V. I.

Lenin

730

LETTER TO J. V. STALIN AND M. I. FRUMKIN AND ASSIGNMENT TO SECRETARY

Comrades Stalin and Frumkin:

I think that we should issue an official ban on all talks
and conversations and Commissions, etc., on weakening the foreign trade monopoly.

I do not agree with Frumkin that state trade will always
be beaten. Throughout the world it is the department stores
that beat everyone else. Yet, in what way are they better
than state trade?

There is need systematically to go over to bonuses for employees for turnover and profit. Unless this is done the
People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade (and all of us)
will be a flop. Frumkin does not think about this, and that
is his fault.

15/ V. Lenin

Send this confidentially to Stalin and Frumkin, requesting them to return it with a couple of words of comment.
See that it is returned as soon as possible (2–3 days). [1]

15/ V. Lenin

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Notes:
[1]
This letter and also the draft decision of the Politbureau of the
R.C.P.(B.) C.C. confirming the foreign trade monopoly (see
present edition, Vol. 42, p. 419) were written in connection with
Lenin’s receipt on May 15, 1922, of material from N. N.
Krestinsky, R.S.F.S.R. Plenipotentiary Representative in Germany,