NOTE TO V. M. MOLOTOV 1
Comrade Molotov! We must give this some serious thought—show it to Stalin—whether it might not be possible to mete out a more severe punishment to the “extortionists”: by way of arrest, or by some other means? We must R E F L E C T carefully on this.
4/IX [1921] Lenin
1 Written on the second page of a telegram from Y. D. Yanson, member of the Irkutsk Committee of the RCP(b), to the Central Committee of the RCP(b) and to the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, concerning the state of negotiations with Japan and the extortionate demands made by the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary representatives in the government of the Far Eastern Republic, aimed at tearing apart the coalition at precisely the moment when negotiations with the Japanese were underway. At the top of the first page, Lenin wrote: “To Comrade Molotov—urgent and confidential. See p. 2.”