20. id[em] from the c[ommi]ssions  
|13|.  
21. clos[ure] of c[ommi]ssions |14|#  
22. from pers[onal] part[icipation] in commissions] |15|  
23. app[aratus] of the W[orkers’] and P[easants’] I[nspection] and the Administration] of A[ffairs] (minim[um])  
|16|.  
24. P[enal]ties — pers[onal] administrative] pen[alties] and court |17|.  

IV. Contact.  
25. Communic[ation] of copies and recording |18|.  
26. id[em] of extr[acts] from rep[orts]  
|19|.  
27. confer  
|20|.  
28. avo[id] cross[ing] |21|.  

V.  
29. Chairs in the CPC— Ts[yurupa], in the CLD Ry[kov]  
|22|.  
30. Signatures[,] tel[ephone] orders].  
31. Division] of P[eople’s] C[ommissariats] for supervi[sion] of the appar[atus] and exec[ut]ion.  

1)  
A. V. Peshekhonov (b. 1867) — statistician and publicist of the Narodnik persuasion, was a contributor to “Russkoye Bogatstvo” and one of the leaders of the Popular Socialist Party. Minister of Food in the Kerensky cabinet. In 1922 the question arose of the possibility of engaging him for work in the Central Statistical Administration. At present in emigration.  

The present document was circulated for comment to all members of the Politburo of the Central Committee and to A. D. Tsyurupa. For the comments — see the note to the following document (p. 84).  

34.  
8746/1821  

RESOLUTION ON THE WORK OF THE DEPUTIES (DEPUTY CHAIRMEN OF THE CPC AND CLD).  

I. GENERAL AND FUNDAMENTAL TASKS OF THE DEPUTIES.  
1. The fundamental work of the deputies, for which they are specially responsible and to which everything else must be subordinated, consists in verifying the actual execution of decrees, laws, and resolutions; in reducing the staffs of Soviet institutions; in supervising the regulation and simplification of office work in them; in combating bureaucracy and red tape.  
All that follows is a detailing of this fundamental task or a particular supplement to it.  
The deputies are charged with:  
2. Seeing to it that the consideration of Soviet questions in other institutions, both Soviet and Party (the Presidium of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, the Politburo and Orgburo of the Central Committee of the RCP — and so on, without any exception), takes place only with the knowledge and participation of the Deputies.  
3. Relieving the CPC and CLD to the maximum degree of petty questions, the settlement of which must take place partly (and predominantly) by way of departmental administration, partly (namely, in cases that brook no delay and are exceptionally important) by direct orders of the deputies.  
4. Careful supervision to ensure that the administrative sessions of the CLD and in particular the Little Council of People’s Commissars do not extend their work beyond absolute necessity, do not complicate their business and the tasks incumbent upon them, do not permit bureaucratic swelling and hypertrophy of their functions, but demand greater independence in work and greater responsibility from each People’s Commissar and each individual institution.  
5. Compelling People’s Commissars and individually established institutions to independent and responsible administration within the limits of the rights granted to them and the duties incumbent upon them.  

7 8  

6. Seeing to it that the responsibility, primarily of members of collegia and the most important Soviet officials, and then of all Soviet officials, is established with complete precision and individually; relentless struggle against the prevailing vagueness and lack of clarity on the question of what is entrusted to each individually, and against the complete irresponsibility resulting therefrom.  
7. Personal acquaintance with a certain number not only of higher, but without fail of middle and lower Soviet officials, by summoning them to oneself and, as far as possible, by trips to individual Moscow institutions and to the provinces, for the purpose of checking and selecting personnel, and likewise for the purpose of genuinely improving the Soviet apparatus.  
8. Placing on a combat footing those People’s Commissariats, their departments, and institutions which, over a certain period, acquire an exceptionally urgent significance, maximum assistance to them with personnel, means, personal instructions of the deputies, etc.  

II. SPECIAL QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE WORK OF THE DEPUTIES.  
9. Approximately 9/10 of their labour the deputies must devote to the economic People’s Commissariats, 1/10 to the rest.  
10. In the immediate future, financial questions have moved into first place; the greatest attention of the deputies must be devoted to them.  
11. Particularly essential is the introduction of a bonus system, the remuneration of Soviet employees, depending on the volume of turnover and the amount of profit, in the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade, in the cooperatives, and in other institutions engaged in trade.  
It is necessary to systematically organise the study and preparation of measures extending the bonus system to the entire remuneration of all Soviet employees in general.  
12. All work on the preparation of a special People’s Commissariat of Internal Trade or the attachment of this matter to the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade or the Supreme Council of National Economy should be stopped. To carry through the creation, under the CLD, of a special “Commission for Internal Trade” with a minimal secretariat attached to it and with its sole local organs: the gubernia economic conferences 1).  
13. Very important is supervision over the work of the state trusts for the purpose of separating the tolerably well-run from the majority that are run  

RESOLUTION ON THE WORK OF THE DEPUTIES  

abominably and the unswerving closure of these latter; verification of the (actual) role of Communists on the boards of state trusts; the designation of persons genuinely responsible for the conduct of business and for the successful conduct of business.  
14. It is necessary that each deputy take upon his own responsibility the setting up of one or two model departments or institutions of one or another People’s Commissariat for the elaboration of a norm for staffs, for the verification of this norm, for the establishment of the best methods of office work and supervision over it.  
The methods of work, the ways of raising its productivity, the methods of control, elaborated in these few but genuinely model institutions, must then be gradually introduced in all Soviet institutions.  
In view of the exceptional importance of this question, in view of the most stubborn resistance of the Soviet bureaucracy, which defends bureaucratic antiquities, a stubborn struggle is inevitable for the creation of a few model institutions, as a means of pulling up and checking the rest. By agreement with the corresponding institutions (the Central Committee of the Union of Soviet Employees, the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions, the Institute of Labour, etc., etc.) and under the supervision of the deputies, all the best, most recent literature, especially American and German, on the organisation of labour and administration must be translated and published.  
15. It is necessary to supervise — at least to begin with in a very few institutions — the redistribution of Communists within Soviet institutions, striving to ensure that Communists occupy exclusively such posts (both at the very top and at the very bottom of the hierarchical ladder) as allow them to genuinely verify the course of work, genuinely combat bureaucracy and red tape, genuinely achieve an immediate improvement in the situation and an easing of the lot of those unfortunate citizens who are compelled to have dealings with our utterly worthless Soviet apparatus.  
Particular attention should be paid to Communists occupying posts at the bottom of the hierarchical ladder, for they are often more important in practice than those standing at the top.  
16. The reports of the gubernia economic conferences must be properly read, firstly, by members of the State Planning Commission and workers of the Central Statistical Administration and “Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn”, so that each reader gives the briefest comments for the press or for his own institution and answers for the necessary timely indications  

8 0  

and conclusions; secondly, by a group of several dozen (not fewer) Communists, as far as possible from among those not on the staff and capable of reading the reports from a non-departmental, but only from a Communist point of view.  
The group headed by Comrade Milyutin 2) in Petrograd must be in charge of distributing the reports of the gubernia economic conferences for reading and utilising these reports in newspapers, journals, summary pamphlets, etc.  
It is necessary to struggle unswervingly for the gradual expansion of the range of reports of all kinds of economic institutions (both the gubernia economic conferences and the state trusts and “mixed societies”, etc., etc.) that must be published, for without accustoming an ever larger number of the population to using such reports in libraries, there can be no talk of any genuine transformation of a semi-Asiatic country into a cultured one and into a socialist one.  
17. The newspaper “Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn” must be transformed into a genuine organ of the CLD, into an organ of economic administration.  
Both deputies must regularly read it and struggle relentlessly against the prevailing striving of all writers and all Soviet officials to reduce this newspaper to the level of an ordinary “semi-independent”, intellectual-bourgeois organ of “opinions”, views, and squabbling, without a summary of reports, without control over the regularity of their submission, without a serious analysis of economic work in individual institutions, without serious criticism of fit and unfit institutions, persons, methods of work, etc.  
For the transformation of “Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn” into a genuine organ of economic administration, into a genuine organ of socialist construction, it will be necessary to struggle for years, but all the more necessary is an unswerving and systematic struggle.  
18. The same applies to the Central Statistical Administration. It must be not an “academic” and not an “independent” organ, which, by old bourgeois habit, it is to the extent of 9/10 at present, but an organ of socialist construction, of verification, control, and accounting of what the socialist state needs to know now, now, in the first place. The resistance of old habits here too will inevitably be very stubborn; the more stubborn must be the struggle. (I request the deputies to look through my correspondence on the indicated subject with the editor of “Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn” and the Central Statistical Administration in the summer of 1921.)  

RESOLUTION ON THE WORK OF THE DEPUTIES  

III. METHOD OF WORK OF THE DEPUTIES; THEIR APPARATUS.  
19. The deputies free themselves to the maximum degree from trifles and from superfluous meetings with People’s Commissars, members of collegia, which usually devour a mass of time and thereby deprive them of the possibility of engaging in verification of actual work.  
20. The deputies free themselves to the maximum degree from participation in commissions of various kinds.  
21. The deputies strive in every way towards the closure of existing commissions (which are 9/10 superfluous and have the property of reviving after closure very quickly under a slightly different sauce) and hinder the formation of new ones.  
22. In unavoidable cases of commission work, the deputies in every way avoid personal participation in them, confining themselves, as far as possible, to the final endorsement of their decisions or to the acceleration of the work and the direction of their decisions in the established procedure for endorsement.  
23. The apparatus of the deputies is, firstly, the personal staff of the business managers of the CPC and CLD, their assistants, and secretaries. Beyond the absolutely necessary minimum — and, moreover, only such as is fully accessible (not too large) to the personal supervision of the deputies — this apparatus must in no case be expanded. Secondly, the deputies entrust individual assignments to individual members of the L[ittle] CPC. Thirdly, the main apparatus of the deputies must be the P[eople’s] C[ommissariat] of the W[orkers’] and P[easants’] Inspection.  
The deputies personally select for themselves assistants and executors from this P[eople’s] C[ommissariat], training them for the work and checking their work, in particular striving for the expansion of the participation of non-Party workers and peasants in this work (a matter exceptionally difficult, but at the same time one without the constant development of which Soviet power is inevitably doomed to perish).  
24. The deputies must strive to apply, more often than before, the imposition of administrative penalties by their personal authority (to speed up the draft law on this subject prepared by Comrade Tsyurupa) for bureaucracy, red tape, non-fulfilment, inaccuracy, etc. In cases of more significant guilt, removal from office, committal for trial, and the staging through the People’s Commissariat of Justice of demonstrative, striking trials are necessary.  

8 2

IV. ON UNITY OF WORK OF BOTH DEPUTIES.
25. To establish full unity of work of both deputies,
they shall communicate to each other copies of the most important directives and
systematically make it a practice to have a stenographic record of those
directives, instructions, etc., which they give orally, during
personal meetings (of course, in the briefest form and only the most
important ones). The number of stenographers in the Administration of Affairs of the CPC
must be increased for this purpose to such an extent that throughout
the entire working time of the deputies, 2 stenographers are on duty.
If necessary, order a couple of the best dictaphones from
abroad.
26. The same applies to the most important reports, both written
and oral.
27. In necessary and most important cases, the deputies shall confer
for the purpose of unity of understanding of tasks and action and for the utmost
elimination of overlapping and contradictions in work.
In the event of disagreement between the deputies, the question shall be decided by the Chairman of the CPC, and in his absence — by the Politburo of the Central Committee or a specially appointed
comrade by them.
V. DISTRIBUTION OF WORK BETWEEN THE DEPUTIES.
28. For the coming months, pending a special resolution,
the following distribution of work between
the deputies is established.
29. Comrade Tsyurupa shall preside in the L[arge] CPC³) (after
2 hours of the session, the chairmanship shall be transferred to Comrade Rykov).
The presence of the non-presiding deputy in the L[arge] CPC and
the CLD (plenary) is mandatory.
Comrade Tsyurupa shall sign for publication the resolutions of the L[arge] CPC and telegraphic directives on its behalf, and also
supervise the commissions of the L[arge] CPC and the S[mall] CPC and
the work of the S[mall] CPC. He shall also directly supervise the administration of affairs
and the secretariat of the L[arge] CPC, being at the same time responsible
for the complete unity of this apparatus with the apparatus of the CLD, for
the absence of any division and any lack of coordination.
30. Comrade Rykov shall preside in the plenary sessions
of the CLD, sign for publication its resolutions and its telegraphic
directives, directly supervising the administration of affairs

RESOLUTION ON THE WORK OF THE DEPUTIES

and the secretariat of the CLD (under the above-mentioned condition of complete
inseparability of this apparatus and the apparatus of the L[arge] CPC).
31.
With regard to verification of execution, supervision over the reduction of staffs and over the improvement of the apparatus, as well as with regard
to individual minor current questions not requiring a
decision of the L[arge] CPC and the CLD, the People’s Commissariats shall be divided between
both deputies as follows:
under the purview of Comrade Tsyurupa fall:
People’s Commissariat of Agriculture
People’s Commissariat of Railways
Supreme Council of National Economy
People’s Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs
People’s Commissariat of Justice
People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs
People’s Commissariat of Nationalities
People’s Commissariat of Education
under the purview of Comrade Rykov fall:
People’s Commissariat of Finance
People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade
Com[mission] for Dom[estic] Trade
Centrosoyuz
People’s Commissariat of Labor (and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in part)
People’s Commissariat of Social Security
People’s Commissariat of Food
People’s Commissariat of Military Affairs
People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs
People’s Commissariat of Health
Central Statistical Administration
Regional Economic Councils
Concessions Committee
State Planning Committee
Chair[man] of the CPC V. Ulyanov (Lenin).
April 11, 1922.
*

*) The Commission for Domestic Trade under the CLD (Comvnutorg) was
established by a resolution of the CPC of May 9, 1922. Its tasks included
drafting projects of decrees and resolutions of the CPC and the CLD on matters
of domestic trade. On August 28, 1923, the rights of the commission were expanded,
and it was charged with implementing the regulation of domestic
trade throughout the entire territory of the Union. Subsequently, in connection with the ever-growing
development of market relations and the necessity, in view of this, to
place a plenipotentiary body at the head of the regulation of domestic trade, it was resolved (in May 1924) to reorganize Comvnutorg into
the People’s Commissariat of Domestic Trade, to which was also transferred a
significant part of the apparatus of the People’s Commissariat of Food, which had been liquidated by that time.
²) V. P. Milyutin (born 1884) — was at that time deputy
chairman of the Economic Council of the North-Western Region. At present, head of the Central Statistical Administration
of the USSR; member of the Central Control Commission.
³) The Large CPC — here refers to the CPC proper, as distinct
from the Small CPC, which was a commission of the CPC.