Date: 1921-12-24
Source: ru:PSS/v54
Source: CW vol 54

Comrade Bogdanov!

I consider all your arguments regarding the Fowler ploughs affair to be absolutely and fundamentally wrong. True, your incorrectness is not as indecent (pardon the strong expression) as that of Osinsky, who has directly turned into a defender of the worst kind of bureaucracy, but still, what you are doing is also not good.

We must not fear the court (our court is proletarian) and publicity; we must drag the red tape into the light of publicity: only in this way will we seriously cure this disease.

Your argument: exceptionally good, devoted, valuable workers.

Let us assume that this is true, that you do not have "departmental enthusiasm."

What follows from this?

Only that if the court agrees with you on this (and since you probably firmly believe this, you will present a series of very serious witnesses to prove it), it will render a decision:
guilty of failing to eliminate red tape and of inefficiency, but, taking into account exceptional devotion to the Soviet power, fully proven by a series of witnesses, outstanding conscientiousness and diligence, also fully proven, taking into account the general shortcomings of the VSNKh mechanism, partly due to the change of the presidium, etc.,... to be acquitted of any punishment, in the belief that the defendants will take this seriously, as will the entire VSNKh presidium.

Can you deny the benefit, the public significance, which would be a thousand times greater than the secret, party, and CC-idiocy of hushing up this dirty business of dirty red tape without publicity, if such a decision were rendered?

You are fundamentally wrong. We do not know how to publicly try for dirty red tape: for this, the People's Commissariat of Justice should hang us all on stinking ropes. And I have not yet lost hope that one day we will be justly hanged for this.

If you think that there is not a single intelligent prosecutor and three intelligent judges, truly intelligent (not hasty, not shouters, not demagogues), in the RSFSR, then I accuse you of pessimism about the Soviet power. I am sending a copy of this letter (along with your letter) to Comrade Kursky with a special request that he read it and circulate it widely among jurists, and that he specifically take responsibility for finding an intelligent prosecutor and intelligent judges for this trial. And that Kursky personally be responsible (1) for the maximum acceleration of the trial and (2) for providing me with a stenographic report of this trial (to see whether our weak People's Commissariat of Justice is finally beginning to learn how to conduct and manage public trials on red tape). It is time to start learning.

I do not understand why an intelligent prosecutor cannot, in front of everyone, completely tear apart, ridicule, and disgrace the "Bogdanov" and "Osinsky" defense of bureaucratic red tape, while at the same time presenting the accusation reasonably, correctly, and in moderation?

Why is a verdict of approximately this type not possible:

Attaching exceptional importance to a public trial on matters of red tape,
we issue the mildest sentence this time in view of the exceptionally rare conscientiousness of the accused, warning hereby that in the future we will punish
for red tape even the holiest, but incompetent fools (the court may express itself more politely),
for what the RSFSR needs is not holiness, but the ability to run things.

Therefore, if Lomov and Stiunkel are exempted from punishment for their "holiness" this time, then Unkov (is that right?) who was obliged to give reports in the STO and did not, is to be arrested for a week;
- and Il'in (director of the former Il'in factory?), and the entire factory committee of this factory, and the entire board of the corresponding trade union, and the entire membership of the party cell of such-and-such factories, we declare guilty of red tape, incompetence, and indulgence of bureaucracy, and we issue a severe reprimand and public censure, with a warning that only this first time
are we being so lenient, but in the future we will mercilessly imprison this trade union and communist scum (the court may express itself more mildly).

With comradely greetings

V. Ulyanov (Lenin)

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First published in 1928 in the Lenin Collection VIII

Printed from the manuscript