V. I. Lenin

To the C. C., R.C.P. [1]

I request you to put on the agenda the question of expelling
from the Party those members who, being judges in the case (May
2, 1918) against bribe-takers, where bribery was proved and
admitted by the defendants, confined themselves to a sentence of
six months’ imprisonment.

To award bribe-takers such derisively weak and mild sentences,
instead of shooting, is disgraceful behaviour for a Communist
and revolutionary. Such comrades must be pilloried by the court
of public opinion and expelled from the Party, for their place
is at the side of Kerensky and Martov and not at the side of
revolutionary Communists.

Lenin

May 4, 1918

Endnotes

[1]
On May 2, 1918 the Moscow Revolutionary Tribunal passed a light
sentence against four judges serving on the Moscow Commission of
Investigation who had been charged with blackmail and taking
bribes. Lenin first sent his letter on the subject to
N. V. Kry-lenko, a member of the Board of the People’s
Commissariat for Justice, with a request that the Party Central
Committee should be informed of the names of the guilty
judges. When he received the reply, which was written on the
other side of the letter, Lenin sent it to the Central
Committee, drawing their attention to the facts furnished by
Krylenko. On Lenin’s insistence the All-Russia
C.E.C. reconsidered the case and three of the accused had their
sentences increased to’ ten years’ imprisonment.

Simultaneously with his letter to the Central Committee Lenin
sent the Poople’s Commissar for Justice D. I. Kursky a note demanding that “a law must be introduced at once,
with demonstrative haste, stating that the punishment for
bribery (extortion, subornation, arranging of bribes and
so on) is to be not less than ten years’ imprisonment with an additional ten years’ compulsory labour”
(see present edition Vol. 35, “Letter to
D. I. Kursky”). On Lenin’s initiative the
Council of People’s Commissars passed a decision on
May 4, 1918 instructing the People’s Commissariat for
Justice to draw up a decree that stipulated a heavy minimum
sentence for bribery and any connivance in bribery. The Draft
Decree on Bribery was submitted by the People’s
Commissariat for Justice for consideration at a meeting of
the Council of People’s Commissars on May 8. Lenin introduced an amendment, after which the decree was passed (see
Decrees of the Soviet Government , Russian edition, Vol. 2, 1959, pp. 236-37 and 240-42).