I request that you provide your assessment, returning both documents to me.¹⁴³ I draw the attention of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to the fact that its circumvention of the Council of People's Commissars decision (by means of a "parallel" apparatus or commission under another name or pretext) is absolutely impermissible. I have suspicion that the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs is in fact circumventing the Soviet resolution. I warn you.

I request the most precise assessment, without evasions, without omissions.

7/III. Lenin

Written 7 March 1921

First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI

Printed from the manuscript