Written: Written on August 11, 1921
Published:
First published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 53.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1976,
Moscow,
Volume 45,
pages 250-251a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
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11/VIII.
Comrade Molotov:
It is absolutely necessary to appoint a special commission from the Politbureau:
Molotov (with the right of his substitution by Chicherin) for the day-to-day handling of matters connected with aid to the starving from America and the League of Nations.
This game is an extremely intricate one. There is rank duplicity on the part of America, Hoover and the League of Nations Council.
Hoover must be punished, he must be slapped in the face publicly, for all the world to see, and the League of Nations Council as well.
This is very hard to do, but it must be done.
I can’t work. There is absolute need of help from Trotsky, who has a capacity for these things (both diplomatic experience and a military and political instinct).
Please have a vote taken in the Politbureau at once by telephone.
Show this note to everyone and get their votes.
The German and Norwegian governments could be taken as models.
Any other approach should be rejected with a motivation which is clear to all, and this should be loudly proclaimed to the whole world.
The disguised interventionists must be caught (have Uuschlicht help out).
The Kompomoshch[1] apparatus must be tightened up (if there is a shortage of men, borrow some from the military for two months).
Collegial work is of especial importance in the next few days, because the political responsibility for this very difficult matter is enormous.
P. S. Our moves must be subtle. A number of especially strict measures. Hoover and Brown are liars and brazen-faced fellows.
The conditions must be of the strictest: arrest and deportation for the slightest interference in our internal affairs.
[1] A reference to the Central Famine Relief Commission under the All-Russia Central Executive Committee.—Ed.
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