PROJECT FOR A LETTER FROM THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE RCP(b) ON RELATIONS WITH NON-PARTY WORKERS
Draft a circular dispatch to the provincial party committees and transmit it by cipher. Content: The experience of non‑party conferences has amply demonstrated that they have increasingly become arenas for the agitation of * Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries;
therefore, utmost caution is required in organizing non‑party conferences, and such conferences must never be convened without first undertaking the most meticulous preparatory work at each individual factory. The provincial party committees must answer to the Party for ensuring the success of every non‑party conference.
Each provincial party committee is obligated not only to report to the Central Committee on the outcome of every non‑party conference, but also to submit, prior to each non‑party conference, a detailed account of its conditions and level of preparedness.
At the same time, it is absolutely essential to intensify efforts to preserve and strengthen the bonds between communists and the non‑party masses. To this end, it is necessary:
to hold not only general assemblies for the working and peasant masses, but also formal reports by all responsible officials to the working and peasant masses. Such reports must be held at least once a month, so that the non‑party working and peasant masses are afforded the opportunity to critically examine the co‑operative institutions and their operations. The reports

* In the manuscript, the word “organization” is written above the word “agitation.” Ed.

must be delivered not only by communists, but by all officials holding positions of responsibility—above all, those in food supply and Sovnarkom institutions.
Each provincial party committee is required to report monthly to the Central Committee with precise data on the number and progress of all such reports, as well as on the demands put forward by non‑party members during these gatherings.
The Central Committee will formulate more detailed instructions regarding the organization of these reports, the measures for assessing connections with the masses, the progress of efforts to improve their living conditions, the struggle against Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries who masquerade as non‑party members, and so forth.
Written in April, no later than the 27th, 1921.
First published in 1932, in the Lenin Collection XX

Printed from the manuscript