204. To V. M. MOLOTOV
Comrade Molotov:
1) About Paikes, please circulate all the members of the
Orgbureau and the Politbureau.
See Paikes personally for 15 minutes. I think he would
do well for top supply work (not for the University).
If he will not do here, perhaps we could let I. N.
Smirnov in Siberia have him in exchange for someone?
2) I don’t know M. Z. Manuilsky. I abstain. I suggest you ask the people at Ivanovo-Voznesensk, and inquire from the People’s Commissars.
3) The question of farming out the port of Petrograd as
a concession has been decided in the C.P.C. (without
me) only in principle and has been referred to a
commission.[1] Both Chicherin and Dzerzhinsky have to fight
it out in the commission.
Write them (and Zinoviev) about it.
From the commission this will go once again to the C.P.C., This means it is early to take it to the Politbureau: Chicherin and Dzerzhinsky are displaying haste for small reason, without seriously going into the matter in the usual, Soviet administrative manner.
With communist greetings,
Lenin
Notes
[1] On May 7, 1921, L. B. Krasin sent Lenin a letter soiling out a British bank’s proposal for a concession agreement to set up a free port in Petrograd. On Krasin’s letter Lenin wrote: “Put on C.L.D. agenda for Wednesday, 11/V (appoint commission). 8/V. Lenin” (Central Party Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee). On May 11, the C.L.D. decided to set up a commission consisting of representatives from the S.E.C., the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade, and the People’s Commissariat for Railways, to examine the question raised by Krasin. This question was repeatedly discussed by the Narrow C.P.C. and the C.L.D., but the proposal for a concession agreement was not accepted.