V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v44; en:CW/CW45;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

LETTER TO G. V. CHICHERIN

ON THE DIRECTIVES OF THE R.C.P.(B.) C.C. FOR THE SOVIET DELEGATION AT THE GENOA CONFERENCE
7/II.
Comrade Chicherin,
All your numerous suggestions are, in my opinion, fundamentally wrong and due, so to speak, to polemical zeal. 168
The directives do not say that we will not agree to any form of covering our counter-claims with any claims whatsoever of the opponent.
The chairman of the delegation (and in this case also the vice-chairman) has, it seems, a host of rights giving him almost autocratic power.
Your letter (and still more Krasin’s) shows—showed, rather—panic. That is the most dangerous thing. A break does not frighten us in the least: tomorrow we shall get an even better conference. We cannot now be frightened by isolation and blockade, nor by intervention either.
We propose a broad agenda, hint at our “palliative” programme of general measures.
Do they reject it?
As you please! (We shall publish our broad programme eventuell* in the name of some member of the delegation, who may even resign (with the C.C.’s consent, of course).
If you don’t want a broad one, let us have a narrower one: Wir nehmen auch Abschlagszahlung!** 
We shall agree even to the very narrowest, but we shall not agree to anything disadvantageous to us. We shall not submit to ultimatums. If you only want to “trade”, let us do so, but we shall not buy a pig in a poke, and without calculating the “claims” down to the last kopeck, we shall not agree to a deal. That is all.
We must prepare and deploy all our guns—there will always be time to decide which are for show, which to fire, and when to fire.
With communist greetings,
Lenin

*—if the occasion arises; possibly. Ed.
**—We also accept payment by instalments! Ed.