LENINIST COLLECTION

[Abandon egalitarianism as a "principle of supply."] Fourth, the supply of workers is carried out by all supplying bodies through factory management, the administration, which receives what is necessary only in the case of obligations given to it by a higher body, for the non-fulfillment of which it is held accountable in court. Place economic calculation at the basis of all economic policy.

The above is put into practice, starting with the largest and most threatened enterprises, by the presidium of the Supreme Council of National Economy [VSNKh], as the necessary preliminary organizational work is carried out.

5. In view of the revealed impossibility of supplying industry even according to a starvation ration from state resources, permit state trusts to realize a larger share of their own production than now, both within the Republic through the Centrosoyuz, and abroad, through the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade [NKVT].

6. It is necessary to move the question of unloading the state apparatus of small enterprises and factories from a dead point.
It is necessary to energetically and decisively implement the decree on leasing enterprises.
The ambiguity and understatement in this matter must be ended. Otherwise, our industry will unconditionally fail to use all the opportunities that lie before it. As one example, the following can be cited. Due to the crop failure, the peasantry is beginning to throw a colossal amount of hides on the market. And in the Republic, over three thousand tanneries are standing idle.

[p.]

[7. The State Planning Commission [Gosplan], having done a great job of attracting highly qualified technical forces of the Republic to Soviet work, is slow with the plan for the second half of 1921. In the current situation, this is completely unacceptable. The main task of the moment is to clearly and soberly outline the role and significance of the main sectors of our national economy in the near future. It is necessary to immediately instruct the State Planning Commission, based on an approximate calculation of food and fuel resources, to draw up a preliminary plan for the second half of 1921.

8. The basis of this plan should be: a) the principle of favoritism (shock work) for the main sectors of the national economy (fuel, metal, etc.). Shock work should be realized through products of own production and by creating combined enterprises, b) maximum concentration and productive consolidation of enterprises.]*
* §§ 7 and 8 crossed out twice by Lenin. — Ed.

AMENDMENTS TO
THE THESES OF THE VSNKh

[III] II.
[9. Extremely вядо] 7. The excessively slowly developing operation with commodity exchange is already providing some material for judging what it will give us in the near future. The limits of local turnover, as well as commodity expeditions from industrial centers or individual factories, saturating the markets of their areas of operation with homogeneous goods (threads or textiles or metal), completely disrupt markets and any possibility of commodity exchange.

The equivalents practiced under free exchange: one hundred for one hundred at pre-war prices or free market prices for both city and village goods dictate a transition to buying and selling. In all commodity exchange operations 1) we must not limit ourselves to the limits of local turnover, 2) alongside natural commodity exchange, where this is profitable, we must most decisively transition to the formula: commodity — money — commodity.

[10] 8. Given the revealed crop failure and outright famine in the southeast, it is obvious that it will be most difficult to extract grain. But this same crop failure devalues items such as livestock, meat. It is necessary to immediately give instructions to scientists and food suppliers to combine a ration from calories of a new ratio between bread and its surrogates and meat.

[II] 9. In order to establish greater stability of our ruble, it is necessary to implement a number of measures for the reverse inflow of money into the state treasury. It is necessary to introduce taxes in the communal economy, village dues, payment for state services, etc. Open savings banks and widely use credit cooperatives. [Allow the circulation of metallic currency in the country.]

[IV] III.
[12. In the current situation, we are powerless to fight against bureaucratism and red tape.]
10. The fight against bureaucratism and red tape [a real fight against this evil is not possible] will be fully successful only when the decisions of the All-Russian Party Conference are [resolutely] implemented much more energetically than now. [We must] We must more decisively and quickly break out of the grip of multiple authority, collegiality, coordination of all trifles, preliminary control. [This entire system] All THIS is in blatant contradiction with the course taken in the spring.

[13] 11. To facilitate purchases abroad, it is necessary to build the NKVT [rebuild] in such a way that interested departments would have the decisive say in purchases. The NKVT, from an organ of monopoly, must gradually transform into an organ regulating transactions of departments and institutions with foreign countries.

[14] 12. It is necessary for party organizations to widely explain to all party members that this turn is not a step back, but a step forward, and that it corresponds both to the objective situation in Russia and to the interests of the world revolution. Precisely stagnation and hesitancy in the implementation of the new policy are the worst enemies.

[15. Draft decrees on the points of the VSNKh jurisdiction are to be developed by the Presidium of the VSNKh in the near future.]*
The Presidium of the VSNKh requests the Central Committee of the RCP to consider and approve this resolution as soon as possible.

NOTES REGARDING THE THESES OF THE VSNKh
JULY 10-11

To Comrade Krzhizhanovsky.
[July 10, 1921]
G. m.
Please read as soon as possible. Compare this draft with my amendments (in pencil)**.
Give your feedback.
I have crossed out the §§ about the State Planning Commission. Maybe you can replace them with one paragraph: it is necessary to accelerate, strengthen, intensify in just such a direction
1.
Maybe then the theses would go under the signature of the presidium] of the Supreme Council of National Economy [VSNKh] presidium] of the State Planning Commission?
Return and answer as soon as possible.
With communist greetings, Lenin.
* Crossed out by Lenin crosswise. — Ed.
** See previous document with Lenin's amendments. — Ed.

NOTES ON THE TEXT OF THE VSNKh RESOLUTION

[To N. P. Bryukhanov, A. M. Lezhava and V. A. Avanesov]
[July 11, 1921]
I ask you not to show this draft to anyone yet, to read it as carefully as possible immediately and call me or (if you cannot get me on the phone) write me 2 words today: acceptable to you? What amendments would you like to make? (very briefly).
I consider it extremely important to carry this out quickly and unanimously.
Lenin.
1 The archive of the Institute has preserved a letter from G. M. Krzhizhanovsky (arch. ЛЗ 26465), with a draft paragraph about the State Planning Commission, which was then laid as the basis for thesis 8 of the resolution of the presidium of the VSNKh of July 11. G. Krzhizhanovsky's letter was apparently sent to Lenin on 10, since on July 11 Lenin already forwarded it to Smilga for review.
* Bryukhanov N. P. — Deputy People's Commissar for Food.
* Lezhava A. M. — Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Trade.

NOTES ON THE TEXT OF THE VSNKh RESOLUTION
OF
JULY 11.
[July 16, 1921]
Lenin's copy.
Resolution of the presidium of the VSNKh of 11/VII-21.
I.
1. The acute crisis of our national economy, which we entered in May, is primarily a consequence of the difficult food situation. Simultaneously with this, we encounter a number of phenomena, without eliminating which the Soviet Republic will not be able to cope with either the problem of developing productive forces or withstanding the fight against famine; the meaning of these phenomena lies in the lag of our economic policy behind the new economic course, which was proclaimed at the X Party Congress and at the spring Party Conference. The emerging deterioration of our economic situation (the fall in productivity of the Donbass, the metallurgical industry, etc.) requires a decisive acceleration of the transition to

LENIN’S COLLECTION
This new economic policy. Otherwise we will be forced to do this a few months later under qualitatively changed,
worsened conditions.
2. One of the main shortcomings of the current economic
policy is the absence of a managing subject, and as a consequence of this, rational management of industry.
This is primarily evident in the area of supply. Food supply is obtained: a) through cards and norms
from the People's Commissariat of Food, b)
theft from factories and enterprises, c) as a result of payment in kind through cooperation, d)
as a result of the sale of the payment-in-kind fund by the enterprise or workers themselves.
Work clothes and special clothes are distributed by the Trade Unions; technical
and material supply comes from the Glavki. Enterprises are supplied with food and
work clothes and special clothes not according to productivity, but according to need. That is, the connection of supply with pro-
ductivity is not direct, but indirect. (Production increases, decreases, supply remains ap-
proximately the same.) This system was a consequence of the military period
of our revolution, when the Republic was a «military camp».
In a besieged fortress, it was perfectly understandable to strive
to supply everyone as equally as possible, to feed, to support,
until it was possible to begin restoring production.
Now the task is not the same; it is necessary at all costs to restore
production, to achieve the development of productive forces.
3. A direct consequence of this is the complete vagueness
of our management. We throw away a mass of food and other resources with a negligible production
effect — unproductively, down the drain. This inevitably must
lead us to defeat on the economic front if we do not quickly and decisively restructure ourselves in accordance with the new
conditions.
4. It is necessary now to restructure ourselves on the following
grounds: firstly, it is necessary to establish, as a principle, that in
the field of the national economy, the state gives nothing to anyone
for free. Secondly, that all the worker's supply is included in his
wage, which for the part that remains, should be lowered significantly and approach the average subsistence

NOTES ON THE TEXT OF THE VSNKh RESOLUTION norm of the worker. Thirdly, all worker supply received
is divided not by the number of workers, but by the unit of output
produced, with the exception of those industries and sectors
of industry and the National Economy where, due to the very nature
of the work, this is not possible.
Fourthly, the matter of supplying workers is carried out by all
supplying bodies through the factory management, the administration,
which receives what is necessary only in the event of obligations given to it
to a higher body, for the non-fulfillment of which it is liable
in court. The basis of all economic policy should be economic calculation.
The above is put into practice, starting with the largest
and most threatened enterprises, by the Presidium of the VSNKh as
the necessary preliminary organizational work is carried out.
5. In view of the revealed impossibility of providing industry
with all types of supplies, even according to the starvation norm, from
state funds, to allow state industrial associations to sell a larger
part of the products of their own production than now, both within the Republic through
Centrosoyuz, and abroad, through the NCVT.
6. It is necessary to move the issue of unloading the state
apparatus from small enterprises and factories off dead center.
It is necessary to energetically and decisively implement the decree on
the leasing of enterprises.
With ambiguity, and understatement in this matter must be ended.
Otherwise, our industry will certainly not use all those opportunities that lie before it.
7. In the matter of the development and organization of petty and handicraft industry
it is necessary to definitely and firmly follow the path of cooper-
ating small producers, combining, where it is economically
and technically expedient, cooperatively organized handicraft industry with large industrial
enterprises. Only such a policy will raise the productivity
of small-scale farming and will contribute to the transition from
small-scale dispersed production to large-scale production
on the principles of voluntary association. Therefore, it is necessary that all or-
gans of Soviet
Power on the basis of this understanding comprehensively encourage the development of industrial cooperation and the voluntary association
of small-scale industry.
II.
8. At the present moment of changes in economic policy,
the Gosplan is assigned a particularly responsible task of urgently
developing a general economic plan and coordinating the interests of industry
with agriculture, transport, food
, etc., for which the Gosplan must in particular set itself the task of carrying out in the shortest possible time the correct selection
of the main, viable enterprises and individual sectors with their maximum production consolidation, commercial
viability, concentration, with the identification of specific
thrust directions for key industries and sectors of the economy. At the same time, the special needs
of the regions and the profitability of the principle of combined enterprises
must be taken into account.
9. The impossibly slowly developing operation with commodity
exchange now gives it some material for judging what it will give us in the near future. The scope of local
turnover, as well as commodity expeditions of industrial centers
or individual factories, saturating the markets of their area of operation
with homogeneous goods (threads or textiles or metal), completely disrupt markets and any possibility of commodity
exchange. The equivalents practiced during free exchange: one hundred
for one hundred at pre-war prices or free market prices for both city and village goods, dictate a transition to
buying and selling. In all commodity exchange operations 1) we must not
limit ourselves to the scope of local turnover, 2) along
with natural commodity exchange, where it is profitable, we must
most decisively move to the monetary form of exchange.
10. In
order to establish greater stability of our ruble, it is necessary to implement a number of measures to reverse the inflow
of money into the state treasury. It is necessary to introduce fees in the Communal
Economy, taxes, payment for state services, etc. Open savings and loan banks and widely use credit cooperation.

NOTES ON THE TEXT OF THE VSNKh RESOLUTION
| \ \
11. In order to facilitate trade relations with foreign countries, the
NCVT must be structured in such a way that interested agencies
would have the right to independently conduct relations
with foreign countries, conclude transactions and implement them. The NCVT
from a monopolistic body should gradually turn into a regulating
and controlling body for transactions of state agencies and institutions, as well as private enterprises, with foreign countries.
III.
12. The fight against bureaucracy and red tape will be fully successful
only when the decisions of the All-Russian Party Conference
are implemented much more energetically than now.
It is necessary to more decisively and quickly break out of the grip of multiple
authority, interdepartmentalism, coordination of all sorts of trifles,
preliminary control and introduce strict personal business
responsibility*. All this is in glaring contradiction with the course taken in the spring.
NOTES ON THE MARGINS OF THE RESOLUTION.
railway tariff/11
Connection of collective [supply] support (or development)
capitalism
Trotsky: (against Goelro)
Trotsky.
“He has no Gosplan” (“Liberation] from the idea of electrification”)..„
I
I. Trotsky
I. Golden ore (Bukharin)
ш.]
Trotsky:
“The Krzhizhanovsky plan has nothing to do with the VSNKh.
Chairman]
Gosplan should be chairman] of the VSNKh”.
Trotsky:
, “Gosplan and VSNKh are not coordinated” .., details correct
-\-
Krasin
4-Narkomprod.

* In the original, a typo: “clearness,” corrected by Lenin to
“responsibility”. Ed.