LETTER TO V. M. MOLOTOV WITH A PROPOSAL FOR THE POLITBURO OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE RCP(b)
To Comrade Molotov, I have read in the latest minutes that the Politburo has rejected the State Planning Committee’s request for the allocation of funds to finance a foreign trip for Professor Ramzin. I believe it is absolutely imperative to submit a proposal to reconsider this decision and to grant the State Planning Committee’s request. Ramzin is the foremost expert on fuel technology in Russia. I am thoroughly familiar with his work—except for the literature—thanks to the reports delivered by Krzhizhanovsky and Smilga. The latter, incidentally, confided in me, in strict confidence, that during their joint trip to Baku, Ramzin had passed on to Smilga a sabotage memorandum drafted by several prominent specialists. Taken together, these facts leave me with not the slightest doubt that, in Ramzin, we have, first, the most distinguished scholar in a field—thermal engineering—for which, after Kirsh, we have no comparable experts, and which holds immense significance for the entire national economy; and second, we have a man who is undoubtedly working with utmost integrity in the service of Soviet power. His illness is extremely severe, and to hesitate to allocate sufficient resources for his swift and complete recovery would, in my view, be not only a mistake but a crime.
I propose that the Politburo adopt the following resolution: The State Planning Committee’s request for the allocation of funds for Professor Ramzin’s foreign trip—both for medical treatment and for negotiations concerning oil—

LETTER TO V. M. MOLOTOV WITH A PROPOSAL FOR THE POLITBURO
industries—to grant the request in full and to instruct Krestinsky, immediately upon receipt of the report from the Berlin physicians, to determine whether these funds are adequate for the complete cure of 176.
Lenin
Dictated over the telephone on February 23, 1922.
First published in 1959 in Lenin Collection XXXVI

Printed according to the secretary’s record