THE LETTERS OF LENIN—Translated & edited by Elizabeth Hill & Doris Mudie— Harcourt, Brace ($4).
Of the thousands of letters written by Vladimir Ilich Ulianov in his 54-year life, about 1,000 are left. That is not because his correspondents were thoughtless but because Vladimir Ulianov was a revolutionary. Many a missive he wrote in invisible ink, bound inside book covers, traced between lines of bromidic gossip; many were destroyed when read, some were intercepted, some went to the dead letter orifice. In Russia, where Vladimir Ulianov's tomb is Moscow's most sacred sight, three volumes of his letters have been published. Last week U. S. readers were glad to be able to see for themselves what kind of letters were written by the No. 1 Revolutionary of the 20th Century, were also glad that Editors Hill & Mudie's ample selection did not include any more.
For nonrevolutionary readers, Lenin's letters are likely to be disappointingly unexplosive. Such readers may not even agree at first with Editors Hill & Mudie that from them "there emerges above all the vivid figure of Lenin himself." Lenin's letters are like business letters. But it was a big business he was about, and as his scheme slowly progresses from small successes to failure to near-success to triumph, even businessmen readers will scarce forbear to cheer. Irritation, anger when schemes go wrong or partners fail him, Lenin frequently shows; personal feeling, almost never. The letters to his wife, Krupskaya, and references to her before and after marriage, are as impersonally businesslike as all the others. Only in his letters to his mother does he show a personal face: to her he is unfailingly tender.
Lenin's letters begin in 1895, when he was a 25-year-old lawyer and already a fledgling revolutionary. Little less than a year later he writes from a Petersburg prison, awaiting his long journey to three years in Siberia. Krupskaya, arrested later, was allowed to join him there. They were married, but when Lenin's term was up she still had a year to serve. Lenin's first letter to her after their separation is a lengthy dissertation on intraParty politics. When Krupskaya was released she joined Lenin's exile in Europe, and for the next 16 years they led a lonely, hand-to-mouth life, supporting themselves by translations, lectures, literary work, trying to patch together a working revolutionary organization. Once, in a letter to his mother, Lenin allowed his discouragement to appear: "My life goes on as usual and fairly lonely . . . and unfortunately pretty senseless."