Letter to V. A. Smolyaninov and CLD Members, August 5, 1921

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These documents were written in connection with the report of July 20, 1921, from S. I. Liberman, an expert of the Concessions Committee under the State Planning Commission, proposing that the administration of the Archangel forest district be transferred to a group of forestry specialists, who were to operate with the rights of a state establishment while retaining some freedom commercially.

On August 17, 1921, the CLD adopted a decision on the administrative organs for the timber industry of the Severo-Belomorsky District, under which a special body—Severoles—was set up within the system of the Chief Timber Committee.

Urgent

Comrade Smolyaninov

Please read my letter on the back of this and get it through the CLD (with a Gosplan opinion) with the utmost speed, in two to four days.

5/8.

Lenin

N.B.:

To get it through fast do the following:

1) Make 2–3 copies. Send one right away to Krzhizhanovsky, asking him for an opinion by Tuesday;

2) Circulate to CLD members at once, and see to it that they read it fast, making their remarks on their copies right away;

3) Ask the CLD members by telephone whether they agree to hand in the preliminary project to a commission— Krasin + Avanesov + Bogdanov (or someone specially authorised by him).

Lenin

I consider the plan correct and subject to immediate approval. Perhaps it may be desirable to have some further specifications and additions, such as:

1) let them have the circulating capital in gold, but only from our export earnings for 1921, charging the group in question to expedite the realisation of this export;

2) specify with greater precision the “leased” area for the given group, taking mostly, or even exclusively, the very far north (this is more convenient for us, because it will spare us the need to send food over there; it is more convenient politically, because the preferential terms for the workers—up to 50 kopeks in gold!!—will cause less envy and fewer collisions among the other workers);

3) give more precise definitions of the group’s obligations: fulfil no less than a given programme (both in production and in export in 1922 and especially 1923);

4) bind the “group” to try to abide by the interests of electrification (buy more foreign equipment for the electric-power stations, make use of saw-dust, etc.)—the interests of Russia’s fuel supply (fuel branch-lines; increased supplies of fuel and firewood to Moscow, etc.);

5) let the group have what it asks in the sphere of financial and material independence.

5/VIII. 1921.

Lenin