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Special pages :
Letter to Ludwig Martens, August 2, 1921
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1976, Moscow, Volume 45, pages 236c-237a.
Martens
I have received a telegram from Riga about the congress of societies in the United States and Canada for technical aid to Soviet Russia, which Golos Rossii?[1] of New York says was held there early in July.[2]
According to this report, the congress sent a telegram of greetings to Martens and the Peopleâs Commissars, and announced in this telegram its decision to start organising technical teams for dispatch to Soviet Russia right away.
I think I should send them a telegram on these lines:
âHaving learned from the New York Golos Rossii about your congress and its telegram of greetings to Soviet Russia, I express, on behalf of the CPC, our heart-felt gratitude.
âLet me add, on my own behalf: we are greatly in need of technical aid from the United States and Canada. If teams are to be sent without agreement in advance concerning the place of settlement, factory, etc., the team must have a two-year supply of food, clothing, etc. Each team must be prepared to do both agricultural and industrial work. The best thing is to have delegates sent ahead for an on-the-spot inspection of land tracts for settlement, forest tracts, mines, factories, etc., for lease.â
Lenin
Chairman, CPC
This requires the signatures of Martens and the Peopleâs Commissariat for Labour, and Bogdanovâs and Chicherinâs are also desirable.
- â A reference to Russky Golos, a progressive daily published in Russian by the Russo-American publishing company in New York since 1917.
- â The Society for Technical Aid to Soviet Russia was organised in May 1919 by Russian Ă©migrĂ©s in New York. Similar societies were set up elsewhere in the U.S.A. and Canada. The aim of the Society was to promote the rehabilitation of the Soviet economy by sending skilled workers and technicians.
The first congress of the societies for technical aid to Soviet Russia was hold in New York from July 2 to 4, 1921; it united local societies in several American and Canadian cities into a single Society for Technical Aid to Soviet Russia. From the end of 1921 to October 1922, the Society sent to Soviet Russia seven agricultural, two construction and one mining communes and a number of groups which brought with them equipment, seeds and foodstuffs worth nearly $500,000. The Society was extending its activity, and by 1923 it had more than 75 branches with over 20,000 members. Its second congress in June 1923 adopted a decision to intensify its work of organising and sending in communes and preparatory groups of skilled workers to Russia. The Society continued its active economic aid until 1925.
Lenin regarded this activity as a striking expression of proletarian internationalism and fraternal solidarity of the working people.