TELEGRAM TO I. T. SMILGA **.
Baku. Smilga1.
August 20, 1921
Please immediately inform me where you were, what the further route is, when you will be [in] the Donbass and when [in] Moscow. Where to address telegrams.
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Lenin.
* Printed from a machine copy. Ed.
** The telegram was written by one of the secretaries. The telegram has the note: "No. 0991 Smolianinova". Ed.

COAL
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1 I. T. Smilga - Chairman of the STO [Council of Labor and Defense] commission, sent in July 1921 to the Donbass, in connection with the catastrophic state of the Donetsk coal industry, and to Baku and Grozny to take measures to raise the oil industry. The VIII Congress of Soviets outlined a production program for 1921 for the Donbass of 600 million poods of coal, i.e. 50 million poods monthly. Meanwhile, starting from May 1921, coal production fell sharply, as evidenced by the figures given by the Chairman of the TsPKP G. L. Pyatakov in "Kommunist" (organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b)U) No. 202, September 10, 1921, in the article: "Wounded Giant." The same article by Pyatakov provides data on the beginning of the reduction of the labor force and, what was especially alarming, on the decrease in miners. On the state of the Donbass, see also "Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn" Nos. 171 and 182, of August 5 and 18, 1921, editorials: "Mortal Danger" and "Donbass in Danger."
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