Written: Written on April 27, 1922
Published:
First published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 54.
Printed from a typewritten copy.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1976,
Moscow,
Volume 45,
page 535.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
You may freely copy, distribute,
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Archive” as your source.
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
[1] The following day, April 28, 1922, C.P.C. secretary Natalya Lepeshinskaya wrote under the text of Lenin’s letter: “Sent to Comrade Shklovsky a letter signed by Stalin, inquiring what kind of work he would like to do, and saying that the C.C. would always meet his wishes in this respect.”
The register of Lenin’s outgoing documents contains the following secretarial entry under the head “Execution”: “Replied 17.V.22. Shklovsky is satisfied with Stalin’s offer.”
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