V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v45;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

I would advise very strongly that at this Congress a number of changes be made in our political system.
I want to share with you the considerations which I regard as most important.
In the first place I place an increase in the number of Central Committee members to a few dozen or even a hundred. I think our Central Committee would be threatened with great dangers if the course of events were not quite favourable for us (and we cannot count on that)—if we did not adopt such a reform.
Then, I intend to propose to the Congress that the decisions of the State Planning Commission be given legislative force, meeting the wishes of Comrade Trotsky in this respect—to a certain extent and on certain conditions.
As for the first point, i.e., increasing the number of Central Committee members, I think it is necessary both for raising the prestige of the Central Committee and for seriously improving our apparatus, and also for preventing conflicts between small sections of the Central Committee from acquiring an importance too disproportionate to the fate of the Party.
I think our Party has the right to demand from the working class 50 to 100 Central Committee members, and can get them from it without overstraining its forces.
Such a reform would greatly increase the stability of our Party and make it easier for it to fight in the midst of hostile states, which, in my opinion, may and must become much more acute in the next few years. I think that the stability of our Party would gain a thousandfold by such a measure.
Lenin
December 23, 1922
Recorded by M. V.
II
Continuation of the notes.
December 24, 1922
By stability of the Central Committee, of which I spoke above, I mean measures against a split, insofar as such measures can be taken at all. For, of course, a whiteguard in *Russkaya Mysl* (it seems it was S. S. Oldenburg) was right when, first, in regard to their game against Soviet Russia, he staked on a split in our Party, and when, second, he staked for that split on serious disagreements in the Party.
Our Party rests on two classes and therefore its instability is possible and its downfall inevitable if there should be no agreement between those two classes. In that event it would be useless to take this or that measure, in general to discuss the stability of our Central Committee. No measures in that case would be capable of preventing a split. But I hope that this is too remote a future and too improbable an event to talk about.
I have in mind stability as a guarantee against a split in the immediate future, and I intend to examine here a number of considerations of a purely personal character.
I think that from this standpoint the prime factors in the question of stability are such members of the Central Committee as Stalin and Trotsky. Relations between them, in my opinion, constitute a greater part of the danger of that split,

which might be avoided, and the avoidance of which, in my opinion, should be served, among other things, by increasing the number of Central Committee members to 50 or 100.
Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has concentrated enormous power in his hands; and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution. On the other hand, Comrade Trotsky, as his struggle against the Central Committee over the question of the People’s Commissariat for Railways has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present Central Committee, but he has also displayed excessive self-assurance and excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work.
These two qualities of the two outstanding leaders of the present Central Committee can inadvertently lead to a split, and if our Party does not take measures to prevent this, a split may come unexpectedly.
I shall not further characterise the other members of the Central Committee as to their personal qualities. I will only recall that the October episode of Zinoviev and Kamenev was, of course, no accident, but that it can as little be blamed on them personally as the non-Bolshevism of Trotsky.
Of the younger members of the Central Committee I want to say a few words about Bukharin and Pyatakov. They are, in my opinion, the most outstanding figures (among the youngest ones), and the following should be borne in mind about them: Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favourite of the whole Party; but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never studied, and I think never fully understood, dialectics).
December 25. Then Pyatakov—a man of undoubtedly outstanding will and outstanding ability, but too much given over to administration and the administrative side of the work to be relied upon in a serious political matter.
Of course, both these remarks are made by me merely for the present time, on the assumption that these two outstanding and devoted Party workers may not find an opportunity to supplement their knowledge and correct their one-sidedness.
Lenin
December 25, 1922
Recorded by M. V.
ADDITION TO THE LETTER OF DECEMBER 24, 1922
Stalin is too rude, and this defect, which is quite tolerable in our midst and in relations among us Communists, becomes intolerable in the office of General Secretary. Therefore, I propose to the comrades that they think of a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing to it another man who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may seem an insignificant trifle. But I think that from the standpoint of preventing a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relations between Stalin and Trotsky, it is not a trifle, or it is a trifle which may assume decisive importance.
Lenin
Recorded by L. F.
January 4, 1923
III
Continuation of the notes.
December 26, 1922
Increasing the number of Central Committee members to 50 or even 100 should, in my opinion, serve a twofold or even threefold purpose: the more members of the Central Committee there are, the more training in Central Committee work there will be and the

less danger there will be of a split due to some imprudence. The enlistment of many workers to the Central Committee will help the workers to improve our apparatus, which is extremely bad. It is, in fact, inherited from the old regime, for it was absolutely impossible to remake it in such a short time, especially during war, famine, etc. Therefore, those “critics” who with a sneer or with malice point to the defects of our apparatus may be calmly answered that these people completely fail to understand the conditions of the modern revolution. It is quite impossible to remake the apparatus sufficiently in five years, especially under the conditions in which our revolution took place. It is enough if in five years we have created a new type of state, in which the workers are in the van of the peasants against the bourgeoisie, and this, in the conditions of a hostile international environment, is a gigantic achievement. But this realisation must by no means close our eyes to the fact that we have, in essence, taken over the old apparatus from the tsar and the bourgeoisie and that now, with the advent of peace and the satisfaction of the minimum need for food, all work must be directed towards improving the apparatus.
I picture the matter to myself in such a way that several dozen workers, becoming members of the Central Committee, can, better than anyone else, engage in checking, improving and remaking our apparatus. The R.C.P., which at first performed this function, proved unable to cope with it and can be used only as an “appendage” or as an assistant, under certain conditions, to these members of the Central Committee. The workers who are to become members of the Central Committee should, in my opinion, be primarily not those who have had a long Soviet service (in this part of my letter I everywhere include peasants among the workers), because those workers have already acquired certain traditions and certain prejudices which it is desirable to combat.
The workers who are to become members of the Central Committee should be primarily those who are below the stratum that has been promoted in the last five years to the rank of Soviet officials, and who belong more closely to the rank-and-file workers and peasants, who, however, do not fall into the category of direct or indirect exploiters. I think that such workers, attending all meetings of the Central Committee, all meetings of the Political Bureau, and reading all the documents of the Central Committee, can form a cadre of devoted supporters of the Soviet system, capable, first, of giving stability to the Central Committee itself, and, second, of really working on the renovation and improvement of the apparatus.
Lenin
Recorded by L. F.
December 26, 1922