V. I.

Lenin

NOTES FOR A SPEECH ON MARCH 27, 1922 [1]

1. On Genoa briefly to repeat what
was said on Mar. 6,
1922. [2]

(+ delegation composed. — Directives carefully discussed
more than once.—“ We are ready. ”)

2. NEP. The main points of this
“question”:
(a) Testing the “link” with the peasant economy.

3. ( b) The test by competition
between state and capitalist enterprises (both commercial
and industrial ; both Russian and foreign ).

4.

(( State capitalism.
“ We ” are the state.))

(c) “State capitalism.”
Scholastic versus revolutionary and practical meaning of this term.

5.

The scouting sortie has been made.
Mixed companies.

(d) Halting the retreat. Not in the sense: “We’ve already,
learned”, but in the sense: don’t have nerves, don’t invent, but
learn on the present ground ; “ regrouping of forces and
preparation”= the watchword of the day. Preparation for the offensive
against private capital =the watchword.

6. “ Evolution or tactics?”
Ustryalov in Smena Vekh [3] :
more useful than “sweet– sounding communist lies”.

Which side will win? What do we lack? Cultured methods,
ability to administer (including ability to carry on state trade).

8. Todorsky , p. 62, to underline . [4]
Already in Oct. 1918!

( Cf. conqueror and conquered: who is more cultured? 4,700
responsible Communists of Moscow and
Moscow bureaucracy.)

Two typical examples:

9. Example No. 1: Moscow Consumers’ Co-operative Society fights
the red tape of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade . [5] “ Copy of the white
cow.” [6] What did “they” (without
Krasin and Kamenev) lack? Culture.

( Material of the “case” of the M.C.C.S. versus the P.C.F.T. )
(In this case there was insufficient ability to manage+a certain
political mistake.)
(Role of the
Communists: they’re bad !)

10. Example No. 2: How “he” (and
“they”) overdid the administering (in the Donets Basin).

11. “ State trusts.” An example ...
for next year!

12. Summing up: we have quite
enough resources to win in
NEP : both political and economic. The question is “ only ”
one of cultured methods !

13. The whiteguards (including the
Mensheviks and S.R.s and Co.)
see in this something in their favour! Vain hope! A review
of what has been completed and not completed is very valuable:

(α) A bourgeois-democratic revolution, “they” say! Against
them (400 years’ worth of dung cleaned out in 4 years!).
(β) Exit from the war: a revolutionary exit from a reactionary war. And what about them?
(γ) The Soviet state. The first in the world. A new epoch:
worse than the first locomotive !

The three are inseparable.

The fourth, and main one, is not finished: laying the foundations of a socialist economy . To be redone again and
again.

14. What “link in the chain” must
we get hold of now?

1917—withdrawal from the war.

1918—Soviet state versus
Constituent Assembly.

1919 and 1920—repelling invasion.

1921: economic approach to the peasantry. The search for an economic policy.

1922: The essential is not in institutions, not in reorganisations, not in new decrees,
but in the selection of personnel and in checking performance .
Selection of personnel and checking performance.
On three (3) conditions:

(a) Absence of intervention.
With Mensheviks and
S.R.s: shooting for political abetting .

(β) The financial crisis not to be excessively severe.
(Not very severe?
Purging the state trusts.)

(γ) Making no political mistakes.

15. “ The key feature of the
moment” (the link in the chain)= the gap between the grandeur
of the tasks imposed and our poverty , not only material but
also cultural .

16. We must be at the head of the
masses, otherwise we are a drop in the ocean.

“ The phase of propaganda by decrees ” is over. The masses
will understand and appreciate only business-like practical
work, practical success in economic and cultural work.

σσ = Selection of people and checking of performance!

_ _ _

Additions:

1. The Party versus the Soviet
bodies. (Don’t bother it with petty jobs. Raise the responsibility of
personnel in Soviet bodies.)

2. All-Russia Central Executive
Committee? Longer sessions.
More careful discussion. More circumstantial checking.

3. Council of People’s Commissars
and Council of Labour and
Defence.
My deputies (Rykov and the usefulness of Wilhelm II).
Correspondence since Jan. 1922.
Checking performance, pulling up, purging from above .

4. C.P.C. Raise its prestige, free it
from minor tasks.

5. C.L.D. Develop and expand the
activities of the regional economic conferences .

6. Narrow Council of People’s
Commissars. Free it also from minor tasks.

Draft directives (on the instruction of the Central Committee)
will be submitted.

---
Notes:
[1]
The notes for a political report of the Central Committee of the
R.C.P.(B.) to the Eleventh Congress of the Party (see present
edition, Vol. 33, pp. 263–309).

[2]
A reference to Lenin’s speech on the international and domestic
situation of the Soviet Republic at a meeting of the Communist
group of the All-Russia Congress of Metalworkers, March 6, 1922
(see present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 212–26).

[3]
Smena Vekh (Change of Landmarks)—a collection of counter-revolutionary articles, issued in Prague in July 1921. Its authors
(N. V. Ustryalov, Y. V. Klyuchnikov, Y. N. Potekhin, S. S.
Lukyanov, A. V. Bobrishchev-Pushkin, and S. S. Chakhotin) were
representatives of intellectuals from the anti-Soviet whiteguard
camp. They had come to realise that it was hopeless to try to
overthrow the Soviet power with the aid of foreign armed
intervention and were hoping that the Soviet state would evolve round
to their views.

[4]
A reference to the book by Alexander Todorsky, A Year with Rifle and Plough , issued by the Vesyegonsk Uyezd Executive
Committee in 1918. Lenin’s article, “A Little Picture in
Illustration of Big Problems” (see present edition, Vol. 28, p. 387),
contains a quotation from the book in a copy of which (p. 62)
he underlined it. This copy is now at the Archives of the Institute
of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.

[5]
For details, see present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 292–94.

[6]
A reference to the incident from Lenin’s law practice, which he
related in the political report of the Central Committee of the
R.C.P.(B.) to the Eleventh Party Congress (see present edition,
Vol. 33, pp. 294–95).