To the authorized representative of the NCPT:
in Siberia – Novo-Nikolayevsk, in the South-East – Rostov-on-Don,
in the North – Arkhangelsk, in Petrozavodsk, in Novorossiysk,
in the Crimea – Sevastopol, in Byelorussia – Minsk, in Vitebsk,
in Baku, in Murmansk, in Tashkent
Copy to Economic Conferences

According to a report from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade, authorized representatives of the NCPT, under pressure from the Economic Conferences, are selling off export goods that constitute the state counter-currency fund.

Arkhangelsk, Rostov-on-Don, Novorossiysk, Novo-Nikolayevsk, Sevastopol, Minsk, Baku have sold part of the state fund, with the sale being effected at a loss, and the currency fetched is being spent not on industrial equipment, but on personal consumer goods. Such actions of squandering the state export fund, given our meager material resources, constitute a state crime. I propose to cease this kind of trading and to carry out trade operations involving the sale of export goods only with special permission and instructions from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade, signed by the Deputy People’s Commissar or by Comrade Rykunov, who is in charge of exports. I propose that the Economic Conferences and the authorized representatives of the NCPT make an accurate inventory of the goods on hand, suitable for export, but not yet transferred to the NCPT, and secure them for

ATTACHMENTS

the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade, and, after they have been earmarked for export by the Commission for Utilization of the C.L.D., transfer them to the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade.

Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Lenin

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Written November 29, 1921.

First published in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XXIII.

Printed from the typewritten text signed by V. I. Lenin.