29/I 1919.

Nikolai Alexandrovich!

I was very glad to receive your letter - not for its content, but because I hope for a rapprochement due to the common factual ground of Soviet work.

The situation is not desperate, but only difficult. But now there is the most serious hope of improving the food supply thanks to victories over the counter-revolutionaries in the South and in the East.

It is not about free trade that we must think - it should be clear to an economist that free trade with the absolute lack of necessary products equals frenzied, vicious speculation and the victory of the haves over the have-nots. Not backward through free trade, but forward through the improvement of state monopoly to socialism. It is a difficult transition, but it is unacceptable and unreasonable to despair. If the non-party or near-party intelligentsia, instead of serenading about free trade, had urgently organized groups, groups and unions for all-round assistance to foodstuffs, they would have helped seriously, they would have reduced hunger.

As for the "one-man dictatorship", pardon the expression, it is nothing at all. The apparatus has already become gigantic - in some places excessive - and under such conditions "one-man dictatorship" is not possible at all and attempts to realize it would be only harmful.

The turning point in the intelligentsia had come. The civil war in Germany and the struggle along the lines of Soviet power against "universal, direct, equal and secret, i.e., against the counter-revolutionary foundation" - this struggle in Germany even the most stubborn intelligentsia's heads are pierced and pierced. You can see it from the outside. Nul n'est prophite en son pays1*. In Russia, they considered it "only" a "savagery" of Bolshevism. But now history has shown that this is the world-wide collapse of bourgeois democracy and bourgeois parliamentarism, that we cannot do without a civil war anywhere (volentem ducunt fata, nolentem trahunt)2* , the intelligentsia will have to come to the position of helping the workers precisely on the Soviet platform.

Then, I think, circles, organizations, committees, free unions, groups, groups of intellectuals offering their self-sacrificing work in the most difficult posts of food and transport work will mushroom. And then we will shorten and ease the agony of labor for months. And something surprisingly good and viable will be born, no matter how hard these pains are.

Hello N. Lenin.

Published - "Rodina", 1992, No. 3, p. 49 (with variations).

Fund 2, op. 1, d. 8492 - handwritten copy.

1* There is no prophet in his fatherland (Latin)

2* Fate leads the willing, fate drags the unwilling (Latin).

1The published letter of V.I. Lenin is a reply to the following letter of N.A. Rozhkov:

"Petrograd, Nizhegorodskaya], 12, kv. 73.

January 11, 1919.

Vladimir Ilyich, I am writing you this letter not because I hope to be heard and understood by you, but for the reason that I cannot remain silent, observing the situation, which seems to me desperate, and I must do everything in my power to prevent the threatening misfortunes. I must make even a hopeless attempt.

The economic, in particular the food situation of Soviet Russia is utterly impossible and is worsening every day. The final terrible catastrophe is approaching. I shall not speak now about the causes of it in the general economic sense - this, if you so dearly wish, can be written about in a special way - but for the present I shall speak only of the food question. The situation here is such that, for example, half the population of Petrograd is doomed to starvation. Under such conditions you will not hold on to power, even if no imperialists or White Guards directly threaten you. This should be clear to you, an economist.

All your threats with barrier troops will not help either: anarchy reigns in the country, and they will not be afraid of you and will not listen to you. And even if they did listen to you, that is not the point - the point is that your whole food policy is built on a false foundation. Who could object to a state monopoly of trade in the most important articles of necessity, if the government could supply the population with them in sufficient quantities? But this is impossible, you cannot and will not be able to do it. You cannot, without risking your own existence, assume responsibility for a matter known to be hopeless. Keep your supply apparatus and continue to use it, but do not monopolize the trade in any article of food, not even bread. Supply what you can, but allow quite free trade, dictatorially order all local councils to lift all prohibitions on imports and exports, destroy all barrier units, if necessary, even by force. Without the assistance of private trade initiative you, and no one else, will not be able to cope with the imminent disaster. If you do not do it, your enemies will. In the XX century you cannot turn the country into a conglomerate of medieval closed local markets: in our medieval times, when the population within the present Soviet Russia was 20 times smaller, it was natural. Now it is a blatant absurdity.

You and I have drifted too far apart. Maybe, and even more likely, we will not understand each other. But the situation, in my opinion, is such that only your one-man dictatorship can cross the road and seize power from a counter-revolutionary dictator, who will not be as stupid as the tsarist generals and cadets who are still ridiculously taking land from the peasants. Such an intelligent dictator does not yet exist. But he will be: "if there is a swamp, there will be devils". We must take over the dictatorship from him. Only you, with your authority and energy, can do it now. And it must be done urgently and first of all in the most acute food business. Otherwise ruin is inevitable. But, of course, we cannot limit ourselves to this. It is necessary to restructure the whole economic policy with socialist aims in mind. And again dictatorship will be necessary for this purpose. Let the Congress of Soviets give you extraordinary powers for this purpose.

For what exactly "this" in the sense of general economic policy in the first place, and then in connection with this and all other policies, - I shall write to you about this, if you wish, another time. It is up to you to judge and decide whether it is necessary. This letter also seems to me ridiculous from my side, as I am a donkikhot. Well, let it be the first and the last in that case. N.Rozhkov" (RCCHIDNI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 1315, l. 1-4).

Rozhkov gave his letter to A.M.Gorky to send to V.I.Lenin. Gorky attached his letter to Rozhkov's letter. Stating the inadmissibility of allowing free trade, he at the same time supported Rozhkov's idea about the necessity of establishing Lenin's personal dictatorship (see: Unknown Gorky (to the 125th anniversary of his birth). Moscow, 1994, pp. 28-29).