December 9, 1922

Comrade Tsyurupa,

Procedure for the work of the deputies and the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom)

1. Working hours—11–2, 6–9; together with the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars on the days: Monday and Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

2. Special meetings of all deputies and the Chairman of the Council of Labour and Defence (STO) on these days and hours (minus the Political Bureau, the Council of People's Commissars and the Council of Labour and Defence) whenever necessary, and in general at least twice a week for one hour. Fix this hour on the previous day not later than nine o'clock in the evening.

3. All the work of the deputies is divided into:

(a) immediate supervision of the work of the Small Council of People's Commissars;

(b) likewise—supervision of the work of the administrative sessions of the Council of Labour and Defence (it is necessary to restore the administrative sessions of the Council of Labour and Defence, in order to free the deputies for other, more important work. The administrative sessions are not chaired by the deputies, but only their signature makes the decisions of these sessions final).

(c) Chairing those parts of the sessions of the Council of People's Commissars and the Council of Labour and Defence where the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars is not presiding.

(d) Participation in the Finance Committee... (Perhaps once a week to set up sessions of the Finance Committee for one hour under the chairmanship of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars? This must be considered.)

(e) Determining the agendas of all institutions, including the Small Council of People's Commissars, and the order of questions, with the most important questions being singled out by the four of us, under the chairmanship of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.

1922

(f) Immediate supervision of individual People's Commissariats and their apparatus, both by means of instructions to the People's Commissars and their deputies personally, and by studying their apparatus both at the top and at the bottom.

(g) For this purpose (point f) the People's Commissariats are distributed among the deputies with the approval of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.

4. All the above-mentioned work is distributed among the deputies in such a way that all three, and if necessary their assistants from among the business managers, "sit" on a definite job for two months, and then change it. (This is necessary in the interests of acquainting all the deputies with the entire apparatus as a whole and in the interests of achieving real unity of administration.)

5. A draft of such a distribution among the three deputies is drawn up by them immediately and approved by the four of us.

6. Since the work of improving and correcting the entire apparatus is far more important than that work of chairing and chatting with deputy people's commissars and people's commissars which has hitherto occupied the deputies entirely, it is necessary to establish and strictly enforce that each deputy "goes down to the bottom" for at least two hours a week, devoting himself to personal study of the most diverse, both upper and lower, parts of the apparatus, and the most unexpected ones at that. A fixed record of such study, approved and communicated (in certain cases) to all departments, must serve to reduce the apparatus and tighten up everyone and everything in our state apparatus.

Lenin

Printed from a typewritten copy.