V. I.

Lenin

739

To:   F. E. DZERZHINSKY [1]

Comrade Dzerzhinsky:

On the question of deporting the writers and professors
helping the counter-revolution.

This needs more thorough preparation. Without it we shall make mistakes. Please discuss these measures of
preparation.

Gall a conference of Messing, Mantsev and some other persons in Moscow.

Put the duty on the Politbureau members to devote 2–3 hours a week to looking through a number of periodicals
and books, verifying execution, demanding reviews in writing , and securing the dispatch to Moscow of all
non-communist publications without delay.

Add to this the reviews by a number of Communist writers (Steklov, Olminsky, Skvortsov, Bukharin, etc.).

Collect systematic information about the political record, work and literary activity of the professors and
writers.

Assign all this to an intelligent, educated and scrupulous
man at the G.P.U.

My opinion on the two Petrograd publications:

Novaya Rossiya
No. 2. [2] Closed down by the Petrograd comrades.

Perhaps it has been closed down too early? Circulate it to the Politbureau members and discuss more thoroughly .
What is its editor Lezhnev ? Is he from Dyen ? Could information about him be collected? Of course, not all the
people working on the magazine are candidates for deportation. [3]

The Petrograd magazine Ekonomist , published by the
XIth Department of the Russian Technical Society, is another
matter. [4] I think this is clearly a whiteguard centre.
Its No. 3 ( only No. 3!!! this nota bene! ) carries a list of
its members on the cover. These, I think, are almost all
the most legitimate candidates for deportation.

These are all patent counter-revolutionaries, accomplices
of the Entente, an organisation of its servitors and spies
and corrupters of the student youth. We should make arrangements to have these “military spies” caught and once
caught constantly and systematically and deported.

Please show this confidentially, without making any copies, to the Politbureau members, returning it to you and to me , and inform me of their opinion and your
conclusion.

19/ V. Lenin