**TO V. V. KUYBUSHEV**

September 19, 1921

Comrade Kuybushev!

I just had a visit from
Rutgers, Calvert and Heywood, representatives of a group of an American workers' colony desiring to take the Nadezhda Plant and a number of enterprises in the Kuzbass.

They ask that their representative (with a translator) be personally at the Council of Labor and Defense on Friday. I think this should be permitted.

Then I draw your attention and request that you inform all members of the commission and sub-commissions of the following:

(1) The Nadezhda Plant, in their view, is both economically and technically connected with a group of enterprises in Kuzbass, because it will provide tractors for their agricultural holdings; tractors and all other agricultural implements for peasants; repair of machines for their group's enterprises in Kuzbass, equipment of water transport connecting with Siberia, etc.

(2) In Kuzbass they are taking 12,000 desyatinas of land and a number of enterprises, wishing to create a large and integrated economic whole.

(3) They are asking for only 300,000 dollars in money. Any other opinion is an error.

(4) They want, moreover, grain and clothing to move the necessary construction work *right away*. They say it is necessary to begin this same winter so that by spring 1922 they will have completed it.

(5) They emphasize that they will create a firm administration for their workers' group; and they will select the entire group (3,000-6,000 workers) from the best workers, mostly young and unmarried, who have practical experience in the appropriate production and have lived in climatic conditions similar to Russian ones (Canada or the northern United States).

(6) They want direct subordination to the Council of Labor and Defense. Something in the nature of an autonomous state trust of a workers' association.

By the way, they say that here in the "emigrant house" there live 200 American lumberjacks. Most of them without work. Longing for work. Send, they say, 30 of them immediately to the Nadezhda Plant and 15 to Kuzbass, giving them full equipment and food, and they will immediately begin construction of wooden barracks. (And then all 200 will go.) They very much ask to hurry with the departure.

They say that Gerbek (? I did not quite catch the English pronunciation) from the Industrial Bureau of the Urals gave them oral agreement to their plan, and the Siberians (Siberian Industrial Bureau) in writing.

Russian-speaking workers will make up 10-15%. Could be more.

I request that you take all this into account.

Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense V. Ulyanov (Lenin)

First published in 1933. Printed from the manuscript