24.IX. 1920 г.

Comrade. Chicherin!

The question of stricter control over ciphers (both external and internal) should not be allowed to go to sleep.

Be sure to let me know when all measures have been taken.

Another one is necessary: with each important ambassador (Krasin, Litvinov, Sheinman, Ioffe, etc.) it is obligatory to set up a special strict cipher, only for personal decryption, i.e. a particularly reliable cipher will be used here. Here a particularly reliable Communist comrade (perhaps better under the CEKA) will encrypt, and there the individual Ambassador (or "agent") must encrypt and decrypt himself, without the right to give it to secretaries or encryptors.

This is obligatory (for especially important messages, 1-2 times a month, 2-3 lines, no more).

Your Lenin.

Fond 2, op. 2, d. 423 - autograph.

1Answering Lenin September 25, 1920. G.V.Chicherin wrote: "In general, the question of the best cipher business in the Republic is being addressed by the commission of Trotsky. Trotsky. As for the encryption business in our Commissariat, from Monday we will start to work with t. Golub, whose task will be to turn the ciphers into official papers for mailing them in this completely changed form to the usual recipients. He will also separate the most conspiratorial and purely personal information from general political information, the latter to be sent out, the former to be communicated only to a very limited circle of persons. Ioffe already has a special cipher with the Central Committee. The only particularly strict cipher is a book cipher. Book ciphers can be used only in some cases due to the extreme cumbersomeness of this system. It takes too much time. For some of the most secret cases it can be done. In the beginning, all our correspondents had book ciphers, but due to the too great cumbersomeness of this system, they gradually gave up. It will be possible to re-establish this system for individual cases, taking advantage of occasions to notify the correspondents. It is inexpedient to organize encryption at the Central Committee, because during the distribution and transmission, the encryption can fall into the wrong hands, and it will be more correct to provide in the most important cases encryption to the most reliable encryptors" (RCCHIDNI, f. 5, on. 1, d. 2055, fol. 19).

See also doc. 247.