V. I.

Lenin

684

To:   V. M. MOLOTOV FOR MEMBERS OF THE POLITBUREAU OF THE R.C.P.(B.) C.C.

30.III.1922

To Comrade Molotov for Politbureau members

I have had a talk with Krasnoshchekov. I see that we, the Politbureau, have made a big mistake.

We have harassed this man, who undoubtedly has brains, energy, knowledge and experience, to a state when one is
quite capable of abandoning everything and getting away
from the whole thing.

He knows all the languages, English excellently. He has been in the movement since 1896. Fifteen years in
America. Started out as a house-painter. Was headmaster
of a school. Knows commerce. Has shown himself to be an
intelligent chairman of the government in the Far-Eastern
Republic, where he organised virtually everything. [1]

We took him away from there. Here we placed him in the
People’s Commissariat for Finance, where complete anarchy reigns. Now, just when he was down with the typhus,
he has been dismissed!!!

We have done everything possible and impossible to repulse this highly energetic, intelligent and valuable
worker.

He has had differences both with the People’s
Commissariat for Foreign Trade and the People’s Commissariat
for Finance, because he favoured greater “freedom to trade”.

He says: “Let me prove myself at work, allow me to complete it without keeping on at me.” That is, of course,
a legitimate desire.

We must make efforts to give him a job at the S.E.C.
At any rate, we mast strive at all costs not to lose this
worker, but to meet his most legitimate desire: give him a
specified job and allow him, say, at least one year of trial,
to test him without harassing him. (He says he is willing
to work anywhere, provided he is not pulled about.)

( He would like to work at the People’s Commissariat for

Foreign Affairs. He has had some differences with Chicherin
on the foreign policy of the Far-Eastern Republic.)

Lenin

---
Notes:
[1]
The Far-Eastern Republic , a democratic slate founded under
Bolshevik leadership during the working people’s struggle against
the foreign armed intervention in the Far East. It existed
from April 6, 1920 to November 14, 1922. The establishment
of the Far-Eastern Republic, a “buffer state” with a bourgeois-democratic system, but essentially conducting a Soviet policy,
was in Soviet Russia’s interests as she was anxious to avoid an
open armed clash with the Japanese imperialists and wanted
to assure herself of a long breathing-space on the Eastern
Front.

Following the expulsion of the Japanese interventionists, the
People’s Assembly of the Far-Eastern Republic, on November
15, 1922. requested the All-Russia C.E.C. to integrate it with
the R.S.F.S.R. and to extend the Soviet Constitution to its
territory. On November 15, 1922, the All-Russia C.E.C. declared
the Far-Eastern Republic to be an inseparable part of the
R.S.F.S.R.