ABSTRACT
Lenin actually found a way to supply strikers with leaflets which he wrote in prison under the inattentive guard of his jailers. The prison officials co-operated, checking out entire libraries and carrying the books to his cell. The lengthy work was written entirely while he was imprisoned and in Siberia under police supervision. It was Lenin's most scholarly work, a treatise devoted to economic history and Russian industrialization. Lenin had committed no overt criminal act, yet early in 1897 he was convicted by administrative decision, without trial, to live in Siberia for three years under surveillance. Lenin corresponded regularly with his friends at home, with fellow exiles in Siberia, and with revolutionaries abroad. Lenin received the news with complacency: Fedosseyev, as a seasoned revolutionary, should have displayed more inner strength, not taking 'exile stories' to heart. Portions of Lenin's book were published in March 1899, in the legal organ, Nachalo.
