This publication of the letters of G.V.Chicherin, the People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, to V.I.Lenin, the chair of the Council of People’s Commissars, sheds light on the mechanism according to which the early Soviet republic constructed its foreign policy. More generally, it also illuminates how the broader political system functioned in Soviet society during its formative period amid civil war and foreign intervention.

This publication of the 1918 correspondence and 1932 memoirs of V.Pukka, a representative of the Council of the People’s Plenipotentiaries (the revolutionary Red Finnish government), details one small aspect of V.I.Lenin’s military-political plan for 1918: the creation of monetary resources for the future communist party of Finland.

This introduction and document publication reveals an unknown episode in the biography of D.B.Riazanov after his arrest in February 1931—his letters to the journal "Bolshevik" and the Central Committee Politburo regarding the publication of a letter of Marx to his daughter in 1881. The publication of Riazanov's two letters from 11 and 12 April 1931 and E.L.Gurevich's letter shed light on the history of the formation of the archival collections of the Marx Engels Institute, and in particular the history of the text of Marx's letter. The letters of V.V.Adoratskii published here from 29 March and 2 June 1931 uncover the political meaning of the Marx letters that Riazanov had "hidden", as well as the motives behind the removal of Riazanov from the post of Marx Engels Institute rector.