Letter to the Organising Bureau of the CC, RCP(b), August 24, 1920

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Author(s) Lenin
Written 24 August 1920


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First published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 51. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1975, Moscow, Volume 44, page 423b
Keywords : Central Committee, Letter, Nikolay Krestinsky, Orgburo, CPSU

Krestinsky

for the Orgbureau

I agree with Krestinsky that Preobrazhensky “didn’t make a success of it”.

It should be more detailed, more agitational, with more feeling—and clearer and more business-like.

Let Zinoviev write it (he will be here tomorrow, 25/8), and the Orgbureau will correct it.[1]

Lenin

  1. ↑ This refers to the circular letter of the CC, RCP(b) drafted by Y. A. Preobrazhensky on the basis of his report dealing with signs of demoralisation in the Party. Commenting on this draft, Krestinsky wrote: “I consider that the reservation contained at the end of point V, which speaks of eliminating inequality in living conditions, ‘in so far as they are not due to the requirements of the work’, should be elaborated as a separate point or, perhaps, even as a separate section of the circular.
    “The point is that the living conditions of gubernia Party and Soviet officials are very hard, especially now that we are carrying out transfers on a mass scale and tearing most comrades away from the places where they had all kinds of family connections and links with the countryside.
    “The comrades are suffering hunger, and since, in addition, they are overworked, they very soon become exhausted and put out of action for a long time or permanently. It is essential to get the mass of Party members to recognise the need of establishing somewhat better, less famished conditions of life for the small number of active revolutionary cadres.
    “If the above idea is sufficiently emphasised and elaborated in the circular, the last two lines of the draft, which very cautiously and not very intelligibly condemn demagogy on the grounds of inequality, will become superfluous.
    “In the discussion in the commission, Comrade Preobrazhensky did not deny the need to include in the circular the idea of a certain inevitable temporary inequality, but he somehow failed to make his point.” (Collected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 51, p. 449.)
    The Orgbureau’s text of the letter from the CC, RCP(b), “To All Party Organisations, to All Party Members”, signed by Krestinsky, was sent to Lenin for approval. On this letter Lenin wrote that he agreed with the text and proposed the insertion in the letter of “a quotation from the Party programme to the effect that for the present there cannot be equality”. This refers to clause 8 of the economic section of the programme. See KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh i resheniyakh syezdov, conferentsii t plenumov TsK (C.P.S.U. in Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and Plenary Meetings of Its Central Committee), Part I, 1954, p. 423.
    The circular letter of the CC, RCP(b) was published on September 4, 1920, in Izvestia of the CC, RCP(b) No. 21.
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