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Special pages :
Letter to Georgy Chicherin on the RCP(b) CC Directives for the Soviet Delegation at the Genoa Conference, February 7, 1922
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 45, pages 463-464a.
7/II.
Comrade Chicherin:
All your numerous assumptions are, I think, basically incorrect and spring, so to say, from polemical ardour.[1]
The directives do not say that we should not agree to cover in any form whatsoever any random claims of the adversary with our own counter-claims.
The chairman of the delegation (and the deputy chairman, in this case) seems to have a host of powers, which gives him almost autocratic power.
Your letter (and Krasinâs even more so) showsârather showedâsigns of panic. That is the most dangerous thing. We are not the least bit afraid of a break-down: we shall have an even better conference tomorrow. Isolation and blockade will no longer intimidate us, nor will intervention.
We are proposing a broad agenda, and are hinting at our own âpalliativeâ programme of general measures.
Suppose they reject it?
As they please! (we might publish our extensive programme on behalf of some member of the delegation, who may even resign (with the CCâs consen, of course).
You do not want an extensive one, letâs have a narrower one: Wir nehmen auch Abschlagszahlung![2]
We shall accept even the narrowest one, but we shall not accept anything disadvantageous. We shall not submit to ultimatums. If you want only âto tradeââletâs have it, but we shall not buy a pig in a poke, and will not make any deal without calculating any âclaimsâ to the last kopek.
That is all.
We must prepare and deploy all our gunsâthere will always be time enough to decide which are to he used as a show, and which are to be fired off and when.
With communist greetings,
Lenin