Telephone Message to Lev Kamenev, July 17, 1920

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Kamenev

1. The utmost attention must be paid to collecting English writings showing that trade agreements with the Soviet Republics arc more advantageous to the British bourgeoisie than unprofitable and even ruinous attempts to crush them. It is necessary to collect such writings for us, and besides this, to discuss with knowledgeable people whether in addition it would not be expedient to employ some kind of literary bureau or agency for the publication of such pamphlets, for giving lectures, and for their distribution, etc. You, of course, know whom one should consult in the first place about this.

2. It is necessary to organise through special people the regular collection, purchase, without stinting money, and dispatch to us in 5 copies, of books, articles, pamphlets, newspaper cuttings, particularly in English, but also in other languages, on questions of modern economics. As an example, Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace. This is the sort of publication that should be collected systematically.

3. Do the same, but only through special people, for the collection and dispatch to us in 20 copies of periodical publications of all kinds, and especially pamphlets and minutes of the following four trends: 1—communist, 2— Centrist (for example, the Independent Labour Party in Britain), 3—anarchist or near to it, 4—syndicalist, etc.

4. All this should be properly organised by a legal agreement, through someone who must be a British subject and not a Communist.

5. Please send me personally: 1—good recent reference books and summary statistical publications, geographical, political and economic, particularly in English and French, which are more easily obtainable in London, and 2—two good thermos flasks.

Lenin