Lenin- Letter to the Emir of Afghanistan Amanullah Khan

3rd Anglo -Afghan war 1919

Letter to the Emir of Afghanistan Amanullah Khan

November 27, 1919

To His Majesty the Emir of Afghanistan

Having received your Majesty's highly valuable letter through your Ambassador Extraordinary, Honorable Mohammed Wali Khan, I hasten to thank you for your greeting and for your initiative to establish friendship between the great peoples of Russia and Afghanistan.

From the first days of the glorious struggle of the Afghan people for their independence, the Workers 'and Peasants' Government of Russia did not hesitate to recognize the new order of things in Afghanistan, solemnly recognize its full independence and sent its embassy to create a permanent and unrelenting connection between Moscow and Kabul. At present, flourishing Afghanistan is the only independent Muslim state in the world and fate sends the Afghan people a great historical task to unite all the enslaved Muslim peoples around them and lead them on the path of freedom and independence.

The Workers 'and Peasants' Government of Russia instructs its embassy in Afghanistan to enter into negotiations with the government of the Afghan people to conclude trade and other friendly agreements, the purpose of which is not only to strengthen good neighborly relations for the greater benefit of both peoples, but also to fight together with Afghanistan the most rapacious imperialist government in the world, Great Britain, whose intrigues, as you rightly point out in your letter, have hindered the peaceful and free development of the Afghan people and alienated them from their closest neighbors.  

From conversations with your Ambassador Extraordinary, Honorable Mohammed Wali Khan, I learned that you are ready to start negotiations on friendly agreements in Kabul, as well as the desire of the Afghan people to receive military assistance from the Russian people against England. The workers 'and peasants' government is inclined to provide the Afghan people with this assistance on the widest scale and, moreover, to restore justice trampled upon by the former governments of the Russian tsars. We have proposed to your ambassador and ordered our Turkestan authorities to form a mixed commission to rectify the Russian-Afghan border, in the sense of expanding Afghan territory, based on law, justice and the free will of the peoples inhabiting the border areas. We hope that this commission, with your approval, will immediately begin work,

Our government, at the request of your ambassador, communicated by radio with the governments of Russia's neighboring states in order to ensure the further passage of the Afghan embassy to Europe and America, but, unfortunately, the intrigues of the same interested state, which you mention in your highly valuable letter, did not made it possible for Your Highness to carry out this plan, and your embassy is forced to choose a different path. Letting go of him with all the good wishes of the Russian people, I, on behalf of the Workers 'and Peasants' Government, bear my heartfelt greetings to you and the entire Afghan people.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. Ulyanov (Lenin).

November 27, 1919

Kremlin, Moscow.

Published in part - "Pravda", No. 100, April 29, 1928

Fund 2, op. 1, d. 11873, l. 5-6 - copy in Russian.

1 V.I.Lenin presented his letter on November 27, 1919, to the Afghan emergency mission headed by Ambassador Mohammed Wali Khan before her departure to her homeland.

Together with a copy of Lenin's letter in the RCKHIDNI, there is a translation of the emir's letter marked by VI Lenin: "Secret in the archive" (f. 2, op. 1, d. 11873, l. 7).