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To:   THE C.C. SECRETARIAT

Comrade Stalin:

I am sending on to you a letter from Comrade Shklovsky (G. L. Shklovsky). I knew him very well while abroad
(1908–1914), where he emigrated being already a Bolshevik
and a Party member. He wants to work in Russia and in the
Party. He used to work in Moscow—in the city administration (Vladimirsky saw him on the job), and at the
People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs and at the People’s
Commissariat for Agriculture; it seems he quite “hit it
off” only with the People’s Commissariat for Foreign
Affairs, where he was valued. In the other places he was either
not in tune or not in full tune, or something of that sort,
for it turned out that it was impossible for him to arrange
for work in Russia. Shklovsky is a veteran Party man, and
he is extremely upset (as his letter shows) that he is “not
being allowed” to work in Russia. He is nervous, he has
fears that he is being “put off”, etc. (He has a family and
children; it is not easy to adapt oneself to cold and starving Russia. Both Zinoviev and Safarov and all those
who were in Switzerland in 1908–1917 knew Shklovsky abroad.)

Please write yourself or have your secretary write to
Shklovsky (through Krestinsky in Berlin), asking him what
he would like, and then raise the question in the
Secretariat. People should not be “squandered”, he should be
given the closest attention. [1]

With communist greetings, Lenin