Comrade Chicherin!
News from
England, especially from
Krasin (and newspaper excerpts) and particularly the news that America will
immediately join (the trade agreement between Russia and England) makes
the trade agreement with England an immediate and especially important issue.
If the question is "peace or W ar"*, then it must be linked with Batumi and Georgia.
Then, regarding the issue of debts, it is necessary to clarify precisely
that we are not obliged to pay.
If there is a trade agreement, who has the right to sign it definitively? Krasin alone? or the Council of People's Commissars?
This issue must be prepared very urgently in all its parts.
With communist greetings, Lenin
November 19 [1920]