NOTE TO M. N. POKROVSKY.
To the Deputy People’s Commissar of Public Education
January 15, 1920
I request that you issue an order instructing our state libraries—such as the Rumyantsev Museum, the Petrograd Public Library, and others—to immediately begin collecting and preserving all White Guard newspapers (both Russian and foreign). I also request that you prepare a draft directive stipulating that all military and civilian authorities are to collect these newspapers and turn them over to the state libraries.
Comrade CIIK v. Ulyanov (Lenin).
P.S. You may find it appropriate, in this same order—or perhaps better yet, in a separate one—to also direct and oversee the systematic collection of complete sets of our newspapers dating from 1917 onward.