V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v45; en:MT;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

REPLY TO THE REMARKS CONCERNING THE WORK OF THE DEPUTIES (DEPUTY CHAIRMEN OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE'S COMMISSARS)

Comrade Stalin, with the request that it be circulated

(not duplicated, in the interests of avoiding publicity of the polemics)

to the members of the Political Bureau and Comrade Tsyurupa (but with each

acknowledging receipt on the document itself, stating when read).

I apologise for the delay in my reply, caused by the fuss over the extraction of bullet 118.

Comrade Rykov's remarks are "critical", but indefinite and require no reply.

Comrade Tomsky's remark about the bonus system I consider incorrect. The collapse of the trade union bonus system, which, according to Comrade Tomsky, degenerated into "robbery of the state", should make us work more persistently at studying and improving the methods of applying the bonus system, and by no means lead to its abandonment.

Comrade Trotsky's remarks are partly also indefinite (for example, the "apprehensions" in § 4) and require no reply, and partly revive our old differences with Comrade Trotsky, which have been repeatedly observed in the Political Bureau. I will reply briefly to them on two main points: (a) the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection, and (b) the State Planning Commission.

(a) Regarding the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection, Comrade Trotsky is fundamentally wrong. With our desperate "departmentalism" even among the best Communists, with the low level of the employees, with the intrigues within departments (worse than any in the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection), we cannot do without the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection at present. It

REPLY TO THE REMARKS CONCERNING THE WORK OF THE DEPUTIES

can and must be systematically and persistently worked upon to make it an apparatus for checking and improving the whole of state work. Otherwise there is no practical means of checking, improving, and teaching work. If at present the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection has an apparatus of about 12,000 people, a poor one and poorly paid, it should be reduced and improved; for example, retain one-sixth of the staff at half the former pay, i.e., trebling the pay; first single out dozens, then hundreds of the best, absolutely honest and capable workers, who exist even now, but are not counted, not singled out, not grouped, not organised. This can and must be done. Otherwise it is impossible to combat departmentalism and bureaucracy. Otherwise it is impossible to teach non-Party workers and peasants the art of administration, and this task cannot be abandoned either in principle or in practice at the present moment.

(b) Regarding the State Planning Commission, Comrade Trotsky is not only fundamentally wrong, but also astonishingly uninformed about the subject he is judging. The State Planning Commission not only does not suffer from academicism, but, on the contrary, suffers from being overloaded with excessively petty, current "trivialities". Comrade Krzhizhanovsky, because of his mildness, yields too readily to the requests of those who try to drag him into "helping" immediately. The new Vice-Chairman of the State Planning Commission, Pyatakov, will, I hope, be "stricter" and will help to rid the State Planning Commission of its defect, which is the exact opposite of the defect of "academicism".

Knowing well the actual defects of the State Planning Commission, I, in order to inform the members of the Political Bureau with factual, objective material, and not with fantasies, asked Comrade Krzhizhanovsky whether his work suffered from "abstractness" and what precise data there were on this. Comrade Krzhizhanovsky sent me a list of the questions that had come before the Presidium of the State Planning Commission during two months: February and March 1922. The result: (aa) planning questions—17%; (bb) questions of important economic character—37%; (cc) "trivialities"—46%. I can send these materials to any member of the Political Bureau for inspection.

Comrade Trotsky's second paper, of April 23, 1922, addressed to the deputies with a copy to the Secretariat of the Political Bureau (the copy to me was probably omitted by accident), contains,

first, an extremely excited but profoundly incorrect "criticism" of the Political Bureau's decision to set up a financial troika (Sokolnikov and both deputies) as a brake between the Small and the Big Council of People's Commissars. The direction of such criticism does not correspond to any planned or, in general, any organised state work on the part of the deputies.

Secondly, this paper contains the same, fundamentally incorrect and diametrically opposite to the truth, accusations of academicism against the State Planning Commission, accusations which go so far as the following statement by Comrade Trotsky, which is positively incredible in its lack of information: "Apart from fixing the volume of the emission," he writes, "and apart from the distribution of money resources among the departments, there is and can be no economic plan at present. Yet, as far as I can judge, the State Planning Commission has no relation whatever to these fundamental questions."

The words I have underlined compel me only to put the question: why "judge" without information? It is easy for any member of the Central Committee and any member of the Council of Labour and Defence to obtain information. To obtain information would mean to learn that the State Planning Commission has a financial and economic section which is working precisely on the questions indicated. There are, of course, defects in this work, but they are to be sought not in academicism, but in the opposite direction.