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Special pages :
Letter to Grigori Sokolnikov, February 1, 1922
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 35, page 546.
Top secret
Comrade Sokolnikov
Copy to Comrade Tsyurupa and Comrade Krzhizhanovsky
You said to me that some of our trusts may, in the immediate future, find themselves without any money and ask us in an ultimatum to nationalise them. I think that trusts and factories have been founded on a self-supporting basis precisely in order that they themselves should be responsible and, moreover, fully responsible, for their enterprises working without a deficit. If it turns out that they have not achieved this, then, in my opinion, they must be prosecuted and punished, as regards all the members of their boards of management, by prolonged terms of imprisonment ( perhaps applying conditional release after a certain time), confiscation of all their property, etc.
If, after setting up trusts and enterprises on a self– supporting basis, we do not prove able by business-like, mercantile methods fully to protect our interests, we shall turn out to be complete idiots.
The Supreme Economic Council must watch over this, but still more the People’s Commissariat of Finance through the Stale Bank and through special inspectors, since it is precisely the People’s Commissariat of Finance which, not being directly interested, is obliged to establish effective and real control and supervision.
Lenin