Note by G.V.Chicherin

Gauschild has received a telegram from Ludendorff that he asks that we send a higher officer to Berlin to work out the details of the Murmansk case. The telegram just received from Ioffe says this, only attributed to me. The whole telegram is very important. It is strange that my long telegram of yesterday about Baku1 is not mentioned.

Sklyansky is waiting for an answer.

A reliable man.

Sklansky suggests sending two men to Berlin: Parsky and Antonov. We should also talk about the South.

Note by Lenin

It is necessary to send only archeologically reliable Bolsheviks, even if they are worse strategists, but reliable people and intelligent, because it is necessary to tactfully put: not an agreement, but a coincidence of interests.

Fond 2, op. 1, d. 6787 - autographs.

1G.V.Chicherin is referring to the note sent by him on August 19, 1918 to the German Consul General about the situation in Baku (see: Documents of Foreign Policy of the USSR. Vol. 1, pp. 428-429).

2These are negotiations in connection with the intervention of England and France in the North of Russia. On the part of the German government, during the drafting of an additional treaty to the Brest Peace Treaty, the question of military cooperation was raised. In the final text of the Russian-German supplementary treaty of August 27, 1918, the task of removing the Entente military forces from the northern regions of Russia was fully entrusted to Russia (see: Documents of Foreign Policy of the USSR. Vol. 1, p. 439). The German troops could not take place either in the north or in the south of the country against the Volunteer Army led by M.V.Alekseev (see doc. 140), as Germany was on the verge of total defeat in the First World War. On November 11, 1918 it capitulated. The command of the Volunteer Army, taking an anti-German position and relying on the Entente's help, when planning offensive operations against the Red Army in 1918, took into account the danger of a blow from the German troops (see: Denikin A.I. Sketches of the Russian Troubles // Questions of History, 1993, No. 2, pp. 124, 126).