To His Majesty the Emir of Afghanistan

Having received Your Majesty's highly valued letter through Your Extraordinary Ambassador, the Honorable Mohammed-Wali Khan, I hasten to thank you for your greeting and for your initiative to establish friendship between the great peoples of Russia and Afghanistan.

From the first days of the glorious struggle of the Afghan people for their independence, the Workers' and Peasants' Government of Russia was not slow to recognize the new order of things in Afghanistan, solemnly recognized its full independence and sent its embassy to establish a permanent and unflagging connection between Moscow and Kabul. At present, the blossoming Afghanistan is the only independent Muslim state in the world and fate is sending the Afghan people a great historical task to unite all the enslaved Muslim peoples around them and lead them on the path of freedom and independence.

The Workers' and Peasants' Government of Russia instructs its embassy in Afghanistan to enter into negotiations with the government of the Afghan people to conclude trade and other friendly treaties, the purpose of which is not only to strengthen good-neighborly relations for the greater benefit of both peoples, but also to fight together with Afghanistan against the most predatory imperialist government in the world, Great Britain, whose intrigues, as you rightly point out in your letter, have hitherto hindered the peaceful and free development of the Afghan people and alienated them from the path of freedom and independence.

From conversations with your Ambassador Extraordinary, the Honorable Mohammed-Wali Khan, I have learned that you are ready to begin negotiations on friendly agreements in Kabul, and also on the desire of the Afghan people to obtain the military assistance of the Russian people against England. The Workers' and Peasants' Government is inclined to give this aid to the Afghan people in the widest possible extent and, in addition, to restore the justice violated by the former governments of the Russian tsars. We have proposed to your ambassador and ordered our Turkestan authorities to form a mixed commission to correct the Russian-Afghan border, in the sense of expanding the Afghan territory, based on law, justice and the free will of the peoples inhabiting the border areas. We hope that this commission, with your approval, will immediately begin the work in order to finish it simultaneously with the conclusion of negotiations on the Russian-Afghan agreement in Kabul.

Our Government, at the wish of your Ambassador, has communicated by radio with the governments of the neighboring states to Russia to secure the further passage of the Afghan Embassy to Europe and America, but unfortunately the intrigues of the same interested power, which you mention in your valuable letter, have prevented the realization of this plan of your Highness, and your Embassy is compelled to choose another way. Letting it go with all the good wishes of the Russian people, I, on behalf of the Workers' and Peasants' Government, testify my cordial greetings to you and to the entire Afghan people.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. Ulyanov (Lenin).

November 27, 1919.

The Kremlin, Moscow.

Published in part - "Pravda", No. 100, April 29, 1928.

Fund 2, op. 1, d. 11873, l. 5-6 - copy in Russian.

1V.I.Lenin handed his letter on November 27, 1919 to the extraordinary Afghan mission headed by Ambassador Mohammed Wali-khan before its departure for home.

Together with a copy of Lenin's letter, the RCCHIDNI keeps a translation of the emir's letter with Lenin's note: "Secret to the archive" (f. 2, op. 1, d. 11873, fol. 7).