V. I.   Lenin

542

To:   MAXIM GORKY

Written: Written on December 6, 1921
Published: First published in 1942 in Lenin Miscellany XXXIV. Sent to Berlin. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 45, page 404^b.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
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Dear A. M.:

I am very sorry to write in haste. I am terribly tired. I’ve got insomnia. I am going away for treatment.

I have been requested to write to you: would you write to Bernard Shaw asking him to go to America, and to Wells who is said to be in America now, to get them both to help us in collecting aid to the starving?

It would be a good thing if you wrote them.

The starving will then get a bit more.

The famine is very bad.^[2]

Make sure to have a good rest and better treatment.^[1]

Regards,
Lenin

Notes

[1] On the envelope Lenin wrote: “To P. P. Gorbunov, with the request to send this on to Berlin for Alexei Maximovich Gorky (from Lenin) {return the envelope with Gorky’s signature).” On the other side of the envelope Maxim Gorky wrote: “Received 24.XII. M. Gorky.”—Ed.

[2] In reply to Lenin’s letter, Maxim Gorky said that he had written to H. G. Wells, who was in America, asking him to have a talk with the organisations and persons concerned about helping the famine-stricken. He wrote: “I have no reply from Wells, but I am sure that my letter found him in America, because he quoted extracts from my letter in one of his articles...” (V. I. Lenin and A. M. Gorky, Pisma, vospominaniya, dokumenty (Letters, Reminiscences, Documents), 2nd ed., 1961, pp. 184–86).