenin Museum
was opened there on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death.