Date: 1922-05-02
Source: ru:PSS/v45

LETTER TO G. Y. SOKOLNIKOV ON QUESTIONS OF FINANCIAL POLICY
Copies to Comrades Tsyurupa, Rykov, and Stalin (for the Politburo)
Comrade Sokolnikov!
I have listened to Comrade Tsyurupa’s account of your draft for an internal grain loan and have reviewed the text of the draft myself. It seems to me that this is nothing more than self-deception. How, pray tell, are you going to prove that this measure can actually yield even the slightest tangible benefit? On the contrary, it seems to me that we ought to conclude that this move will only worsen our situation—by further fueling emission, that is, by pushing the speculative market toward precisely the kind of counter‑measures against us that it has been employing with such remarkable success. Indeed, the market has, it appears, almost mastered the art of inflating prices at a pace so rapid that, in the wake of each increase in emission, the latter ceases to extract any real value from the population, degenerating instead into a hollow game—and a futile form of self‑consolation for us. (By the way, we ought to have precise data on just what real values are being extracted through emission. We should be summarizing these figures in the most concise possible form, if only on a weekly basis. Is this being done?)
It seems to me that the time has come to abandon this harmful self‑deception and to place genuinely revolutionary measures high on the agenda—on the one hand, by increasing the collection of all kinds of taxes; on the other, by swiftly and decisively reducing staff levels. In doing so, we must not shy away from closing, in some cases without setting a specific deadline, and in others until autumn, entire sections within numerous People’s Commissariats—and even certain individual People’s Commissariats themselves.
Today I wrote to Dzerzhinsky about conducting a thorough review of whether we are, in fact, seriously pursuing the closure of railway lines of the third category.

LETTER TO G. Y. SOKOLNIKOV
The roads of the third category number 114. I am deeply concerned that, without revolutionary measures of this sort, the Congress resolution on financial policy—number 115—will remain nothing more than a piece of paper, and that we will continue to lag behind reality, risking becoming utterly helpless in the face of the looming catastrophe. I respectfully request your opinion on this matter—number 116.
Lenin
Dictated over the telephone on May 2, 1922.
First published in 1959.

In Lenin Collection XXXVI

Printed from the secretary’s record (a typewritten copy)