From this point of view, one must calculate what purchases abroad are necessary in order to overcome at all costs the most acute need—that is, to procure without fail the lacking foodstuffs (through direct purchase abroad of food articles and through exchange for grain in the outlying regions of Russia) and to procure the necessary minimum of fuel.

Only those requisitions can and must be justified which are necessary from this point of view.

Not all electrical requisitions fit here. It is insufficient to prove that electricity economizes fuel.

One must further prove that the given expenditure is necessary for 1921-1922 under conditions of maximum grain and fuel shortage.

Lenin

in the book: G. M. Krzhizhanovsky.

"Commodity Exchange and Planned Work."

Written April 13, 1921

First published in 1924

Moscow

Printed from the manuscript