To [comrades] Stalin and Kamenev1*.

1. I enclose Trotsky's letter about the Party budget. Trotsky is right.

A number of radical measures are needed. Think it over. We'll talk on Wednesday.1

Don't approve the experts. They will embarrass us. Examine them first: write a week's worth of outlines of your program and tactics2. Otherwise, to hell with them. Bye-bye, they will shame us, as Preobrazhajenskii (chairman of the FinCom!!!) shamed us with the budget.

We will always have time to take a shit in experts: first we will try to allocate something good2*.

Smolyaninov reworked the "Decree of the Council of Labor and Industry". Why? I don't know.

The game of redrafting instead of business work: to pull up the swag and bastards who don't want to submit reports. (I cannot do this both because I am ill and because I am extremely angry and am only able to throw Smolyaninov out).

I ask you to devote 2-3 hours to this matter3.

There is a scandal with the gold cash. For God's sake, do not put up with this outrage. Who's in charge? Novitsky? Then put him on trial for lying. Sokolnikov? Then get a written vouch from him. If he fails, I'll raise a furious fight at the congress. Teach these assholes to answer seriously and give accurate figures, otherwise we'll embarrass ourselves and fail inevitably.

Two numbers: (a) all in all, (b) the commitments of the whole.

Then I see (c) means free cash is so much.

4/II.

Lenin.

Fond 2, op. 1, d. 25985 - autograph.

1* In the upper right corner of the 1st page Lenin wrote: "I enclose an addon to the directives".

2* Then V.I.Lenin's note: "See the following countrys".

1See docs. 352 и 354.

2Lenin's unfolded proposal on the experts of the Russian delegation at the Genoa Conference on the same day was sent to V.M.Molotov for the members of the Politburo (see: Lenin V.I. Complete Collected Works, vol. 44, p. 380). Members of the Politburo were interviewed by telephone and agreed with Lenin's proposal. It was included in the minutes of the Politburo of February 6, 1922 without changes (see: RCCHIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 260, l. 3).

3It seems that Lenin got acquainted with the minutes No. 258 of the meeting of the Council of Labor and Defense of February 1, 1922, and noticed that the agenda included a report by V.A. Smolyaninov on the revision of the punishment of the STO, but the discussion was postponed for a week. Lenin's intervention accelerated the resolution of the issue: on February 15, the STO heard the report and decided: "To accept and, with the signatures of T. Smolyaninov and Avanesov, to give for signature to the chairman of the STO" (RCCHIDNI, f. 19, op. 3, d. 294, fol. 211).

Apparently, this refers to the "Instruction from the SNK and STO to local Soviet institutions", developed by Lenin in May 1921 (see: Lenin V.I. Complete Collected Works, vol. 43, pp. 266-291).

The circumstances that caused the redrafting of the punishment could not be established.