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Urgent. Confidential

To Deputy Chairman of the Cheka, Comrade Unskhlikt

Make inquiries and report to me no later than tomorrow exact and exhaustive answers to the following questions:

1) Is it true that in Petrograd on May 27 the following were arrested: Prof. P. A. Shchurkevich (Electrotechnical Institute), Prof. N. N. Martinovich (University and Oriental Institute), Prof. Shcherba (University, Professor of Comparative Linguistics), Prof. B. S. Martynov (University, Professor of Civil Law), senior zoologist A. K. Mordvilko (Academy of Sciences), the wife of Prof. Tikhanov (Institute of Civil Engineers), Prof. B. E. Vorobyev (First Polytechnical Institute)?

2) Is it true that Prof. Pantelei Antonovich Shchurkevich has been arrested for the fifth time, and Prof. Boris Evdokimovich Vorobyev for the third time?

3) What is the reason for these arrests and why has arrest been chosen as the preventive measure—they will not flee, after all.

4) Does the Cheka, Provincial Cheka, or other Cheka organs issue mandates not for personal arrests but for arrests "at discretion," and if so, to which specifically (degree of responsibility, position, political maturity) staff members?

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars

V. Ulyanov (Lenin)

from the typescript text signed by V. I. Lenin

Written June 2, 1921

Published for the first time