V. I.

Lenin

Draft Decision for the C.L.D. on Local Economic Conferences, on Reporting and on Complying with the Instructions of the C.L.D.

1. Gubernia and uyezd economic conferences are to be
organised everywhere, standing in the same relation to the gubernia and
uyezd executive committees as the Council of Labour and Defence to the
Council of People’s Commissars. Managing offices or secretariats must be
common ones. All the work is to be done through the apparatus of the
corresponding departments without creating a special apparatus.

2. The village committees and village Soviets are to act as
the local, lower bodies of the C.L.D., and in factory and urban communities
these functions are to be assumed by the district Soviets, the district
economic conferences and the factory committees. The volost executive
committees either completely fulfil the duties of volost economic
conference or assign several of their members to form the volost economic
conferences.

3. It is the obligatory duty of all the economic
conferences to report on their activities to the C.L.D., such activities to
be guided by the Instructions of the C.L.D. which are to be issued
simultaneously with this decision.

The reports of the regional economic conferences, the gubernia and
uyezd economic conferences must be printed in no less than 100 copies (three of which are to be sent to the C.L.D., one
copy each to the leading public libraries, the Rumyantsev Library in Moscow
and the Public Library in Petrograd, and one copy to the library of each
gubernia, economic conference). Reports are to be submitted every two
months (three or four months?).

The reports of the lower bodies are to be in writing, one copy for the
gubernia economic conference and one for the C,L.D.; to be submitted not
less than twice a year.

The report to the C.L.D. must be accompanied by systematically selected
issues of the local newspapers or cuttings from them devoted to questions
of local economic life, as well as all publications on these
questions.

The co-operation of the local staff of the Central Statistical Board
and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection should be enlisted, in compiling
these reports.

Each local body is obliged immediately to appoint and communicate to
the C.L.D. the names of persons responsible for the timely drawing up of
the report in each of its subsections and general collation, as well as the
names of their deputies.

4. The newspaper Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn [1] is to become the organ of the C.L.D.

Following the same Instructions, it should regularly publish summaries
of local economic work alongside its present coverage. The recording and
study of practical experience in all economic work in the R.S.F.S.R. and
the working out of general guidelines on the basis of such experience must
become the chief task of Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn .

The editors must select and widen the circle of local correspondents,
both Party and non-Party, for the purpose of information on the work done
in the local areas.

It shall be the duty of the Central Distributing Agency to accurately
deliver two copies of Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn to every gubernia,
uyezd and volost library, and the duty of these libraries to keep newspaper
files of both copies available for the whole population.

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Notes:
[1]
Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn (Economic Lifs)—a daily newspaper,
started coming out in November 1918 as the organ of the Supreme Economic
Council and the economic commissariats. It continued publication till
November 1937, latterly as the organ of the Commissariat for Finance of the
U.S.S.R., the State Bank and other financial organisations of the
U.S.S.R. and the Central Committee of the Bank Employees’ Trade Union.