V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:LS/v23
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

EIGHTH ALL-RUSSIA ELECTROTECHNICAL CONGRESS

I have no doubt that there may be thousands of wiseacres who will very plausibly argue that the State Commission has failed to take this or that into account, and who will raise very profound questions. It is extremely difficult to keep up with such wiseacres, especially if they stubbornly refuse to think (dialectically]...
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[concretely]
We must note with regret that V. G. Groman\(^1\) must apparently be numbered among our irreconcilable critics. In his report at the scientific-technical club of the MG SPS, V. G. Groman in many respects gave due credit to the work of Goelro in a very positive sense. But the theses of his report which he singled out stand in sharp contradiction to the general line of his argument. In these theses V. G. Groman, gradually increasing the pressure of his pen, asserts that we have not taken into account in our work either class relations or the international situation or the question of concessions, etc., etc.
It thus appears that the entire approach to the construction of a national economic plan is anti-scientific, and consequently the electrification plan itself is built on sand. The result is a curious impression, and one involuntarily recalls the anecdote about a certain bashful deacon. When this deacon was invited to have a drink early one morning, he replied that, in the first place, he did not drink, in the second place, it was still too early, and in the third place—he had already had a drink. V. G. Groman's inconsistencies clearly stem from the fact that he simply failed to take into account the limits set for our report as the first extract from the work of Goelro.
11/IX [1921]
G. M.!\(^2\) I advise you to have it printed in *Pravda*, after making a few changes, keeping the part against Groman and adding 1-2 pages [about] facts indicating the real tempo of economic recovery in W[estern] Eur[ope].

\(^1\) V. G. Groman—in 1921 a member of the State Planning Commission (Gosplan); in 1930 convicted in the case of the Union Bureau of the Mensheviks.
\(^2\) The note was written by Lenin in the margin of the first page of Krzhizhanovsky's manuscript in indelible pencil. At the top of the page on the right, Lenin wrote in the same pencil: "To G. M. Krzhizhanovsky." Later, apparently, he wrote in red ink at the top centre of the page: "Send to G. M. Krzhizhanovsky."—Ed.