Letter to Alexander Tsiurupa, February 20, 1922

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A PROGRAMME FOR WORK ON NEW LINES

First published in 1928 in Lenin Miscellany VIII

Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 35, pages 535-542.

Comrade Tsyurupa,

More on the subject of work on new lines.

I will try to formulate its programme in this way:

(1) the CPC and the CLD to be made ten times more compact, in the sense that the People’s Commissars should not dare to bring trivial matters before them, but should decide them themselves and answer for them themselves;

(2) the staff of the Managing Department of the CPC (at present three-quarters idle) should be made responsible for this, for putting this into effect;

(3) the same applies to the Narrow Council of People’s Commissars, plus its especial reduction in size;

(4) some of the members of the Narrow Council and its staff, and also the staff of the Managing Department of the CPC, to be taken by you under your personal command in order to check up on effective fulfilment (you instruct so-and-so: take a journey down there, look, read, check up, you will answer for any bungling through gullibility).

(5) You (and Rykov) must devote first and foremost one hour, or if your health permits, two, every day, to personal checking-up on the work: you summon to your office (or visit) not grandees, but members of Collegiums and lower, practical workers of the People’s Commissariat of X, Y, Z—and check up on their work, get down to rock-bottom, school them, teach them, give them a proper trouncing. Study people, search for able workers. This is now the essence; all orders and decisions without this are dirty bits of paper.

Reply to me. We shall think it over, consult with members of the Central Committee, and as rapidly as possible fix such a (or some other) programme.

Yours,

Lenin

P.S. But Bryukhanov is not suitable. Someone else must be found. For the time being you had better set up a “trio” there, something pretty strong.

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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, page 478.

Comrade Tsyurupa:

I should like to draw your attention especially to my letter to Sokolnikov on trade, the State Bank and the State Bank’s Trade Department.

The crucial thing is trade and its control by the State Bank.

It looks as though the State Bank’s Trade Department has nothing to do with “commerce”, and is just as sh..... bureaucratic as everything else in the R.S.F.S.R. I believe that we should concentrate all our efforts on this

and secure the introduction of commission fees, verification by practice, and the expulsion from the State Bank’s Trade Department of everything that is .flabby, everything that is not commercial, everything that is unable to secure success in trade.

We do not need a “department for internal trade” (we have enough of such sh.. as departments), but one or two dozen men at the State Bank who know how to trade (and teach others to do so). This is crucial, without this the monetary system cannot be put straight.

With communist greetings,

Lenin