V. I. Lenin

Remarks on and Addenda to Drafts for

Rules for the Workers’ and Peasants’
Inspection

To Comrade Stalin. Copies to Avanesov and Tomsky, and also to Kiselyov, Member of the Presidium of the All-Russia
Central Executive Committee

On the basis of directive given by the Central Committee [1] the three drafts should, in my
opinion, be worked up into one.

I think you should add:

(1) The “Department” of the Workers’ and
Peasants’ Inspection at the State Control Commission should
be a temporary one for the purpose of involving the Workers’
and Peasants’ Inspection in all departments of the
State Control Commission, and should then disappear as a special
department.

(2) Purpose: all working people, both men and particularly women, should serve in the Workers’
and Peasants’ Inspection.

(3) For this draw up lists in the localities (in accordance
with the Constitution), excluding clerks, etc.

--all others in turn to participate in the
Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection.

(4) Participation to vary according to the degree of development of the participants—beginning with the role of
“listener”, or witness, or learner for the illiterate and completely undeveloped workers and peasants, and ending with
the granting of all rights (or almost all) to the literate and
developed who have been tested in some way or another.

(5) Pay special attention to (and make strictly precise rules
for), and extend control by the Workers’ and
Peasants’

Inspection over accounting for food, goods, warehouses, tools,
materials, fuel, etc., etc. (in dining-rooms, etc., especially).

Women, literally every woman, must be drawn into this work.

(6) So as not to get into a mess with the involvement of masses
of participants they must be drawn into the work gradually, in
turn, etc. The ways in which they participate must also be
carefully planned (two or three at a time, rarely, in special
cases, more, so that they will not waste the working time of the
clerks).

(7) Detailed instructions must be compiled.

(8) Officials of the State Control Commission must (in accordance with a special instruction), first, invite
representatives of the Workers’ and Peasants’
Inspection to all their operations, and secondly, deliver lectures
to non-party conferences of workers and peasants (popular lectures
according to a specially approved programme on the principles of
the State Control Commission and its methods; perhaps the lectures
could be replaced by the reading of a pamphlet that we shall
publish—that is, the State Control Commission, Stalin and
Avanesov, will publish it with the special participation of the
Party—and commenting on that pamphlet).

(9 Gradually summon peasants from the localities (they must be non-party peasants) to participate in the State Control
Commission at the centre; begin with at least (if it is impossible
to do more) one or two from each gubernia and then, depending on
transport and other conditions, increase the number. The
same thing for non-party workers.

(10) Gradually introduce the verification of the participation
of working people in the State Control Commission by the Party and
the trade unions, i.e., through these organisations verify whether
everyone participates and what results come from the participation
insofar as learning the business of state administration is
concerned.

Lenin

January 24, 1920

Endnotes

[1]
This refers to the directive adopted on Lenin’s proposal by
the Political Bureau of the CC, R.C.P.(B.) on January 23, 1920 on
the organisation of a workers’ and peasants’ inspection. On February 7, 1920 the All-Russia Central Executive
Committee endorsed the Rules for the Workers’ and
Peasants’ Inspection according to which the state control
bodies were reorganised “into a single body of socialist
control by workers and peasants”.

Lenin attached great importance to workers’ and peasants’ inspection. In the articles
written in 1923, “How We Should Reorganise the
Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection” and “Better Fewer, but Better”, Lenin proposed to unite
the workers’ and peasants’ inspection bodies with the
Central Control Commission. In April 1923, the Twelfth Party
Congress adopted a decision that followed Lenin’s proposal
to found a joint body with Party and state control functions.

At the time of the Stalin cult Lenin’s principles of the organisation of Party and state control were
grossly violated and a bureaucratic control apparatus was
substituted for the Leninist system of control.

In November 1962 a plenary meeting of the C.C., C.P.S.U. considered it necessary to reorganise the system of
supervision on Leninist principles. It decided to set up a
Committee of Party and State Control of the C.C., C.P.S,U. and the
Council of Ministers of the USSR to unite and direct theentire
work of supervision in the country.