164

TELEGRAM TO N. M. KNIPOVICH
To Nikolai Mikhailovich Knipovich (Bolshoi Kozikhinsky St. 8).
August 5, 1921
I very much regret that due to illness I could not speak
with you when you were at Nadezhda Konstantinovna's. I would ask,
if this does not trouble you, to write to me in brief words:
1) Your assessment of Meisner a) from the point of view of integrity,
b) from the political side, c) knowledge of the matter, d) administrative
abilities. 2) Your disagreement with Glavryba. 3) Your pro
posal, if there is one, regarding decentralization in the fish business
and its organization in Murman
[669]
Lenin.

NOTES ON N. M. KNIPOVICH'S LETTER.
[September 3, 1921]
To the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov.
Your telegram of August 5, No. 669, was delivered to me yesterday,
to which I consider it my duty to immediately answer you frankly
and, as far as I can, objectively.
Your most difficult question is the assessment of V. I. Meisner. I have known
him for a long time, he was, among other things, my assistant and deputy in
the Caspian studies of 1912, and the rather brilliant success of the work of the
small expedition of that year is more Meisner's merit than
mine. I had a very high opinion of him until recent years, when
I was forced to be significantly disappointed in him in some
respects.
...He is strongly carried away by the desire, unfortunately characteristic of almost all
departments, to seize more power, in this case to take into his own hands as much as possible everything that relates to the fish
business, to suppress that which does not go under the Glavryba flag and is not personally
liked. In these aspirations to create some kind of strange monopoly,
V. I. Meisner sometimes acts incorrectly, unfairly and unwisely,
causing sharp and widespread dissatisfaction with Glavryba,
enmity towards it and the desire to get rid of serving it or working in
contact with it. I consider the appointment, by reason of personal relations, to the position of head of the hydrological part in
the department of fish farming and scientific and commercial research of the agricultural-

* Printed from a typed copy. Ed.