May 11, 1922

348
LENIN COLLECTED WORKS
9868

FROM A LETTER TO THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSARIAT OF POSTS AND TELEGRAPH
May 11, 1922

Comrade Dovgalevsky, I read in *Izvestiya* today a report that the Nizhny Novgorod Soviet has submitted a petition to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee requesting that the Nizhny Novgorod Radio Laboratory be awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and that Professors Bonch-Bruyevich and Vologdin be inscribed on the honor roll.

I request your assessment. For my part, I would consider it necessary to support this petition.

Incidentally, in connection with your letter to me, I request that you inform me whether you are fully satisfied with the work of the Nizhny Novgorod Radio Laboratory; and also send me, if possible, the briefest assessment from Bonch-Bruyevich concerning how his work is progressing on the manufacture of loudspeakers capable of transmitting to the broad masses what is communicated by wireless telephone. This work is of exceptional importance for us inasmuch as its success, which Bonch-Bruyevich has long promised, would bring enormous benefit to agitation and propaganda.

Therefore it is necessary to make certain sacrifices to support this work. In particular, I have heard that in America similar work has already led to successful practical results.

It would be necessary to check whether we have at the disposal of the Nizhny Novgorod Radio Laboratory all the latest American literature on this question.

I request your assessment as soon as possible, so that I might, if necessary, sign one or another communication or petition at the session of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee opening tomorrow.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars
V. Ulyanov (Lenin)

9861
TELEPHONE MESSAGE TO THE SUPREME TRIBUNAL
TO COMRADE ROZMIROVITCH*
May 13, 1922

In response to your communication no. 96/sec. of May 8** I report:

I do not remember. It may be possible to verify this: 1) through the newspapers of that time, 2) through the Committee of that district or that factory about which you are asking, 3) through the agitators and propagandists who were performing in Moscow then, since I almost always ran into someone from among them.

Lenin

9868
FROM A LETTER TO THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSAR OF ENLIGHTENMENT
May 17, 1922

I receive a number of reports that the high price of books, given our "enthusiasms" and exaggerations of the NEP, deprives the people of useful books.

It seems to me necessary to establish some rule or enact a law of approximately the following kind: with regard to local taxes, fix certain sums which must be remitted to the center for the constitution of a fund, at the expense of which several thousand copies (let us say, Skvortsov: *Electrification* and the like) are purchased for distribution to all district libraries.

I request that you discuss this and report to me your conclusions.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars
V. Ulyanov (Lenin)

* Dictated by V. I. Lenin by telephone. Printed from a typewritten copy.

** The Supreme Tribunal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in connection with preparations for a judicial trial against the Socialist-Revolutionaries, asked V. I. Lenin to report whether he had spoken on the day of the attempt on his life by the Socialist-Revolutionary Kaplan on August 30, 1918, at a meeting in the Grain Exchange (Basmanny District)—before speaking at a meeting at the [former] Mikhelson factory.