V. I.

Lenin

483

To:   D. I. KURSKY

Comrade Kursky , People’s Commissariat for Justice

In my letter No. 809 of September 3, I made you personally responsible for a number of assignments and requested that you should inform me regularly about their
execution. [1]

Please let me know how the following tasks have been fulfilled:

1) to pull up the judges through the C.C. so that they
punish red tape more severely;

2) to arrange a conference of the Moscow people’s
judges, members of tribunals, etc., to work out effective
measures to combat red tape;

3) without fail, this autumn and winter of 1921–1922, to
bring up for trial in Moscow 4-6 cases of Moscow red tape,
selecting the more “vivid” cases, and making each trial a
political affair;

4) to find some, if only 2-3, sensible “experts” on
questions of red tape, among the more fierce and militant
Communists (get hold of Sosnovsky), so as to train people to
weed out red tape;

5) to publish a good, intelligent, non-bureaucratic letter
(a circular of the People’s Commissariat for Justice) on
fighting red tape. [2]

Chairman of the C.P.C.

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Notes:
[1]
See present edition, Vol. 35, Document 298.— Ed.

[2]
In reply to this letter, People’s Commissar for Justice, D. I.
Kursky, on November 14, 1921, sent Lenin a report from the
investigation department of the, People’s Commissariat for Justice over
the first half-year of 1921 on 18 cases involving red tape. Kursky
wrote that most of these cases ended with the imposition of
disciplinary penalties, a part of them were wound up and “cases could
be referred to the courts (Revolutionary Tribunal and the People’s

Courts) only by way of exception”. Reporting the preparation of
exemplary trials, he said they were now considering the renewal of
the panels of the people’s judges in Moscow (Central Party
Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.P.S.U.
Central Committee).

Kursky’s reply did not satisfy Lenin and he wrote to him once
again (see present edition, Vol. 35, Document 306).