Written: Written on October 16, 1921
Published:
First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1976,
Moscow,
Volume 45,
pages 339c-340a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
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16.X.
Comrade Chicherin:
I do not agree with you in the assessment of the situation or on the steps you propose.[1] There can be no question at all of Trotsky and myself withdrawing from the Executive Committee of the Communist International.
It is quite enough for Krasin to make a statement on the debts.
Urquhart has so far disagreed with the percentage level: he offered 5 per cent of gross output, our commission demanded 10 per cent.
The British and the French want to plunder us. That we shall not allow. We shall pay no attention to their “dissatisfaction” over this.
There is one concession: timber in the Caucasus. Trade arrangements with the Germans are under way. They are starting with Italy: she has offered a loan. This matter should be speeded up and pushed forward by every means.
There is a contract with Armstrong on the boilers. There is a contract with Norway.
The only “sharp turn” is with Britain and France, and I do not see that we should make any concessions or steps. Hoover is a real asset.
With communist greetings,
Lenin
[1] On October 15, 1921, G. V. Chicherin wrote Lenin that the dissolution of the All-Russia Famine Relief Committee, for its counter-revolutionary activity, and the break-down of the concession talks with Urquhart have worsened the international position of the R.S.F.S.R. He proposed a number of steps which he believed would improve relations with the capitalist countries, namely, Lenin’s and Trotsky’s withdrawal from the Comintern Executive Committee, a statement by the Soviet Government on recognition of tsarist Russia’s debts, etc.
In the final sentence a reference is to the 1921 agreement with ARA, which was headed by Herbert Hoover, on aid to the starving in the Volga area (see this volume, Document 370).
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