[September 13, 1921]

September 13, 1921
Comrade Ioffe, Today's Politbureau decision, as you see (I am enclosing it), to a great
extent satisfies your dispatch of September 9, 1921.
I earnestly ask you to send a more thorough written report.
Moreover, from myself personally, in order to get to the bottom of the
matter thoroughly, I would ask you to pay special attention (in your report or
in a special supplement to the report) to the question of defending the
interests of the native population against "Russian" (Great-Russian or
colonizing) exaggerations.
The attitude of the native population towards Safarov? **Facts**, facts and
facts.
The native population themselves (Safarov's supporters)? Names?
Experience? Authority? (Facts, facts...).
Can they defend themselves? Surely? And against such a clever, firm,
and stubborn person as Tomsky?
How many such people?
The "Union of the Poor" (created by Safarov?) — its composition?
significance? strength? role? Is it true that the native population was
"forcibly" stratified?
Cotton? Its fate? Is it true that Safarov is ruining cotton? Facts, facts.
Fronts in Fergana? Basmach movement? Its attitude towards the "line"
of Tomsky and Safarov? Facts and precise decisions of the Turkestan
Central Executive Committee regarding the Basmach movement? Facts,
in what and when did Tomsky and Safarov or their supporters differ on
**this question**? (Excerpts from relevant decisions, so that it is precisely
clear when exactly, and in what exactly they formally differed.)
There are some disagreements on this question within the Central
Committee.
It is very important to be informed more accurately.
I personally strongly suspect "Tomsky's line" (perhaps, more
accurately, Peters' line? or Pravdiv's line? and so o n.) of Great-Russian
chauvinism, or, more correctly, of a deviation in that direction.
For all our Weltpolitik * it is devilishly important to win the trust of the
native population; to win it three and four times over; to prove that we
are not imperialists, that we will **not** tolerate adeviation in this
direction.
This is a world question, without exaggeration a world question.
Here one must be extremely strict.
This will affect India, the East; one cannot joke here, here one must
be 1,000 times more careful.

With communist greetings, Lenin

* — world politics.