word of rudeness. The business of the party and of Ilyich are not less dear to me than to Stalin. I need at present the maximum of self-control. What one can and what one cannot discuss with Ilyich I know better than any doctor, because I know what makes him nervous and what does not, in any case I know better than Stalin. I am turning to you and to Grigory [E. Zinoviev] as much closer comrades of V. I. and I beg you to protect me from rude interference with my private life and from vile invectives and threats. I have no doubt as to what will be the unanimous decision of the Control Commission, with which Stalin sees fit to threaten me; however, I have neither the strength nor the time to waste on this foolish quarrel. And I am a living person and my nerves are strained to the utmost.
Nadezhda Konstantinovna wrote this letter on December 23, 1922. After two and a half months, in March 1923, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin sent Stalin the following letter[1]:
"To Comrade Stalin:
"Copies for: Kamenev and Zinoviev.
"Dear Comrade Stalin!
"You permitted yourself a rude summons of my wife to the telephone and a rude reprimand of her. Despite the fact that she told you that she agreed to forget what was said, nevertheless Zinoviev and Kamenev heard about it from
- ↑ The existence of this letter was known from Trotsky's memoirs, but the full text has never previously been available. Trotsky knew only, since Krupskaya had told Kamenev, that on March 5 Lenin "dictated to a stenographer a letter to Stalin breaking off all relations" (Trotsky's memoirs, Russian edition, vol. 2, p. 223). This was the final stage in the struggle described in Note 2.
The problem which particularly troubled Lenin at that time was the situation in Georgia, where a struggle was in progress between a group of old Georgian Bolsheviks led by Budu Mdivani, F. Makharadze and others, on the one hand, and Stalin, whose policy was being pushed by Sergo Ordzhonikidze, on the other. The first group sought a broadening of the national rights of the Georgian Republic within the framework of the USSR; the second aimed at restricting Georgia's national autonomy. Lenin carefully followed developments in Georgia, wrote several articles on the nationalities problem (which have not yet been published in the Soviet Union, although they were published abroad as early as 1923 in the Socialist Courier ), and sided completely with Mdivani, Makharadze et aL At the beginning of March 1923, events in Georgia entered a decisive stage: A meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the Transcaucasian Federation was scheduled there for March 15, and on March 12 there was to be a conference of the Georgian Communist party, to which Leo Kamenev, at that time Stalin's ally, traveled from Moscow. The old Georgian Bolsheviks were besieged within the Party; Ordzhonikidze even resorted to personal physical violence against opponents.
The importance of these events in Georgia was all the greater because they formed part of the preparations for the coming Congress of the Communist
