N. P. GORBUNOV
3. IX.

Comrade Gorbunov!

I have just now signed the credentials for the chairman and members of the Extraordinary Commission for Export under the Council of Labour and Defence (Rykunov, Pyatigorsky, Valayev and Vladimir Spiridonovich Yermakov). I charge you to familiarise yourself with the composition of this Commission and with its statute, and thereafter to keep systematically informed of the course of its work, its reports, and to report to me.

I am using this occasion to point out to you the necessity for a correct division of labour between yourself and Smolyaninov (and Boris Volin, if it proves possible to draw him in) and for a correct organisation of the entire work of the Administration of Affairs of the Council of People’s Commissars and the Council of Labour and Defence. The functions must be precisely distributed between you and Smolyaninov. Each must “exercise supervision” over definite matters (electroploughs, Hydro-Peat, collective supply, tariffs, etc., etc.). For each matter, whether “old” or newly arising, all papers and all information must be systematically gathered together, so that what is required can always easily be found. In addition to the distribution between you of the affairs of the “economic front”, the front that is most important today, it is also necessary to distribute (or for you to take upon yourself entirely) the non-economic People’s Commissariats, “following” their work through the reports of the gubernia and uyezd economic conferences and otherwise.

For each “matter”, from time to time (once a week, once a month or once every two months, depending on the nature and importance of the matter, and also suddenly) a check must be made of the actual fulfilment. This is the most important and most necessary thing. The results of each check should be noted.

I think that when there are three of you (you + Smolyaninov + B. Volin or someone else, if it does not work out with Volin), that will be sufficient (with a small number of office assistants) for conducting the entire work of the Administration of Affairs of the Council of People’s Commissars and the Council of Labour and Defence — provided, of course, that there is absolute accuracy on the one hand, and, on the other, that everything that can and should be handed over is handed over to Economic Life, to the State Planning Commission and to other appropriate institutions. To read the uyezd reports it will be necessary to draw in a further series of persons, with the obligatory signature of the reader on a slip attached to each report: we shall draw in writers, some of the Party’s oldest members, and some experts. When the number of incoming reports grows, you will draw up a list of “helpers in reading reports” and establish a strict procedure for returning what has been read.

Take a typewritten copy of this letter and send it to me together with your reply as to the plan for the distribution and conduct of all work of the Administration of Affairs of the Council of People’s Commissars and the Council of Labour and Defence.

In particular, especially close attention must be paid to Hydro-Peat, both in connection with the orders already placed abroad for peat pumps for the season of 1922, and in connection with the recent communication from R. E. Klasson on the problem of dehydration that he has solved.

I further charge you to investigate the case of the idleness of the Swedish plant “Nitves and Holm” (Economic Life No. 194, p. 4). They “took their time in formalising” the order for water turbines!! Of which we have a frightful shortage!! This is the height of disgracefulness and shamelessness! Find the guilty ones without fail, so that we can let these scoundrels rot in prison. Establish the precise personal responsibility for the work of this plant and the orders placed with it. In general, the establishment of precise personal responsibility is the most important task of the Administration of Affairs of the Council of People’s Commissars and the Council of Labour and Defence. This I shall demand most strictly. If the need arises, immediately draw in the People’s Commissariat of Justice and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, or an “expert” from them.

One more matter. The Scientific and Technical Department of the Supreme Council of National Economy has, I think, fallen completely asleep. It must either be awakened, or else the matter of dispersing these learned idlers must be set in motion in a real way, and it must be established without fail who will bear responsibility for giving us a proper, timely, practical, and non-bureaucratic acquaintance with European and American technology. In particular, Moscow must have one copy of every most important piece of machinery among the very latest, in order to learn and to teach. (Two engineers told me that in America roads are built by a machine which turns a cart track into a highway through the force of its pressure alone; how important that would be for our roadless, semi-savage country!) We must see to it that the Scientific and Technical Department of the Supreme Council of National Economy and its numerous idlers abroad either stop their idling, or that we replace them with others.

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