V. I.   Lenin

Letter to the Politbureau of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) with a Draft of
Directives to Comrades Travelling Abroad

Written: Written March 17, 1922
Published: First published in 1964 in the Fifth Russian Edition of the Collected Works, Vol. 45. Printed from the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, pages 407^b-408^a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala and D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
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In view of Comrade Radek’s trip abroad, and Comrade Sosnovsky’s, too, I hear,

—in view of the fact that a flair for diplomacy is not one of the strong points of these most valuable and important workers, I propose that the following directive be issued by the Politbureau:

“The Politbureau impresses upon all comrades travelling abroad that the present moment calls, on the one hand, for   the greatest restraint in utterances and talks about the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and, on the other hand, for a relentless struggle against and the greatest distrust towards them (as the most dangerous de facto accomplices of the whiteguards)”.

P.S. Please get this voted by telephone.^[1]

Lenin

Notes

[1] The Politbureau adopted Lenin’s proposal on March 15, 1922.