INTRODUCTORY LAW TO THE CRIMINAL CODE OF THE RSFSR
… 5. Until such time as conditions are established that guarantee Soviet power against counterrevolutionary encroachments upon it, the revolutionary tribunal shall be authorized to impose, as the ultimate penalty, execution by firing squad for offenses enumerated in Articles 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63 +
64 of the Criminal Code.
x) Add Articles 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, and 69. xx) Introduce the provision allowing for the substitution of execution by firing squad with exile abroad, at the discretion of the Presidium
of the VTsIK (for a fixed term or for life). xxx) Add: execution by firing squad for unauthorized return from abroad.
Comrade Kursky!
In my view, we must broaden the scope of application of the death penalty (while retaining the option of substituting exile abroad). See p. 1, at the bottom, concerning all activities undertaken by Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, and the like;
we should formulate the text in such a way as to link these acts explicitly to the international bourgeoisie and its ongoing struggle against us—through the bribery of the press and agents, the preparation of war, and the like.
I request that you promptly return this document, along with your comments.
15/V.
Lenin
Written on May 15, 1922.
First published, in incomplete form, in 1937 in the journal “Bol’shevik,” No. 2.

This is the first complete publication, based on the manuscript.

17 May 1922.
Comrade Kursky! In addition to our conversation, I am sending you a draft of an additional paragraph for the Criminal Code. The draft is rough—and, of course, it will require extensive refinement and revision. Nevertheless, I hope the central idea is clear despite the shortcomings of the initial draft: to openly articulate a principled, politically truthful (and not merely narrowly legalistic) position that explains the essence and justification of terror, its necessity, and its limits.
The court must not seek to eliminate terror; to promise such a thing would be self-deception—or deception of others—but rather to ground and legitimize terror on principled grounds, clearly, without falsity and without embellishment. The formulation must be as broad as possible, for it is only revolutionary legal consciousness and revolutionary conscience that will determine, in practice, the extent—more or less wide—within which terror may be applied.
With communist greetings, Lenin
Variant 1:
Propaganda, or agitation, or participation in the organization of, or assistance to organizations engaged in activities—whether through propaganda or agitation—in support of that segment of the international bourgeoisie which does not recognize the equal rights of the communist system of property, destined to supplant capitalism, and which seeks to violently overthrow it, whether through intervention, blockade, espionage, or the financing of the press and other such means—shall be punishable by the highest penalty, with substitution, in cases where mitigating circumstances are present, by imprisonment or exile abroad.