Letter to Nikolai Gorbunov, January 29, 1922

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This is written on a telephone message from Y. V. Lomonosov to Lenin on January 28, 1922 (see Note 550).

On February 3, 1922, Chairman of the State Planning Commission, G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, submitted a detailed memo giving Lenin a progress report on implementing the CLD decision of January 1, 1922, concerning diesel locomotives (see Note 500).

He believed that it was necessary, along with building diesel locomotives to Russian blueprints, to announce an international competition. He wrote that the work was being carried on in two directions: the drafting of the terms of the international competition and the “working out of outline blueprints of diesel locomotives for their subsequent construction through the allocation of orders to factories” (Central Party Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CPSU Central Committee).

On March 10, 1922, the CLD approved the terms of the competition for the construction of diesel locomotives for the RSFSR, which had been worked out by the State Planning Commission together with the Thermal Technical Institute and the People’s Commissariat for Railways, and set March 1, 1924, as the date of the competition (see this volume, Documents 568 and 611).

Comrade Gorbunov:

Either you or Smolyaninov must keep this matter under special supervision. This is very important. Make a file of everything relevant (the CLD bonus decision, etc.). Have a talk with Lomonosov. He and Krzhizhanovsky and others will hold a meeting at Gosplan on Wednesday. The minutes must be in your hands. Let me know the result. I have read this to Krzhizhanovsky. He says that the competition and Lomonosov’s plan do not exclude each other.

29/I. Lenin

P.S. I believe Styunkel has some material about this. Someone should be collecting all the scientific literature on this question.