Comrade Preobrazhensky!

From some of your remarks today it was evident that you consider the Politburo decision regarding the professors a mistake. I fear there is a misunderstanding here. I fear you are not interpreting the decision correctly. That Kalinnikov (so it seems) is a reactionary, I readily admit. There are also malicious Cadets there, undoubtedly. But they must be exposed in a different way. And exposed on concrete grounds. Give such an assignment to Kozmin (only he is not very clever: be more careful with him): expose on a precise fact, action, statement. Then we’ll lock him up for a month, a year. He will be taught a lesson. The same with the malicious Cadet. The same if the class enemies slandered Ignatov (? so it seems? I don’t know him). Prepare material, verify, expose and condemn before everyone, punish as an example. A military specialist is caught for treason. But all military specialists are involved and are working. Lunacharsky and Pokrovsky do not know how to “catch” their specialists and, angry at themselves, take it out on everyone for nothing. That is Pokrovsky’s mistake. And the disagreements between us, perhaps, are not so many. Worst of all in the People’s Commissariat of Education is the lack of system, consistency; their communist cells are disgracefully “lax.” And they have not yet learned to work out methods of “catching” specialists and punishing them, of catching and training communist cells in the People’s Commissariat of Education.

With communist greetings

Lenin