Letter to Georgy Chicherin and Lev Karakhan, March 7, 1921

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The document was written on a report by A. G. Goikhbarg, Deputy Chairman of the Narrow CPC, about breaches by the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the CPC decision of November 30, 1920, concerning the work of the commission on the question of the looses inflicted on Soviet Russia by the imperialist war, the armed intervention of the Entente and the blockade. The CPC decision put the duty on the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs and the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade to place at the commission’s disposal all the available material on this question. But in a letter to Lenin on March 5, 1921 (which Lenin passed to Goikhbarg the same day), Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs L. M. Karakhan said that the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs was also working on the question of the losses and requested that the material should be handed over to a commission of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.

On April 14, 1921, the Narrow CPC examined the question of the P.C.F.A.’s violation of the CPC decision and took into consideration Karakhan’s statement that the P.C.F.A. had stopped working on the question of the losses.

Comrades Chicherin and Karakhan

Please let me know your opinion and return both documents to = me. I draw the attention of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to the fact that its circumvention of the CPC decision (through a “parallel” apparatus or commission under another name or pretext) is absolutely intolerable. I have the suspicion that the P.C.F.A. is actually circumventing the CPC decision. This is a warning. I request a most precise opinion, without evasions or suppression of the facts.

7/III. Lenin