V. I.

Lenin

633

To:   V. G. YAKOVENKO

Comrade Yakovenko , People’s Commissariat for Agriculture

On January 26, Izvestia VTsIK carried an article by
Comrade A. Belyakov entitled “Yearning Motors and
Proletarian Agriculture”.

I advise you to give serious attention to this item. It
turns out that 770 brand new motors with spare parts, in
good condition, in their foreign packaging, with a total
of almost 117,000 h.p., and costing over 14 million pre-war
gold rubles, have been lying about at the war department
for five years. These motors are of no use to the War
Department, and are being handed over by it to the People’s
Commissariat for Agriculture, which can very well use them for the needs of agriculture. It is four months now
since the P.C.A. has been informed of this, bat not a thing
has yet been done, apart from exchanges on paper.

This is sheer mismanagement and helplessness.

I propose that:

1. the P.C.A. should give me a written explanation;

2. those guilty of delays and red tape should be found,
and a trial of this business should be arranged with wide
publicity;

3. this thing should at once be got going in practice
most, resolutely, informing me within a month of what has
been actually done (when the motors were accepted, how used, to whom handed over, when and how they will start
operating, etc.). [1]

V. Ulyanov (Lenin )

Chairman, Council of People’s Commissars

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Notes:
[1]
In reply to this letter, People’s Commissar for Agriculture, V. G.
Yakovenko, informed Lenin on February 21, 1922, that he had
ordered an inquiry in connection with A. A. Belyakov’s article
in Izvestia VTsIK . Yakovenko wrote that he had handed over
the material on this to D. I. Kursky at the People’s
Commissariat for Justice to have proceedings started against those guilty
of red tape, if he found this necessary.

On May 15, 1922, Yakovenko submitted to Lenin a report on
the use of the aeroengines for mechanising agriculture (Central
Party Archives of thy Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the
C.P.S.U. Central Committee).