Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

161

To: D. I. KURSKY

Written: Written on May 12, 1921
Published: First published In 1942 in Lenin Miscellany XXXIV. Printed from, a typewritten copy signed by Lenin.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 45, page 144^a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.

Top secret

Comrade Kursky, People’s Commissariat for Justice

A petition No. 8086, dated 10.V.1921, enclosed in copy, has been received at the C.L.D. from the representative extraordinary for the supply of the Red Army and Navy, revealing strictly confidential information on the numerical strength of the Army. With a better choice of wording, the petition could have avoided giving information on the numerical strength of the Army. Besides, the correspondence did not arrive in a secret envelope or by messenger but was sent by post. As a result it was opened at the inregister of the managing department, and could have been made public in transit through the post.

Please conduct an inquiry.^[1]

V. Ulyanov (Lenin)
Chairman, Council of People’s Commissars

Notes

[1] On May 19, 1921, P. A. Krasikov, a member of the Collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Justice, who had been conducting an inquiry into the case on D. I. Kursky’s instructions, proposed that a reprimand (with publication in the press) should be issued to N. B. Eismont, Deputy Chairman of Chusosnabarm (see Note 678), that Comrade Angert, who was at the special disposal of Chusosnabarm and who was directly to blame for dispatching the letter to the C.L.D., containing the secret information, without taking the necessary precautions, should be dismissed, and that a disciplinary penalty should be applied to the secretary who had sent out the letter to the C.L.D.