V. I.

Lenin

631

LETTER TO D. I. KURSKY AND ASSIGNMENT TO N. P. GORBUNOV

Comrade Kursky:

I enclose Koblents’s reply to me. [1]

After reading, please, return to N. P. Gorbunov:

1) I very strongly suspect that Koblents is poor, and
that the whole of this department is poor too.

Koblents has clearly “forgotten” that an enterprise leased
from the Soviet power is still a Soviet enterprise;

2) —— confused the question about subsequent or
preliminary audit with the question of whether or not it is liable
to auditing at all;

3) he has apparently “forgotten” that the rights of the
Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection are not narrower than
the State Control’s old powers (Collection of Statutes, 1920,
No. 16); he has forgotten many other things as well.

Conclusion: Koblents’s opinion must be checked up, and if a careful study shows that Koblents has told a lie, he
should be replaced by a more solid lawyer.

Let me know whom you will appoint as responsible for this check-up.

——— If our laws are “contradictory” (of which there is no doubt), what are the People’s Commissariat for Justice
and the Legislative Proposals Department for?

What then is being done towards codification?—towards removal of contradictions?

In particular, this is just the time for urgently working
out a clear and precise law on the extension of the W.P.I.’s
powers to audit and inquire to all manner of establishments
and enterprises (private, co-operative, concession, etc.).

Let me know who will be given this assignment.

With communist greetings, Lenin

Comrade N. P. Gorbunov:

Please read this and make a note of it for yourself to keep an eye on execution.

Have this typed and sent to Comrade
Kursky. [2]