INSTRUCTION TO V. A. SMOLYANINOV
AND NOTE FROM L. A. FOTIEVA
13/VII 1921

Vladimir Ilyich, A few days after the Inter-Soviet Trade Union Congress, the Swiss delegate Wirt (or Wirth) will be arriving—first in line—and he may take a letter addressed to Plat. If Axelrod manages to do so, he will send over part of what is requested today; the remainder will follow tomorrow. Letters have been dispatched to everyone. Whatever we’ve managed to secure, I am sending along.

X)
I am sending
No.
“Economic Life” with an article by Krzhizhanovsky*.
All the best, L. Fotieva** x) I ask Smolyaninov to ensure that this matter is carried out accordingly. 1
13/VII [1921] Lenin
To Fotieva: Have my notes (+ Rykov’s) on this topic been sent to Bukharin? 2 Where is the reply I’m awaiting from Bukharin? 3
* Underlined by V. I. Lenin.
** On L. A. Fotieva’s note, V. I. Lenin made the annotation: “See the reverse,” where he penned the document now being published.

1 In the newspaper “Economic Life,” No. 151, dated July 13, 1921, an article titled “From the State Planning Committee” appeared, signed by the Chairman of Gosplan, G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, in response to the publication by Yu. Larin of a fuel-supply program for industry covering the second half of 1921. The note pointed out that, to avoid misunderstandings, Gosplan deemed it necessary to make clear that, until the fuel-supply program for industry was approved by the Council of Labor and Defense, all programs published by Larin were merely preliminary calculations, subject to unlimited revision… as work proceeded on the formulation of the current plan for the national economy” (“Economic Life,” No. 151, July 13, 1921).
2 We are speaking here of the exchange of notes between V. I. Lenin and A. I. Rykov on July 12, 1921, concerning the need to publish G. M. Krzhizhanovsky’s note.
On the same day, in a note to L. A. Fotieva, V. I. Lenin wrote:
“Send this through Smolyaninov.
Check the printing.
When it’s printed, let me know and secretly forward this issue of ‘Economic Life’ to Bukharin, enclosing the exchange of my notes with Rykov.
Let Bukharin read it and return it to me with a few words. Lenin” (Central Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism–Leninism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union).
3 In his reply, the editor of the newspaper “Pravda,” N. I. Bukharin, reported that Larin’s articles were being published with great caution—self-promotion was carefully excised, and in many cases the articles were sent for review to the relevant organizations. Now, he wrote, it would also be necessary to scrutinize official documents. On this reply, V. I. Lenin noted: “Archive. Bukharin on Larin” (Central Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism–Leninism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union).