V. I.

Lenin

September 3

Comrade Gorbunov, I have just signed credentials for the chairman and
members of the Extraordinary Commission for Exports of the
Council of Labour and
Defence [1] (Rykunov, Pyatigorsky, Valayev and Vladimir Spiridonovich Yermakov). It will
be your task to study the membership of this Commission
and its terms of reference, then systematically to review
its activity and its reports , and to inform me.

I take advantage of this opportunity to point out to you the need for a proper division of labour between you
and Smolyaninov (and Boris Volin, if we succeed in getting him), and proper organisation of the whole work of
the office of the Council of People’s Commissars and the
Council of Labour and Defence.

The functions should be clearly demarcated between yourself and Smolyaninov. Each must “ carry on supervision ”
of specified undertakings (electric ploughs; Hydropeat Board;
collective supply; wage rates, etc., etc.).

For each subject, both “old” and newly arising, there must be systematic filing of all papers and reference notes,
so that it should always be easy to find what is required.

In addition to the distribution between you of the business of the “economic front”, the most important front
at the present time, there should also be a division between
you (or you should take them all on yourself) of the noneconomic People’s Commissariats, “following up” their
work on the basis of the reports of the gubernia and uyezd
economic conferences and otherwise.

On each “subject” it is necessary from time to time (once
a week, once a month or every two months, according to the nature and importance of the business—and then also
suddenly ) to carry out a check on actual fulfilment. This
is most important and most essential. A record should be made of the results of each check-up.

I think that when there are three of you (you+
Smolyaninov+B. Volin or someone else, if we can’t have Volin)
this will be enough (with a few office assistants) to carry
on the whole work, of course on condition of absolute efficiency, on the one hand, and of referring everything that
can and should be referred to Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn , to the
State Planning Commission and other appropriate institutions, on the other. To read the uyezd reports it will
be necessary to recruit a number of other people, each being
obliged to sign that he has read it, on a sheet attached to
each report: we shall draw in both writers and some of the
oldest members of the Party, as well as some “experts”.
When the number of reports arriving begins to grow, you
will draw up a list of “helpers in the reading of reports”
and establish a strict procedure for returning what has been
read.

Take a typed copy of this letter, and send it to me, together with your reply about a plan for distributing and
carrying on all the work of the Executive Secretary of the C.P.C. and the Council of Labour and Defence.

In particular, it is necessary to follow up with special
attention the work of the Hydropeat Board, both in connection
with the orders for peat pumps already placed abroad for
the 1922 season, and in connection with the recent communication from R. E. Klasson that he has solved the
problem of dehydration. [2]

Then I ask you to investigate the affair of the idleness
of the Swedish works, Nydqvist och Holms ( Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn No. 194,
p. 4). [3] “ They were slow in getting out ” the order for water-driven turbines! Of which we have
a terrible lack! This is the height of disgrace and shamelessness!

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Make sure to find out who is to blame so that we can send these scoundrels to rot in prison.

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Find out who precisely is personally responsible for the
work of this factory, and for the orders placed with it.

Altogether, the establishment of specified personal responsibility is the most important job for the Executive
Secretary of the C.P.C. and the Council of Labour and
Defence. I will require this more strictly than anything
else. If it proves necessary, call in immediately for this
purpose the People’s Commissariat for Justice, arid the
Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, or an “expert” from them.

One more thing. It seems to me that the Scientific and
Technical Department of the Supreme Economic Council has fallen asleep altogether. It is essential either to wake
it up, or really to set going a drive to disperse these
scientific loafers, and establish precisely and without fail who
will be responsible for keeping us abreast of European and
American techniques sensibly, in good time, practically,
not bureaucratically. In particular, Moscow should have
one specimen of all the most important latest machines :
to learn and to teach. (Two engineers have told me that in
America they make roads with a machine which transforms
a dirt road into a hard road simply by the force of its own
pressure; how important this would be for our roadless semi-civilised country!)

We must see that the Scientific and Technical
Department of the Supreme Economic Council, and its numerous
idlers abroad, should stop idling, or that we should replace them by others .

V. Ulyanov (Lenin )
Chairman, Council of People’s Commissars