Published:
First published in 1929 in Lenin Miscellany XI.
Sent from Munich to Berne.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
pages 100-101.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
You may freely copy, distribute,
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Text
• README
November 27, 1901
Dear L. I.,
Thank you for your book which V. Iv. has shown me. I very much regret that I have not yet been able to start reading it: first, I have lately been very busy with a pamphlet (against Rabocheye Dyelo),[1] and, secondly, I am once again going down with some “undetermined” illness. The work is at a standstill, and I don’t know how soon I shall be able to get down to it again! And it’s urgent work.
As regards a recommendation to Popova, to my deep regret I am quite unsuitable for this. I don’t know and never have known Popova personally. I dealt with her only through Struve (and, you will understand, it’s quite out of the question to ask him to recommend your book. Yet he is editorial manager of Popova’s publications!). If I were to apply to Popova, therefore, the result would be sooner negative than otherwise.
But even that is not all. I recently wrote (a month or six weeks ago) to Popova for the first time, asking her to send me a copy of the second volume of the Webbs, the translation of which I edited and which has only just been published.[2] Up to this day I have neither reply nor book!
I once had what you might call a “friendly” correspondence with Vodovozova. But she has not replied at all to my last letter to her (a business one, written last spring!). As you see, there again I am no use at all.
You will have either to look for someone with better connections in literary and publishing circles, or to apply directly to several publishers enclosing your book. [ Perhaps Filippov could help you? After all, he has printed something of yours! My relations with him have been broken off.]
Berg will write to you or have a personal talk with you: he wants to go soon.
Best wishes,
Yours,
Frey
[1] A reference to Lenin’s book, What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (see present edition, Vol. 5, pp. 347–529).
[2] Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The History of Trade Unionism. The first volume of the book, translated by Lenin and N. K. Krupskaya, was published in 1900; the second volume, edited by Lenin, in November 1901.
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