TELEGRAM TO THE SAMARKAND COMMUNISTS

2. — In the same
paragraph, replace the word "catastrophic" (in the following phrase) with the word "difficult situation."
3. — In paragraph 2, subpoint "A," after the words
"thanks to the three-year war situation," add the words "and extreme impoverishment of the country."
4. — In the same paragraph, in subpoint "E," add in parentheses after the word "supply" (both food and special clothing).
5. — In paragraph 5, at the end, replace the words "are transferred to the existing state-wide supply" with "are transferred to other work."
6. — In paragraph 6, replace the word "calmly" with "correctly" in the first subpoint.
7. — In paragraph 8, after the words "require the interests," add "of restoring the national economy in general and monetary circulation in particular."

Chairman of Sovnarkom V. Ulyanov (Lenin).

TELEGRAM TO THE SAMARKAND COMMUNISTS.
(To)

27 VI [1921]
Urgent. Send them a telegram of gratitude and approval. "Give a draft."
Lenin.
Samarkand. Provincial Party Committee. Shafiransky.
[27 June 1921]
I thank the group of friends for the greeting. The main thing now is to immediately improve the situation of workers and peasants. Everything now depends on the energy and skill of local workers: the food tax, the development of agricultural trade with industry, the development of small industry. Capitalism is not a threat to us, as long as the proletariat firmly holds power, transport, and large-scale industry and can direct it into the channel of state capitalism. Under these conditions, capitalism will help in the fight against bureaucracy and the dispersion of small producers. We know what we want, so we will win. [6971
-
L
J
Signed: Lenin.
1 This refers to a welcoming telegram from July 15, 1921, addressed to "The First Soldier of the Communist Revolutionary Army" Lenin by a group of party members from the Samarkand organization. The telegram was a response to the brochure "On the Food Tax."
8 The draft of the reply telegram was prepared by the Secretariat of the Council of People's Commissars, undoubtedly based on Lenin's instructions.

IV. CONCESSIONS

FEBRUARY — 17
JULY

G.

First, the imperialist, and then the civil war, caused extreme devastation of the Soviet Republic. A severe economic crisis in the spring of 1924 led to a political crisis. The transition from war to peace required the party to review the methods of struggle and construction used during the period of war communism and to adapt them to the new tasks of socialist construction. In the broad plan for the restoration of large-scale socialist industry and peasant agriculture, which Lenin began to develop in the second half of 1920 (completed in March 1924 in the form of the New Economic Policy), concessions played a significant role. Concessions, i.e., the leasing of certain mines, oil fields, forest areas, etc., by the Soviet state to foreign capitalists under specific conditions, partly represented a tactical step by the Soviet government, a known political move to make it difficult for imperialists to form a united front against us (Collected Works, Vol. XXVI, p. 45). Of course, concessions also had purely economic significance: according to Lenin's plan, they were to serve the cause of restoring large-scale socialist industry and improving the situation of workers and peasants. By the spring of 1924, the decline in the productive forces of the republic was so great, and the economic crisis so acute, that there was concern about the possibility of quickly restoring the ruined economy with the own forces of the workers and peasants of our country. Therefore, Lenin raised the question of concessions particularly sharply. Essentially, Lenin considered concessions as one of the possible ways to boost the economy—the most favorable under the given conditions. Only with our own strength or also "with the help" of foreign capital?—Lenin posed this question, outlining the ways out of the severe economic crisis, and answered it by demanding all measures be taken to attract foreign capital to the task of rebuilding our socialist industry (in the form of providing concessions to capitalists), for this path of building large-scale industry on the basis of state capitalism, which concessions represented, opened up prospects for the working class to relatively quickly overcome the severe economic crisis. Lenin viewed concessions as an auxiliary means, which, under conditions of extreme necessity, could play a significant role.