To the People’s Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs, typewritten:
1) to the addressee
2) to me
3) to N. P. Gorbunov

Comrade Dovgalevsky!

I request you to provide me with information on the state of our wireless telephone work.

1) Is the Central Moscow station working? If yes, for how many hours a day?
over how many versts?

If not, what is lacking?

2) Are receivers being manufactured (and how many?), apparatuses capable of listening to Moscow’s conversation?

3) How is the matter with loudspeakers, apparatuses that allow a whole hall (or square) to hear Moscow?
and so on.

I very much fear that this matter has again “fallen asleep” (according to the damned habit of Russian Oblomovs of putting everyone, everything and all to sleep).

G. V. CHICHERIN. 2 SEPTEMBER 1921.

It has been “promised” many times, and all deadlines have long since passed!

The importance of this matter for us (for propaganda especially in the East) is exceptional. Delay and negligence here are criminal.

All this already exists abroad; what is lacking can and should be purchased. In all probability, somewhere there is criminal negligence.

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

2. IX. 1921.

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First published incomplete
in 1932 in the journal “Radiofront” No. 3
Published in full in 1933
in the Lenin Miscellany XXIII
Printed from the manuscript