LETTER TO THE POLITBURO OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE RCP(b) ON THE CIVIL CODE OF THE RSFSR
To Comrade Molotov, for the Members of the Politburo
I wish to draw your attention to the fact that, as Comrade Gorbunov informs me, the Civil Code was utterly botched yesterday in the Sovnarkom. The very warnings I had issued in my letter to Kursky* were, it turns out, completely disregarded. I hereby instruct the Presidium of the VTsIK to review this matter in accordance with the spirit of my directives as set forth in my letter to Kursky. Under no circumstances should the draft be approved without first being resubmitted to the Politburo, accompanied by my preliminary assessment. An immediate commission should be established, composed of three jurists whose integrity and competence can be fully trusted—jurists who truly grasp the essence of the matter and are capable of formulating the necessary amendments and additions—and this commission should be charged with submitting, within a short timeframe, to the Politburo a draft of revisions and supplements. The commission’s primary task must be to ensure, in every respect, the interests of the proletarian state, with particular regard to the ability to exercise control—subsequent oversight—over all private enterprises without exception, and to annul any contracts or private transactions that contravene either the letter of the law or the interests of the toiling working class and peasantry. Rather than slavishly imitating bourgeois civil law, we must instead introduce a series of restrictions on it, aligned with the spirit of our own laws, without unduly hampering economic or commercial activity.
22 February 1922
Lenin
First published in 1937 in Bolshevik magazine, No. 2

Printed from a typewritten copy

* See the present volume, pp. 396–400. Ed.