Written: Written on February 21, 1922
Published:
First published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 54.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1976,
Moscow,
Volume 45,
pages 479b-480a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
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21/II.
It is quite ridiculous to say that you are at fault or anything like it because of our long conversation. There are no objective symptoms in my illness (today, after an excellent night I am quite unwell), and I alone could estimate just how much strength I had. It was also ray own fault, because you had repeatedly asked me whether I was tired or not.
I would very strongly advise that you should not forget
1) to remove Radek from diplomacy without fail[1] ;
2) Lapinsky as well.
3) Over the enclosed letter from Smilga give someone (N. P. Gorbunov?) stricter instructions to get the thing actually done.[4]
4) This should be added about Myasnikov: either print the whole of my letter or meaningful and complete extracts from it (otherwise it looks vague, and no one will understand anything: perhaps Lenin wrote in favour of Myasnikov?).[5]
5) I sent A. D. Tsyurupa my opinion of his project on the Narrow C.P.C. It needs careful thought, checking up and weighing again and again.[2]
6) I contest § 8 of the Politbureau decision of 20/II. It is not right, not right at all to take Sokolnikov.[6]
7) The draft decree on Workers’ and Peasants’ inspection should be rewritten, thought out, specified, enlarged and presented as an interpretation and summary of the laws in force.[3]
P.S. We should have Pravda and Izvestia carry a dozen articles on “Milyukov merely contemplates”. Pravda of 21/II.
If this is confirmed, make sure to sack 20–40 professors.
They are fooling us.
This should be thought out, prepared and a strong blow delivered.[7]
[1] See previous document.—Ed.
[2] See present edition, Vol. 35, Document 309.—Ed.
[3] See Documents 629, 658 of this volume, and Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Edition, Vol. 54, Document 306.—Ed.
[4] In a letter from Berlin on February 12, 1922, I. T. Smilga, head of the Central Fuel Administration of the Supreme Economic Council, reported about the unsuccessful demands for remittances to Germany of funds for the Administration, as a result of which equipment for the coal and oil industries was purchased only to “an insignificant amount”. He requested the earliest remittance of the funds (Central Party Archives of the institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee).
[5] A reference to Lenin’s letter to G. I. Myasnikov of August 5, 1921 (see present edition, Vol. 32, pp. 504–09). The proposal related to a Politbureau decision on Myasnikov of February 20, 1922. Having heard the report of a commission set up by the Orgbureau of the R.C.P.(B.) Central Committee on July 29, 1921, to inquire into Myasnikov’s anti-Party activity, the Politbureau approved the commission’s proposal to expel him from the Party.
[6] A Politbureau of the R.C.P.(B.) C.C. decision of February 20, 1922, included G. Y. Sokolnikov in the R.C.P.(B.) delegation to the “international communist conference”, the first enlarged plenary meeting of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, which was held in Moscow from February 21 to March 4, 1922.
[7] The above-mentioned article reported a strike by lecturers of the Moscow Higher Technical College, who had taken their cue from the Cadet Poslednie Novosti, published by the whiteguard émigrés in Paris.
On February 24, 1922, Izvestia VTsIK carried an article “Cadets at Work” (On the Lecturers’ Strike at the Moscow Higher Technical College).
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