1) Who is responsible for this?

2) What exactly has the People's Commissariat done in fulfillment of the decision of the Council of Labor and Defense (15 or 17 December 1920)181 on this question?

3) When was the directive on attributing oil tanks to various railways adopted and by whom—and likewise, when and by whom was it rescinded?

4) What is the current distribution of tanks across the network?

If what is indicated in your "reference report" (undated document) (received 29 March) in the last column of Table 1 ("actual availability" as of what date?), then how is one to explain the presence of 2555 tanks on 8 railways (183 + 161 + 22 + 88 + 9 + 493 + 1405 + 194 =), although there are no "loading assignments" on these railways?

5) Could you not present me with more complete data on the availability and operation of tanks, dividing the railways into 3 groups and providing totals* for the 3 groups:
(a) (1) railways that transported oil from the Volga (b) (2) railways that transported oil from the Caucasus (Grozny and Baku)
(c) (3) railways that did not transport oil?

6) Why has the speed of oil trains been set at 6 versts per hour? Are there technical obstacles (and what are they) to achieving maximum speed (say, that of military trains)?

What was our prewar speed? What is our actual speed in 1920—minimum and maximum?

I request that you inform me which of the indicated information you can present immediately and which within the shortest possible time frames (what exactly are those time frames?)?

With comradely greetings, Lenin

First published 21 January 1931 in the newspaper "For Industrialization" no. 21

Printed from the manuscript