18 August 1920  

Comrade Sergo! Inessa Armand is leaving today. I ask you not to forget your promise. You must telegraph-* to Kislovodsk, give orders to arrange things properly for her and her son, and supervise execution. Without checking on execution, they won’t do a damned thing.  

Please reply to me by letter, and if possible also by telegram: “received the letter, will do everything, will set up proper supervision.”  

I earnestly ask you, in view of the dangerous situation in the Kuban, to establish contact with Inessa Armand so that she and her son can be evacuated, if necessary, in time to Petrovsk and Astrakhan, or else to arrange (her son is ill) for them in the mountains near the Caspian coast, and in general take all measures.  

Write from time to time about Persia, etc. You inform me too seldom.  

Greetings! Your Lenin  
5450  

* Letters of V. I. Lenin on the educational atlas also see in Lenin Miscellany XX, pp. 317–322.  
** At the top of the telegram written by V. I. Lenin, there is his note: “To Stalin in cipher.”