Written: Written in the autumn of 1920
Published:
First published in 1929 in the journal Proletarskaya Revolutsia No. 11 (94).
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
page 529.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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The main principle of administration, in the spirit of all the decisions of the R.C.P. and the central Soviet institutions, is the following:
—a definite person is fully responsible for some specified work.
I have been doing something (for such-and-such a time), and I am responsible for it. I am hindered by X, who is not the responsible person, who is not in charge.
This means squabbling. This means chaos. This means interference by a person unsuitable for responsible work. I demand his removal.
[1] A. I. Yelizarova tells the following: “This was in the autumn of 1920. Since that January, my department, under a decision of the Council of People’s Commissars, had been transferred from the People’s Commissariat for Social Security to the People’s Commissariat for Education. I hesitated to move with it at once: I was afraid that I would not be able to work with the People’s Commissariat for Education—because of the differences on some points—especially after the sudden appointment as my deputy of a total stranger from the Commissariat for Education in place of one of my associates. Vladimir Ilyich suggested that I give it a try, and if things didn’t work out and I failed to establish a working arrangement with this person, then I could make an effort to get another deputy. In fact things did not work out....” = She informed Lenin of this and he handed her the note at a sitting of the Council of People’s Commissars (A. I. Yelizarova, “A Page from Reminiscences about Vladimir Ilyich in the Council of People’s Commissars”. = Vospominaniya o V. I. Lenine. Ch. 2 [ Reminiscences of Lenin. Part Two], 1957, pp. 293–94).
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