V. I. Lenin

To the Society of Friends of Soviet Russia (In the United States) [1]

October 20, 1922

Dear Comrades, I have just verified by special inquiry to the Perm Gubernia Executive
Committee the extremely favourable information that was published in our
newspapers about the work of the members of your Society, headed by Harold
Ware, with the tractor team at the Toikino State Farm, Perm Gubernia.

In spite of the immense difficulties, particularly in view of the extreme
remoteness of that locality from the centre, and also the devastation caused
by Kolehak during the Civil War, you have achieved successes that must be
regarded as truly outstanding.

I hasten to express to you my profound gratitude and to ask you to
publish this in your Society’s journal, and, if possible, in the
general press of the United States.

I am sending a recommendation to the Presidium of the All-Russia Central
Executive Committee that it should recognise this state farm as a model
farm, and render it special and extraordinary assistance in building and
also in supplying petrol, metal, and other materials neces-sary for a repair
shop.

Once again on behalf of our Republic I express to you our profound
gratitude, and ask you to bear in mind that no form of assistance is as
timely and as important for us as that which you are rendering.

Lenin ,

Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars

Endnotes

[1] The Friends
of Soviet Russia (in the United States) was founded in June 1921. It had
over 200 local organisations, each of which had an Executive Committee or
Committee of Action, which was directly linked up with the Society’s
National Executive. The National Executive and the Consultative Committee
directed all organisational and propaganda work and also concentrated all
cash donations into a single fund. The aim of the Society was to help the
workers and peasants of Soviet Russia, tell the people of the U.S.A. the
truth about Soviet Russia and secure the lifting of the U.S. economic
blockade of Russia.

In May 1922, the Society sent to Russia a tractor team,
which began working at the Toikino State Farm, Sarapul Uyezd, Perm Gubernia,
on July 17. The team did much to raise production at the state farm and to
show the peasants the advantages of large-scale farming with machines.

On Lenin’s recommendation, Toikino was recognised as a mod-el farm by the Presidium of the All-Russia Central Executive
Committee on November 9, 1922.

Lenin’s letter was translated into English and printed on November 15, 1922 in the magazine Soviet Russia, which was
published in New York by Russian workers’ organisations in the
U.S.A.