557. TELEGRAM TO MAXIM GORKY[1]
Gorky
Petrograd
In reply to your letter of 5/III, I quote the text of the telegram which the People’s Commissariat for Food sent to Badayev: “Pending final settlement by a special commission of the Council of People’s Commissars of the question of improving the position of scientists, you are instructed to continue supplies according to the plan previously adopted by you, i.e., without making a reduction in keeping with recent orders of the People’s Commissariat for Food.” Pokrovsky’s commission is appealing against the Petrograd list as being unfair. Sapozhnikov was released on 9/III. Manukhin has to present to Semashko, People’s Commissar for Health, a description of the method of the proposed research, on the results of the examination of which the decision depends.
Lenin
Chairman, Council of People’s Commissars
Notes
[1] In a letter dated March 5,1920, Maxim Gorky asked Lenin to keep the 1,800 rations for Petrograd scientists intact, to release from prison as soon as possible the well-known chemist A. V. Sapozhnikov, and to enable the physician I. I. Manukhin to carry out research on a vaccine against typhus (see V. I. Lenin i A. M. Gorky. Pisma, vospominaniya, dokumenty, Moscow, 1961, pp. 146–47).