352. To G. V. CHICHERIN[1]
This Skobelev should be “cut down to size”. Noulens’s appointment is a piece of impudence.
1/IX.
Lenin
Notes
[1] Written on a telegram from J. A. Berzin addressed to G. V. Chicherin, saying that M. I. Skobelev, who had started negotiations with the French Government as a representative of the All-Russia Famine Relief Committee, was requesting powers from the Soviet Government as well.
Below is the reference to the appointment of Joseph Noulens, one-time French Ambassador to Russia (1917–18), one of the organisers of counter-revolutionary plots against the Soviet power and of foreign armed intervention, to the Chairmanship of the International Relief Commission. The commission (Britain, France, Italy and Belgium) was set up by a decision of the Allied Supreme Council and was in fact, a cover for implementing anti-Soviet plans.