Letter to Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, December, 1920

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G. M.,

The following idea has come into my head.

There must be propaganda for electricity. How? Not, only in words but by example.

What does this mean? The most important thing is to make it popular. For this we have, here and now, to work out a plan for lighting up every house in the RSFSR by electricity.

This is a long-term affair, because neither 20,000,000 (-40,000,000?) bulbs, nor wire, etc., shall we have for a long time.

But all the same a plan is needed now, if only to cover a number of years.

That comes first.

And secondly, we must work out right away a shorter plan, and then thirdly—and this is most important—we must be able to arouse both competition and initiative among the masses, so that they set about the job straightaway.

Would it not be possible for this purpose immediately to work out such a plan (for example):

(1) All volosts (10–15 thousand) to be supplied with electric lighting in one year.

(2) All settlements (1 1/2 million, probably not more than 3/4 million) in two years.

(3) Priority for^the reading-room and the Soviet (two light bulbs).

(4) Get the poles ready at once in such-and-such a way.

(5) Prepare the insulators at once yourselves (ceramics works, I believe, are local and small affairs?). Make them in such-and-such a way.

(6) Copper for the wires? Collect it yourselves in your uyezd and volosts (a gentle hint at church bells, etc.).

(7) Organise (raining; in electricity in such-and-such a way.

Could not something of this kind be considered, worked out and decreed?

Yours,

Lenin