To Instructor Comrade Martyshkin.

I have received your letter about the antics of Vasily Stalin. Thank you for the letter.

I reply with considerable delay owing to being overloaded with work. I beg your forgiveness.

Vasily is a spoiled youth of middling abilities, a little savage (the Scythian type!), not always truthful, fond of blackmailing weak "supervisors," and not infrequently impudent, with a weak -- or, more precisely, undisciplined -- will.

He has been spoiled by all sorts of "godfathers" and "godmothers" who constantly emphasize that he is "Stalin's son."

I am glad that in your person there has been found at least one self-respecting teacher who treats Vasily as he treats everyone else and who demands that the insolent boy submit to the common rules of the school. Vasily has been spoiled by directors of the sort you mentioned -- spineless people who have no place in a school -- and if the impudent Vasily has not yet managed to ruin himself, it is only because there exist in our country certain teachers who do not give quarter to a capricious young master.

My advice: be stricter with Vasily and do not be afraid of the false, blackmailing threats of the capricious boy about "suicide." You will have my support in this.

Unfortunately, I myself do not have the opportunity to fuss over Vasily. But I promise to take him by the scruff of the neck from time to time.

Greetings!

I. STALIN

June 8, 1938

Iosif Stalin in the Embrace of His Family. Moscow, 1993. Pp. 54-55.