13/VIII

Dear Comrade Rothstein!

Only yesterday I received your letter of 17/VII1. I gave a telegram to Ordzhonikidze, asking him to confirm whether any help to Eskhanulla, etc. had been stopped by the Baku people. Chicherin told me that it has been stopped.

I seem to agree with your cautious policy in Persia. I have not heard the "other side", but I think that your main considerations cannot be refuted.

Will you write a work on Persia, so that we can all learn about a subject so interesting and so unknown to us?

It is extremely important to develop a line of work on the East.

I will not write further, for you will learn the news from the newspapers, and I am now on vacation: I am overworked and undergoing treatment.

The Belgovs, I hope, are already with you.

I wrote to you about Aleksandr Aleksandrovich and Varvara Alexandrovna Armand, who went with him and for whom I am very anxious. I hope they will be useful in Persia and that you will give them a moment's attention.

I shake hands firmly and send my best regards.

Lenin1*.

Published in part - Lenin V.I. Complete Collected Works, vol. 53, с. 119.

Fund 2, op. 1, d. 24615 - autograph.

1* To the letter there is an envelope with Lenin's inscription: "t. Rothstein".

1Already on July 16, 1921 V.I.Lenin knew about the conflict between Rothstein and G.K.Ordzhonikidze on the question of policy in Persia from a coded telegram of the RSFSR ambassador to Persia F.A.Rothstein. On July 16, Lenin proposed Chicherin to submit to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) a draft resolution on the prohibition of party and Soviet bodies of the Caucasus to violate the Russian-Persian treaty and directives of the Central Committee and the NKID on Persian policy (see: Lenin V.I. Complete Collected Works, vol. 53, p. 36; Izvestiya TsK CPSU, 1990, No. 4, pp. 181-182). On July 21 Chicherin wrote about it to the Politburo V.M.Molotov, and on July 26 his proposal was adopted (RCCHIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 192, l. 3).

See also doc. 334.