Date: 1917
Source: ru:PSS/v31; en:CW/CW24

Regarding the report that several former ministers had taken up positions as directors of major banks, Pravda asked:

“— In how many banks do the current ministers Guchkov, Tereshchenko, and Konovalov participate—as directors, shareholders, or de facto owners?”

And she added:

“Comrades who work in the banking sector—whom, it should be noted, urgently need to organize themselves into their own union—would do well to gather material on this matter and publish it in the workers’ press.”[78]

On this very issue, the anxious Birzhevye Vedomosti—a newspaper that, as is well known, carries a rather strong ‘banking scent’—wrote:

“To the ‘comrades who serve in the banks,’ we suggest organizing an inquiry, rummaging through the cash desks of bourgeois ministers in order to account for their holdings. With the same brazenness, the Bolsheviks also pry into others’ convictions. Will we soon see Pravda proposing that comrades establish their own security department? There’s certainly room in the Kshesinskaya mansion…”

Why, then, have the gentlemen at Birzhevye Vedomosti grown so concerned?

What, pray tell, does ‘inquiry’ have to do with this, gentlemen?

We have absolutely no objection to comrades in the banking sector publishing lists of the banking tycoons from all political parties. Why, gentlemen, should the people not have the right to know who exactly are the principal owners of institutions like banks—those most powerful institutions upon which the entire economic life of the country depends, upon which the resolution of questions of war and peace hinges?

What is it, precisely, that you fear, gentlemen?

Pravda, No. 44, May 12 (April 29), 1917.

Printed according to the text of the newspaper Pravda.