V. I. Lenin

Letter To D. I. Kursky With Notes

On The Draft Civil Code

February 28, 1922

Comrade Kursky, Re your letter of February 23 (No. 255) in reply to my
letter.

I shall try to see you personally, but I cannot promise it
because I am not feeling well.

I hope that after the meeting of executives in connection with
my letter, you will write to me about its practical results. It
is particularly important to organise a real check of what is
actually being done, what is actually being accomplished, what
the People’s Courts and the Revolutionary Tribunals have
achieved and how this can be assessed and verified.

How many cases of abuses of the New Economic Policy have been
tried?

How many sentenced, and what punishments (as a whole and not in
individual cases)?

etc.

With communist greetings, Lenin

Especially urgent and important:

P. S. Re the Civil Code [1] : I am unable to go
into the wording of individual articles. My health does not
permit me to do so.

I must confine myself to the following points:

1) The People’s Commissar of Justice must find out and
personally check who precisely is responsible for each major
section of the Civil Code.

2) Everything that the literature and experience of the
West-European countries contain on the protection of the
working people must be used.

3) Do not limit yourself to that (this is most important). Do
not follow the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs
blindly. We must not play up to “Europe” but MOVE
FARTHER in intensifying state interference in “private legal relations” , in civil affairs. I cannot say
exactly how that ought to be done because I am in no condition either to study the question or to go into even an
individual code. But that that must be done is clear to
me. The danger threatening us in this field is that of under
doing it (and not that of overdoing it); that, too, is perfectly clear to me. On the eve of Genoa [2] we
must not make a false move, show a lack of spirit, let slip
out of our hands the slightest possibility of extending state
interference in “civil” relations.

Lenin