Dictated: Dictated by phone
Published:
First published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 54.
Printed from a typewritten copy.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1976,
Moscow,
Volume 45,
pages 485b-486a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
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• README
February 25, 1922
Having read, apart from the telegrams, the leaders in today’s newspapers, I come to the conclusion that the Note concerning the postponement of the Genoa Conference without any indication of date should be couched in the most insolent and derisive tone, so that the people at Genoa should feel the slap in the face. It looks as though the only way to create an actual impression is to be superinsolent. In particular, we could say that among our counterclaims we include the expenses incidental to the fact that these powers have failed to fulfil their initial obligation—to convene the conference at the appointed time. We must not miss the opportunity when we can, through an insolent and mocking Note, help bring about a situation in which all the pacifist elements of the bourgeoisie will be strengthened all over the world.[2]
[1] Lenin wrote this letter, as well as the note to the Politbureau members of February 24, and the notes to J. V. Stalin and L. B. Kamenev of February 25, 1922 (see this volume, Document 649, and also present edition, Vol. 42, p. 404), in connection with a radio message from the Italian Foreign Minister Torretta to G. V. Chicherin of February 24, 1922, saying that the Italian Government was forced to postpone the Genoa Conference in view of a ministerial crisis. The radio message was published in Izvestia VTsIK No. 45, on February 25, 1922.
[2] That same day, February 25, 1922, Chicherin sent Italian Foreign Minister Torretta and British Foreign Secretary Curzon a telegram on the date of the Genoa Conference, and it was published in Izvestia VTsIK No. 47, on February 28, 1922 (see Dokumenty vneshnei politiki SSSR, Vol. V, Moscow, 1961, pp. 113–15).
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