V. I.

Lenin

328

To:   P. I. POPOV

Comrade Popov:

I am afraid I cannot accept your resignation.

As you are, of course, aware, you are entitled to appeal
against my instructions, but your appeal does not suspend
the necessity of performance. Please let me have a short
list of what you are doing in accordance with my instructions, specifying the dates (roughly, of course, from—to).

V. Ulyanov (Lenin )

Chairman, C.P.C.

P.S. Certainly, you can and must take sick leave to recover. But in that case write separately to me or, if you
want to expedite matters, to Fotieva, and she will read
it out to me over the telephone (about the leave and a “deputy”). There must be a formal appointment of a temporary
“deputy”.

P.P.S. Let me add that your letter is much too polemical. I do not object to polemics, but it should be brought
out specially. You have been arguing against something that I have never said or thought. Your argument implies
that I deny the usefulness of what has been done, etc. But
I have never said or thought so.

Please inform me of what you are undertaking in accordance with the points of my letters of
June 4 [1] and August

16 [2]

(for instance: “brief monthly reports on industry will be delivered from such-and-such a date”, on the
distribution of foodstuffs on such a date, etc.).

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Notes:
[1]
The letter has not been found.— Ed .

[2]
See present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 30–32.— Ed .