I extend my greetings to the assembly of Centrosouz delegates on behalf of the Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee of the RCP. I deeply regret that I am unable to attend the meeting in person and to address the most complex challenges now facing the cooperative movement.
I have no doubt that the exchange of experience gained from work already accomplished will help resolve these challenges in a spirit of coordination with the country’s overall economic development plan. The success of the forthcoming practical work will depend, to a large extent, on the proper determination within the sphere of commodity circulation of the balance between urban industry and agriculture—on the cooperative movement’s ability, through consistent and unwavering struggle, to remove all obstacles to the expansion of commodity exchange and to secure a leading position in this field; and on its capacity to gather scattered commodity resources and to give new life to emerging ones. The practical resolution of these questions is the best means of ultimately achieving our goals: the restoration of agriculture and the consolidation and development of large-scale industry on its foundation.
These tasks are rendered exceedingly complicated by the crop failure that has taken shape in several gubernias. The assembly will need to devote special attention in its work to the newly looming disaster and to bear its consequences in mind when addressing all current issues.

GREETING TO THE CONGRESS OF CENTROSOUZ DELEGATES
I am confident that, however brief the experience of operating under new conditions may be, Soviet cooperatives will succeed in forging close ties with the broader effort to overcome devastation and in harnessing maximum energy in the struggle against it.
Written on July 16, 1921.
Printed on July 17, 1921, in the newspaper “Izvestia VTsIK,” No. 155,
and on July 19, 1921, in the newspaper “Pravda,” No. 156.

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “Pravda.”