Published:
Pravda No. 232 and Izvestia No. 232, October 17, 1919.
Printed from the Pravda text.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
2nd English Edition,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 42,
page 146.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
D. Walters
Copyleft:
V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
© 2003
Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
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Text
Comrade Lenin met the Ambassador in his private office with the words, “I am very glad to see in the red capital of the worker and peasant government the representative of the friendly Afghan people, who are suffering and fighting against imperialist oppression.” To which the Ambassador replied: “I proffer you a friendly hand and hope that you will help the whole of the East to free itself from the yoke of European imperialism.” During the talk that followed, Lenin said that Soviet power, the power of the working people and the oppressed, was striving towards the very goal the Afghan Ambassador Extraordinary had spoken about, but that it was necessary that the Moslem East should realise this and help Soviet Russia in her great war of liberation. To this the Ambassador replied that he could assert that the Moslem East realised this and the hour was not far off when the world would see that there was no room for European imperialism in the East.
Afterwards the Ambassador stood up and with the words: “I have the honour of presenting my Sovereign’s letter to the Head of the free Russian proletarian Government and hope that the Soviet Government will give due consideration to what the Afghan Government is writing about,” he handed Lenin the Amir’s letter. Comrade Lenin answered that he accepted the letter with the greatest pleasure and promised shortly to give a reply to all the questions Afghanistan was interested in.{2}
{1} The Afghan Embassy Extraordinary headed by the Ambassador Extraordinary Mohammad Wali-Khan arrived in Moscow on October 10, 1919. On October 12 the Ambassador, accompanied by Chief Judge of the Afghan Army Saifurrahman-Khan Commissar the Secretary of the Embassy visited the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs. He was received by the Board of the Commissariat in full atteiidariee. On October14 Lenin received the embassy in the presence of representatives of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. The talk between the Ambassador and Lenin lasted over half an hour.
{2} Replies to the questions raised in the letter of Amir Amanullah Khan were given in the Soviet Government’s letter dated November 27, 1919, signed by Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars V. I. Lenin.
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