How We Should Reorganize Rabkrin (A PROPOSAL TO THE TWELFTH PARTY CONGRESS) 216
There is no doubt that Rabkrin presents an enormous challenge for us—and one that has yet to be fully resolved. I believe that those comrades who dismiss Rabkrin’s utility or even its necessity are mistaken. Yet at the same time, I do not deny that the question of our state apparatus and its improvement remains deeply complex, far from settled, and—above all—extremely urgent.
Our state apparatus, with the exception of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, is, to the greatest extent, a relic of the old order, having undergone scarcely any serious transformation. It has been merely lightly “painted over” on the surface; in all other respects, it remains the most quintessential example of the old within our old state apparatus. And so, if we are to seek a way to truly renew it, I believe we must look to the experience of our Civil War.
How did we act during the more perilous moments of the Civil War?
We concentrated our best party forces within the Red Army; we mobilized the finest among our workers; and we turned to those regions where the deepest roots of our dictatorship lay, seeking out new sources of strength.
It is in this very direction, in my view, that we should look for the source of Rabkrin’s reorganization. I propose that our Twelfth Party Congress adopt the following plan for such reorganization, based on a distinctive expansion of our Central Control Commission.
The Plenum of our Party’s Central Committee has already begun to evolve into a kind of supreme party conference. It meets, on average, no more than once every two months, while the day-to-day work of the Central Committee is carried out, as we know, by our Politburo, our Organizational Bureau, our Secretariat, and so forth. I believe we should complete the path we have thus begun and definitively transform the Central Committee Plenums into supreme party conferences, convened every two months with the participation of the Central Control Commission. And this Central Control Commission should be integrated, under the conditions set forth below, with the core of the reorganized Rabkrin.
I propose that the Congress elect 75–100 (though these figures are, of course, only approximate) new members to the Central Control Commission from among the working class and peasantry. Those elected must undergo the same rigorous party screening as ordinary Central Committee members, for they will be entitled to all the rights of Central Committee members.
On the other hand, Rabkrin should be reduced to a staff of 300–400 employees—carefully vetted for integrity and for their familiarity with our state apparatus, and subjected to a special test assessing their grasp of the fundamentals of scientific organization of labor in general, and of managerial, clerical, and similar tasks in particular.
In my view, such a merger of Rabkrin with the Central Control Commission would benefit both institutions. On the one hand, Rabkrin would thereby acquire such high standing that it would become, at the very least, no less authoritative than our People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. On the other hand, our Central Committee, together with the Central Control Commission, would finally embark upon the path toward becoming a supreme party conference—a path it has, in essence, already begun to follow, and one along which it must proceed to the end if it is to fulfill its tasks properly, in two crucial respects: first, in terms of the systematic, purposeful, and methodical organization and operation of its apparatus; and second, in terms of establishing genuine connections with the broadest masses through the intermediary of our finest workers and peasants.

HOW WE SHOULD REORGANIZE RABKRIN
I anticipate one objection, arising either directly or indirectly from those quarters that perpetuate the antiquity of our apparatus—that is, from those who advocate preserving our apparatus in precisely the pre-revolutionary form in which it still exists today, a form that has become, quite frankly, not just obsolete but downright indecent (and, incidentally, we have now encountered a rather rare historical opportunity to set deadlines for fundamental social transformations—and we can clearly see what can be accomplished within five years, and how much longer we will need to achieve what truly demands far greater timeframes).
This objection holds that the proposed reform would result in nothing but chaos. Members of the Central Control Commission would wander aimlessly from one institution to another, unsure where to go, why they are there, or whom to consult, sowing disarray everywhere, distracting officials from their daily duties, and so on and so forth.
I believe the malicious source of this objection is so obvious that it hardly requires a response. It goes without saying that the Presidium of the Central Control Commission, the People’s Commissar of Rabkrin and his collegium (as well as, where appropriate, our Central Committee Secretariat), will need more than a year of painstaking effort to properly organize the People’s Commissariat and its work in close collaboration with the Central Control Commission. In my view, the People’s Commissar of Rabkrin may—and indeed should—remain in office, as should the entire collegium, retaining overall leadership of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, including all members of the Central Control Commission who will be regarded as “seconded” to his authority. The 300–400 Rabkrin employees who remain, according to my plan, will, on the one hand, perform purely clerical duties alongside the other Rabkrin officials and the additional members of the Central Control Commission; and on the other hand, they must be highly skilled, rigorously vetted, exceptionally reliable, and paid a salary sufficient to free them from their current, truly wretched—indeed, one might even say worse—status as Rabkrin bureaucrats.
I am confident that reducing the number of employees to the figure I have specified will improve the quality of…

the workers of Rabkrin—and to elevate the quality of all work, while at the same time enabling the People’s Commissar and the members of the collegium to devote themselves entirely to organizing work and to that systematic, relentless improvement in its quality which is an absolute necessity for the worker–peasant government and for our Soviet system.
On the other hand, I also believe that the People’s Commissar of Rabkrin will need to work toward, in part, merging and, in part, coordinating those higher institutions concerned with labor organization—such as the Central Institute of Labor, the Institute of Scientific Organization of Labor, and others—of which we now have no fewer than twelve within the republic. Excessive uniformity, and the resulting tendency toward consolidation, would be detrimental. On the contrary, we must strike a reasonable and pragmatic balance between fully integrating all these institutions into one unified body and, at the same time, clearly delineating their respective spheres of responsibility while preserving a degree of autonomy for each institution.
There is no doubt that such a reform will benefit not only Rabkrin but also our own Central Committee—both in terms of strengthening its ties with the masses and in terms of enhancing the regularity and solidity of its work. In that case, it will be possible—and indeed necessary—to establish a more rigorous and accountable procedure for preparing Politburo sessions, ensuring that a specific number of Central Committee members attend these meetings—either according to a fixed time frame or in accordance with a well-defined organizational plan.
The People’s Commissar of Rabkrin, together with the Presidium of the Central Committee for Labor and Industry, will be responsible for allocating the tasks of its members in light of their obligation to attend Politburo sessions and to review all documents that are submitted for its consideration; likewise, they will be tasked with ensuring that members devote their working time to theoretical preparation and to the study of scientific labor organization, or else to actively participating in the oversight and improvement of our state apparatus—from the highest state institutions down to the lowest local bodies, and beyond.

HOW WE SHOULD REORGANIZE RABKRIN
I also believe that, in addition to the political advantage that, under this reform, members of the Central Committee and members of the Central Committee for Labor and Industry will be far better informed and better prepared for Politburo sessions—since all documents pertaining to these sessions must be made available to all members of the Central Committee and the Central Committee for Labor and Industry no later than twenty-four hours before the start of the Politburo meeting, except in cases that absolutely cannot tolerate any delay, which require special procedures for briefing the members of the Central Committee and the Central Committee for Labor and Industry and for determining the proper course of action—among the benefits we should also count the fact that the influence of purely personal and contingent factors on our Central Committee will be reduced, thereby diminishing the risk of internal division.
Our Central Committee has evolved into a highly centralized and authoritative body—but the work of this body has not been organized in a manner commensurate with its standing. The reform I propose is intended to address this shortcoming: the members of the Central Committee for Labor and Industry, who are required to attend a specified number of Politburo sessions, must form a cohesive group that, “without regard to personal considerations,” will ensure that no one—neither the General Secretary nor any other member of the Central Committee—can obstruct their ability to raise pertinent questions, scrutinize documents, and, in general, achieve complete awareness and the utmost accuracy in all matters.
Of course, in our Soviet Republic, the social order is founded on the cooperation of two classes: the workers and the peasants—and now, under certain conditions, even the “Nepmen,” that is, the bourgeoisie, have been admitted to this partnership. Should serious class divisions arise between these classes, then schism will be inevitable; yet our social order does not inherently contain the seeds of such inevitability. The primary task of our Central Committee and the Central Committee for Labor and Industry—and, by extension, of our Party as a whole—is to closely monitor the circumstances that might give rise to division and to take proactive measures to avert them, for in the final analysis, the fate of our republic will depend on whether the peasant masses remain united with the working class, faithfully upholding their alliance with it, or whether they turn instead to the “Nepmen”—that is, to the new bourgeoisie, severing their bonds with the workers and fracturing their unity with them. The clearer we can envision this dual outcome, and the more thoroughly our workers and peasants come to understand it, the greater our chances of avoiding a schism that would prove ruinous for the Soviet Republic.
January 23, 1923.
Pravda, No. 16, January 25, 1923.

Signed: N. Lenin

Printed from a secretary’s record (a typewritten copy), verified against the newspaper text