Written: Written on January 27, 1916
Published:
First published in 1929 in Lenin Miscellany XI.
Sent from Berne to Zurich.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
page 365.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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Dear Comrade,
I should very much like to go to Zurich for two or three weeks to work in the libraries on a piece of research.[1] My wife also. So far we have no papers, but hope soon to get them. The question is whether we shall be able to overcome the financial difficulties. I would very much ask you to reply frankly and without exaggeration to the following questions:
(1) What net income can there be (i.e., for me) from a lecture? Minimum and maximum? The subject: “Two Internationals”: the growing division and rupture with the social-chauvinists throughout the world. Is it possible to increase the income by giving two lectures, and by how much?[2] (2) Will the local comrades help the two of us to get cheap accommodation? (3) How much will it cost to have a room (for two, even if with a single bed) per week? The cheapest, preferably in a worker’s family? (4) Dinner in a canteen, if there is one (here we pay 65 centimes in a students’ canteen)? (5) Morgenkafee and coffee in the evening, because, of course, we cannot do our own housekeeping in Zurich?
The cost of the journey will be 7x4=28 francs; extra expenditure on living in another town? That is the question. The room situation here is bad. Do you happen to know a worker’s family which could reliably promise to put us up cheap?
I shall be very grateful for a frank reply, but without any wild promises.
Beste Grüsse,
Yours,
Lenin
P.S. Are there any cheap self-service food counters or the like, and what are the prices?
[1] A reference to Lenin’s work on his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
[2] In Zurich, Lenin read two lectures: on February 17, 1916, “Two Internationals”, and on February 26, 1916, “‘Conditions of Peace’ in Connection with the National Question”.
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