TELEGRAM TO THE AZERBAIJAN SOVNARKHOZ
Baku
29 June 1920
According to information received by the People’s Commissariat for Food Supply, you have at your disposal six thousand poods of pressed black caviar, which you intend to export abroad by way of independent commodity exchange. We consider it necessary to draw your attention

* The telegram is published from the original signed by V. I. Lenin. The postscript to D. I. Kursky is written in his own hand.

to the undesirability, from the state-wide point of view, of your action, uncoordinated with us, on the question of commodity exchange. If there really is a surplus amounting to six thousand poods of pressed caviar, we request that you send it to Moscow, addressed to the People’s Commissariat of Food, for distribution among the children and sick proletarians of the starving centres. Wire the Food Supply Distribution Department about further developments.
Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars
Lenin