555. To INESSA ARMAND^[1]

Written March 18, 1911 · First published in 1964 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 49. Sent from Ambulant (Switzerland) to Clarens. Printed from the original. · page 616

Dear Friend,

I am writing to you on my way back from a lecture. Yesterday (Saturday) I lectured on the amnesty.^[2] We are all dreaming of leaving. If you are going home drop in to see us first. We’ll have a talk. I would very much like you to find out for me in England discreetly whether I would be granted passage.

All the best,
Yours,
V. U.

Notes

[1] This letter (postcard) to Inessa Armand in Clarens was written by Lenin on his way to Zurich from La Chaux-de-Fonds and posted by him in Ambulant (Switzerland). In La Chaux-de-Fonds—a large working-class centre of Switzerland—Lenin delivered a lecture (in German) at a workers’ club on the Paris Commune and the prospects of development of the Russian revolution (“Will the Russian Revolution Follow the Path of the Paris Commune?”).

[2] Lenin is referring to the declaration of the Provisional Government setting fort its political programme, one point of which provided for a complete and immediate amnesty in political and religious cases (see Vestnik Vremennogo Pravitelstva No. 1, March 5, 1917).