Urgent

Comrade Smolyaninov,

I request you to read my letter on the reverse side and pass it through the S.T.O. (with the conclusion of Gosplan) with the utmost speed in 2-4 days.
5/VIII.

Lenin
N.B.:

For speedy passage do as follows:

1) make 2-3 copies. Send one immediately to Krzhizhanovsky with a request to give his conclusion by Tuesday;

2) send to the members of the S.T.O. immediately, seeing to it that they read quickly and make their notes right here, at once;

3) ask the members of the S.T.O. by telephone whether they agree to hand over the preliminary working out to a commission: Krasin + Avanesov + Bogdanov (or his special representative).

Lenin

I consider the plan correct and subject to immediate approval. Perhaps some specifications and additions are desirable, for example:

1) to give working capital in gold, but only from our earnings from exports in 1921, obliging this same group to speed up the realization of this export;

2) to define more precisely the “lease” area for this group, taking mainly or even exclusively the very far North (this is more convenient for us because it relieves us from sending food there; this is more convenient politically because preferential conditions for workers – up to 50 copecks in gold!! – will provoke less envy and conflicts among other workers);

3) to define more precisely the group’s obligations: to fulfill not “a certain” programme (both production and export, in 1922 and especially in 1923)*;

4) to oblige the “group” to try to observe the interests of electrification (to purchase more foreign accessories for power stations, use of sawdust, etc.) – the interests of the fuel supply of Russia (fuel railway spur lines; increasing fuel and firewood transport to Moscow, etc.);

5) to give the group what it is asking for in the sphere of financial and material independence.

5/VIII. 1921. Lenin

* Not “a certain” – not less than. – Ed.

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CONVERSATION OVER DIRECT WIRE WITH M. K. VLADIMIROV

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First printed in 1959 in Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol. XXXVI.
Printed from the manuscript.