V. I.

Lenin

218

To:   L. K. MARTENS

22.VI.1921

Comrade Martens:

I must reproach you for having misdirected the papers on the American colonies in
Russia. [1]

I read them only on 20/VI. You should not have sent them through Bukharin, but should have formulated some
20 lines of practical proposals in Russian, and sent them
up to the C.L.D., and a copy for me personally and a short
letter.

The delay was due to the misdirection of the file.

In substance: I am in favour, provided the American workers and settlers in general will bring along with them:

1) foodstuffs for two years (you say that this has been
done before, which means that it is possible);

2) clothes, for a similar period;

3) implements of labour.

No. 1 (and No. 2) are the most important. The $200 is less
important. If we have No. 1, I agree to give every support .

To speed things, draw up a draft C.L.D. decision right away and table it today (if you can, before 3.00 p.m. ),
this very day in the C.L.D., and we shall decide at 6.00;
even if you are late, table it in the C.L.D. at 6.00, we shall
set up a commission and decide it on Friday, 24/VI.

Draft decision:
1) terms—the three afore-mentioned,

2) management (you+1 American worker+1 from the
People’s Commissariat for Labour?),
3) we help (give land,
timber, pits, etc.),
4) financial relations such-and-such.

Please reply by bearer.

V. Ulyanov (Lenin )

Chairman, C.P.C.

P.S. After writing this letter, I saw that the question
is on today’s C.L.D. agenda. Please elaborate the points
I have indicated. [2]

---
Notes:
[1]
On June 10, 1921, L. K. Martens, a member of the S.E.C.
Presidium, submitted to Lenin a copy of his report to the S.E.C.
Presidium, which urged the need to enlist for work in Soviet industry
foreign workers, chiefly Russian émigrés in America, many of
whom were eager to go to Soviet Russia in view of the industrial
crisis in America at the end of 1920 and early 1921. His report
also contained a number of practical proposals on organising the
immigration of foreign workers.

On page 1 of the report, Lenin wrote: “NB: p. 9, bring along
food”, and on page 9, he underlined Martens’s words: “They have
brought with them food for six months”, and wrote in the margin:
“NB” (Central Party Archives of the Institute of
Marxism-Leninism of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee).

The report was appended to Minutes No. 224 of the C.L.D.
sitting on June 22, 1921. A detailed article about this appeared
in Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn No. 157 of July 20, 1921, and was then
reprinted in the monthly information journal Soviet Russia (Vol.
V, No. 4, 1921, pp. 156–58).

[2]
Having received this letter, Martens replied to Lenin that he
would immediately start working on the draft C.L.D. decision
concerning the industrial immigration of Russians from America and
would have it ready by six o’clock.

That same day, June 22, 1921, the C.L.D. declared that it was
desirable to “develop separate industrial enterprises or groups of
enterprises by leasing them to groups of American workers, and
industrially developed peasants, on contractual terms assuring
them of a measure of economic autonomy” ( Lenin Miscellany XX , p. 202) The C.L.D. also recognised the need to regulate the
industrial immigration of workers from other countries, and
instructed the S.E.C. to work out the terms for leasing enterprises
to these workers.