October 3, 1921

Comrade Gorbunov!

Comrade Beloborodov, chairman of the South-Eastern Regional Economic Council, has brought a report on an extremely poor state of affairs.

The Council of Labor and Defense, it seems, does not respond to inquiries.

The Deputy Commissar of Foreign Trade does not possess the necessary authority, is excessively limited in his independence, and so forth and so on.

It is necessary to clarify the matter and introduce a series of decisions in the Council of Labor and Defense and in the Central Committee.

I propose a commission consisting of:
Stalin (if he is unable, he can be replaced by Central Committee member Comrade Ordzhonikidze),
Radchenko (Deputy Commissar of Foreign Trade) and Beloborodov (find him through Zalutsky in the Kremlin), and
that should be quite sufficient.

I ask you to get in touch with Stalin and with members of the Council of Labor and Defense and report the results to me tomorrow,
October 4th, so that I can then definitively sign off on the commission's appointment and its assignment 278.

Chairman Lenin

* See the present volume, document 240. Ed.

First published in 1933 in Lenin Collection XXIII

Printed from the manuscript