Written: Written on September 18, 1922
Published:
First published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 54.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1976,
Moscow,
Volume 45,
pages 567c-568a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
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Comrade Zinoviev:
About the rapporteur I agree conditionally: 1) Trotsky must also be there as a substitute (and for his own report as well); 2) I should be allowed to back out, but only if my health or my work prevents me.[1]
Concerning Urquhart, I withdraw my hesitations. There are already some American proposals. Baku is much better and more important. There is a decision by a C.C. commission (Smilga + Andreyev + Krasin) which has been directly violated by Krasin. There are all the other minuses (99 years; the immensity of the dimensions, etc.).[2]
P.S. Let the Politbureau members read this.
Yours,
Lenin
18/IX.
[1] A reference to Lenin’s speech at the forthcoming Fourth Congress of the Communist International.
At the morning sitting on November 13, 1922, Lenin gave a report “Five Years of the Russian Revolution and the Prospects of the World Revolution” (see present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 418–32).
[2] The talks with Leslie Urquhart, which he broke off in October 1921, were resumed in 1922. A preliminary agreement was signed by L. B. Krasin on September 9, 1922 (for the terms see this volume, Document 750). Having acquainted himself with the agreement, Lenin found it to be patently disadvantageous for the Soviet state, and in a letter to Politbureau members on September 12 came out against its approval (see this volume, Document 754). Lenin wrote about this in the note to Zinoviev here published.
The commission mentioned by Lenin was set up by the Politbureau on August 24, 1922, to specify and put the finishing touches to the draft agreement with Urquhart.
By “American proposals” Lenin apparently means the talks between Krasin and the International Barnsdoll Corporation, with which two agreements were signed on September 20, 1022: one for the exploitation of the Balakhany oil wells in Baku for 15 1/2 years, and the other for the sinking of new wells. See also this volume, Documents 767 and 784, and Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Edition, Vol. 54, Documents 483 and 485.
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