V. I.

Lenin

A Letter to the Politbureau Members with a Draft Decision for the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) and the Council of Labour and Defence on The Question of Rutgers’ Proposals

In my opinion, Rutgers’ proposals cannot be accepted now in
their present form. But I should like to try a thing like this: to make him
modify the group (Rutgers + Heywood + Calvert). And modify the
financial terms, too. We could decide this way:

while rejecting the proposals of Comrade Rutgers in their present form, i.e., the motion of Comrade Bogdanov and the members of
the S.E.C. Presidium who voted with him, the C.C. (and then the C.L.D. in
administrative order) expresses an earnest wish that Comrade Rutgers’ group
should not regard this refusal as a final one and should revise their
proposals on the following lines:

α) modification of the group, the main group of sponsors, by adding
to it 5-8 prominent representatives of the American labour union movement
or other labour organisations; β) reducing our Government’s expenses to the sum of $300,000 maximum; ’) cutting and specifying our expenses in the event of the agreement being cancelled. [1]

Lenin

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Notes:
[1]
Lenin’s proposals formed the basis of the Politbureau’s decision of
October 15, 1921, concerning the proposals of S. Rutgers, and the Council
of Labour and Defence decision of October 17, 1921, “On the Terms of an
Agreement with the Rutgers Group”.