V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:LS/v35; en:MT; es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek); AI-translated.

May 17, 1922

I am receiving a number of reports that the high cost of books, amid our "enthusiasms" and exaggerations of the New Economic Policy, is depriving the people of useful books.

It seems to me that it is necessary to establish some rule or pass a law of roughly the following kind: to set certain sums from local taxes, which must be remitted to the centre for the formation of a fund, from which several thousand copies (say, Skvortsov: "Electrification" and the like) are purchased for distribution to all district libraries.

I request that this be discussed and that your conclusion be communicated to me.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars
V. Ulyanov (Lenin)