NOTE TO I. V. STALIN¹
If you have read this and, if it is not too much trouble, Comrade Stalin—please underline in this report what, in your view, is acceptable (or, conversely, what, in your view, is absolutely unacceptable).
9/X [1921] Lenin
1 The note was written on a report by G. I. Safarov concerning the state of affairs in Turkestan. In the text of the report, Vladimir Ilyich had inscribed: “To Safarov” and underlined the word “Turkestan”; on the envelope he wrote: “To Comrade Stalin (from Lenin).” The report contains a substantial number of underlinings and marginal notes by I. V. Stalin, in which he expressed his views and attitudes toward certain points raised in Safarov’s report. On the envelope bearing Stalin’s inscription regarding the return of the material to Lenin on the very same day—October 9—Vladimir Ilyich made the notation: “To the archives.”
At this time, and until April 25, 1922, I. V. Stalin served as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b).