Date: 1922-03-21
Source: ru:ND; en:Pipes

To Comrade Gorbunov.

I request that you submit the following proposal to the Secretariat of the Central Committee, via Molotov, and inform me whether it has been approved. In light of Krestinsky’s departure for Moscow on March 18th, accompanied by German specialists in nervous disorders, to conduct examinations of a group of senior party officials, I propose that the Secretariat of the Central Committee assign the physician responsible for overseeing the treatment of leading Party members—(and if, despite the numerous resolutions of the Central Committee, no such physician exists, then a dedicated physician must be appointed for this task)—to compile a list of comrades requiring medical examination, and to take all necessary measures to ensure that they are examined in a timely manner by the visiting physician, consulting, where appropriate, those Russian physicians who have previously treated these comrades. The list should clearly include Comrades Chicherin, Osinsky, Trotsky, Kamenev, Stalin, Bryukhanov, and undoubtedly a whole host of others as well.

March 21, 1922.

Lenin.

Received by telephone

L. Fotieva.

Fund 2, Inventory 1, File 22960, Page 2 – autograph of L. Fotieva.

On March 11, 1922, the Secretariat of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR received a report from N.N. Krestinsky regarding his departure from Berlin on March 18, together with the German professors G. Klemperer and O. Förster, who had been invited to examine a number of key Party officials and provide assessments of their health. At the April 6 meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), the results of the medical examinations were discussed, and the following decision was adopted: “a) To forward Comrade Semashko’s proposals to the members of the Politburo for their review. b) To reaffirm that Comrade Semashko is responsible for implementation. c) To instruct Comrade Semashko to submit his specific proposals to the Secretariat of the Central Committee in written form” (RGASPI, Fund 17, Inventory 3, File 287, Page 3).

The German physicians also examined V.I. Lenin. In this connection, M.I. Ulyanova recalled: “The professors Förster and Klemperer, who were soon summoned from abroad, found, just like the Russian physicians, nothing in Vladimir Ilyich except severe overexertion. They noted ‘excitability and weakness of the nervous system, manifesting as headaches, insomnia, mild physical and mental fatigue, and a tendency toward hypochondriacal moods….’ Förster and Klemperer prescribed for Vladimir Ilyich a prolonged period of rest—about three months—away from Moscow, a temporary withdrawal from all official duties” (Izvestia of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 1991, No. 2, p. 132).